This episode is a first-person conversation with Rich Hernandez, the founder of Do Hard Things 365, who can do 5,000 push-ups in one set without ever touching his knees and is training to break a push-up record that has stood since 1980. The whole point he keeps coming back to is that the push-ups are not the point. They are the visible proof of a daily habit — showing up, doing one hard thing, getting one percent better — that carries into business, parenting, school, and everything else. This one was recorded in person, the morning after Rich trained with my group.
Press play in the player above to watch the full conversation, or keep reading for what we got into.
Rich can do 5,000 push-ups in a single set without touching his knees or breaking the plank position. He has hundreds of livestreamed videos of himself doing 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 in real time as proof. He is now training to break the standing push-up record of 10,507.
Rich is chasing a record of 10,507 consecutive push-ups, a number that has not been broken since 1980. He notes there is no video evidence of that original mark, though Guinness recognized it. His own best on video is 5,000, and in one 14-hour livestreamed training day he logged 12,345 push-ups by doing 20 every minute on the minute.
Three years ago Rich could do 40 push-ups in one set, and that was his limit. He built to 5,000 by focusing on getting one percent better every day and letting it compound over time. He describes the curve as a hockey stick: long flat stretches early, then a sharp inflection once the work accumulates.
Rich started with a seven-minute plank in October 2023 and added one minute every Friday for seventeen weeks without failing. After a friend challenged him to actually push to failure, he started jumping five minutes at a time, then hours at a time, reaching a four-hour plank inside ten months. He walks through the full progression in the episode.
Rich's philosophy is consistency, accuracy, intensity — in that order. Consistency comes first: show up every day and build the habit, even if you do very little once you get there. Accuracy is dialing in your form and range of motion, and intensity is added last, once the first two are locked in.
Rich frames getting anything done like knocking on doors to sell something. It comes down to three factors: whether you have a good product, whether you are a good salesperson, and how many doors you knock on. If any one of those is zero, the whole thing is zero, which is why he treats consistency as the factor that matters most.
Do Hard Things 365 is the platform and community Rich built around a simple message: do something hard every day, get one percent better, and keep at it for a long time. He posts daily proof of the work and coaches a growing group of people following the same path. You can find him as DoHardThings365 on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.
We do a 10,000 push-up challenge with our community every February, so push-ups mean something around here. When I met Rich, I could not believe how many he could do — more than anyone I have ever met in my life. I had him on the show once before for a full-length interview, and this time I wanted to do it in person. I bring anybody I can into my morning group workout to teach the group something, and I wanted these guys to feel his energy up close. He trained with us that morning, and then we sat down. Press play to hear how it went.
Rich went to MIT for electrical engineering and computer science, worked in the aerospace world for a defense contractor, picked up a master's along the way, and then earned an MBA at Yale. On paper he was already doing hard things — the kind you do with your mind. Somewhere in there he decided to point all of that at a different problem. The reason he gives for walking away from that track is worth hearing in his own words. Watch the player above to hear him tell it.
Rich has gone more than a thousand days with no days off, and none of them are easy days. One year he ran what he calls the hardest push-up challenge in the world: one unbroken set every day, adding five reps daily, from five on January 1st to more than 1,800 by December 31st — over 333,000 push-ups for the year. The number is staggering, but the lesson he pulls out of it is not really about push-ups at all. He explains what it is in the episode.
Rich keeps saying the push-ups are just the visible part. His real claim is that once you learn to show up for yourself every day, you start getting things done everywhere — the business, the website, the room that needed cleaning. He tells the story of a woman named Veronica who started sketching again after years away, and a guy who lost more than a hundred pounds and ended up on a hospital board. How that spillover actually works is the part I did not want to paraphrase. Scroll up and hear him lay it out.
This is the story I keep thinking about. Rich started with a seven-minute plank, shaking and burning the whole time, and added a minute every single Friday. When a friend pointed out he had never actually failed, he started jumping five minutes at a time, then whole hours, until he was holding a plank for four hours — all inside ten months. The shape of that curve tells you almost everything about how progress really works. He walks through it step by step in the conversation.
Rich's whole system fits in a few words: consistency, then accuracy, then intensity. He also has a framework he borrows from the traveling salesman problem — product, sales skill, and how many doors you knock on — where the whole thing collapses to zero if any single piece is missing. His advice for anyone frozen at the start is almost too simple: put on your shoes and go for a walk. The way he connects those ideas is worth hearing him say out loud. Press play in the player above.
