@alidvx Biggest piece of advice: keep going!!!!
I 100% hear you about being embarrassed, but you don’t need to be. That’s what exercising is for- improving. That’s what everyone is trying to do. Don’t let being discouraged stop you.
Second piece of advice: small, incremental, attainable goals are the way. You’re right to scale back goals to ones you feel are realistic. Stay on course, keep working hard, and don’t compare yourself to where others are because you’re just starting!
Edit: also try engaging your core as much as you can during non-ab specific exercises. That will do more than you’d think to help strengthen the area, and will help you get stronger on those planks and other ab-exercises.
@violetnicole Honestly I would add on to this to even drop time constrained goals and just focus on improving on a week by week increment, whatever it might be.
Use dumbbells to do bench press, which works the same muscles as push ups. Start with 5s if you need to. Try to go up 2.5 lbs every week.
I was at a slightly higher starting place than OP (not by much) and it must have taken me 5 months of consistency to even get one push up? After that I was able to add on a push up every few days to weeks, but that first one was tough. Of course this will depend on so many other factors but my point is there’s no reason to get fixated on a certain time to hit X when you have no way to plan or predict how your body responds to each workout session. The only thing you KNOW is you can get stronger, so just try to hit X, then Y, then Z.
There is a lot of strength that will transfer over as you’ve suggested with the core. Deadlifts are great for building core and so many other muscle groups in one exercise, highly recommend incorporating KB deadlifts.
Be consistent and learn to enjoy the journey and feeling stronger than you did a few weeks ago. That will keep you going!