What stayed with me from this one is how ordinary Rich makes it all sound. He is not selling a supplement or a shortcut. He is selling the idea that you can do a little more than you think, if you are willing to show up every day and let it add up.
The parallels to everything I do — fishing, running the boat, building the show — are all over this conversation. It is the same game every time: keep showing up, get a little better, and trust that the curve eventually bends.
Watch the whole thing in the player at the top of the page. Rich is easy to root for, and this one is short and worth your time.
Rich Hernandez, Do Hard Things 365, David Goggins, Atomic Habits, MIT, Northrop Grumman, Yale University.
Rich Hernandez is an MIT graduate and former aerospace engineer with a master's in electrical engineering and an MBA from Yale who left the corporate world to found Do Hard Things 365. He is known for doing 5,000 consecutive push-ups without touching his knees, holding a four-hour plank, and logging more than 333,000 push-ups in a single year, and he is currently training to break the long-standing push-up record of 10,507. He shares daily proof of the work as DoHardThings365 on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.
Transcript
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 1025: Rich Hernandez
In this in-person follow-up: 5,000 push-ups without touching his knees, the record unbroken since 1980, 333,000 push-ups in a year, the seven-minute-to-four-hour plank, and why the 1% rule beats talent every time.
Welcome to the Tom Rowland Podcast, brought to you by Star brite. Star brite makes an awesome line of products to take care of your boat — whether it's Salt Off or any of the boat cleaning products, Star brite has you covered. They do a tremendous amount in conservation, too, which is certainly important to us all.
I'm Rich Hernandez from Do Hard Things 365, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast. In person, live — we made it happen. What did you think about the group this morning? The morning workout was awesome. It was early, a lot of energy, a lot of positivity, a lot of community. Thank you for having me.
Thanks for coming. I always try to bring anybody I can into the group to teach them something. You have an incredible perspective — you can do more push-ups than anybody I've ever met in my life. It's not just a physical thing, it's a mental thing. The reason you can do 5,000 push-ups without touching your knees is not just physical, it's mental, and there are tremendous lessons we can all apply to our own lives.
I'm known as the push-up guy. Yes, I can do 5,000. I'm hoping to break the world record this year, which is a crazy number — 10,507. It's a record that hasn't been broken since 1980, so that's before I was born. I'm 44.
It's not about the push-ups. It's never been about the push-ups. It's about doing hard things every day, growing physically, but most importantly mentally.
Just so everybody understands the record: you're in the plank position, the push-up position, you don't touch your knees, and you don't get out of the position. Someone did more than 10,000 push-ups for a world record. There's no video evidence, but Guinness signed off on it. You, with video evidence, have done 5,000.
There are probably 200 videos on my Instagram and YouTube of livestreams doing 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, where you can watch a time lapse of the whole thing — I don't get out of the push-up position, I don't touch my knees, I don't lift an arm to rest. I really believe in putting up receipts. There are people out there who claim a lot of things; I livestream all of it.
The last livestream I did was a 14-hour training session. It was a high-volume day — 20 push-ups every minute on the minute for 14 hours. On that day I did 12,345.
That means a lot to this audience, because we do the 10,000 push-up challenge every February — 10,000 push-ups in a month — and you're doing 12,000 in a day. We just ate breakfast and caught up on a lot of things, including your education. You have quite an education — a couple of degrees.
I went to MIT for my undergrad and studied electrical engineering and computer science. I worked in the aerospace industry with Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor. They had me go get a master's of engineering in electrical engineering. Then I went to Yale University for my MBA.
So you've done all that and worked in those sectors — why are you doing what you're doing now? I had some reflection recently, especially during the COVID times, when a lot of people had to look deep inside and ask, "What are we doing, and why?" I started a personal journey in 2019 leading into COVID, when I read David Goggins' book Can't Hurt Me. That book lit a fire in my belly and I started walking the walk.
What I found in that journey is that I was capable of so much more, and all it took was showing up for myself every day, leaning into something hard, and focusing on getting a little better. I got so passionate about it that I wanted to spread that gospel. In the world we live in, there's a lot of noise — people trying to sell you the silver bullet. I don't have anything to sell. The thing I sell is the gospel of hard work.
On my social media I've done more than 1,000 days with no days off, and these are hard days. Last year I did what I call the hardest push-up challenge in the world: one set of unbroken push-ups, adding five every single day. January 1st, five; January 2nd, ten; all the way to December 31st at 1,825. In total I did at least 333,000 push-ups. The year before, in training, I was working out six or seven hours a day on average.
If you'd asked me five years ago whether I was capable of this, I'd have said absolutely not. I learned by doing that we are capable of so much more. I believe in leading from the front and being the man in the arena.
A lot of people would think, how do you do something harder than putting a satellite in space? Really, that's what you were doing before — doing hard things with your mind more than your body.
In my upbringing, my parents had a small business selling imported goods — shoes and leather goods. Growing up, I worked at the business. At the time I hated it. All my friends were watching Cartoon Network, at the park, at the pool, and I was waking up at 5:00 in the morning, unloading the truck, selling products for seven hours, packing it all up, and going home. But it was the foundation of all of this.
What I'm learning in this journey is that it's not about the push-ups and it's not about the physical. It's about gaining confidence in yourself and improving your mindset — call it mental grit or mental resiliency.
I'm a strong believer that with physical action you get the mind going. Once the mind and the confidence are going, you start vibrating at a higher level, and you can take that in any direction — business, school, relationships.
You're leading by example and showing people what's possible. A lot of people aren't interested in setting a world record or even doing more push-ups than their friends. But when they can do more than they could before, how do they apply that to being a parent, a business owner, or a fishing guide who's the captain in charge of the whole boat? When you show someone they're capable of more than they thought, how do they apply it to their life?
I'll give you two examples. I have a 50-day program where we brought a community together to do clean eating, drink our water, take daily walks, and work out for 50 minutes every day. One woman, Veronica, was on day 40, and she sent me a note: "I started sketching again. I was so passionate about this years ago and hadn't touched those supplies, and now I just feel better. I want to do more." People gain confidence, discipline, and agency — being confident in your ability to show up for yourself every day — and the natural extension is chasing other things that matter to you.
There's a guy who goes by the handle Life Is Good. He lost more than 100 pounds. His thing isn't push-ups — he does hot yoga and walks like a madman, at least 10,000 steps, and the other day he did 20,000. He gained a lot of confidence and now does patient advocacy; he's on the board of a hospital and has a very successful business. He just wanted to get leaner, and through that year-long journey he lost more than 110 pounds, and now he's crushing it and doing something positive in the world.
When you start focusing on being better, the natural extension is that you get better at everything else. You feel better, you have more energy, and you have the bandwidth to think, "Maybe I could volunteer, maybe I could do this." By learning to show up for yourself every day, you learn how to get stuff done — and then you get stuff done in your personal life. You clean your room, you chase that business, you build that website.
Push-ups are simple, but not a lot of people can do many of them, especially with good form. Three years ago I could do 40 push-ups in one go. I looked strong, I thought I was strong, and 40 was my limit. Today it's 5,000.
Have you read Atomic Habits? There's a powerful concept in it about getting 1% better every day. I think it's rooted in Japanese kaizen. If you get 1% better every day for 365 days and do the math, you're about 3,700% better than day one. It's the concept of compounding interest. The curve has a lot of names — the hockey stick, the exponential curve — and there's an inflection point where it feels like there are no gains at the very beginning, and then all of a sudden the gains come consistently.
On my planking journey — just holding the front leaning rest position — I started with a seven-minute plank in October 2023, and it was hard. My body was shaking, everything was burning. But I did seven minutes, so I asked, can I do eight? The next Friday I did eight, then nine, and I kept that progression going for 17 weeks and never failed.
Then a buddy, Dom, challenged me: "You haven't failed. Are you really pushing?" So I started bumping it up by five minutes — 30, 35, 40, all the way to 100 minutes. Then I jumped to two hours, then two and a half, then three, then four. That whole thing took me 10 months — 10 months to go from a seven-minute plank to a four-hour plank. The curve is exactly like the book: flat in the beginning, and then all of a sudden it takes off. The same thing happened with push-ups.
With everyone I've worked with, you have to put in four or five months of work before you start seeing the beginning of change, and a lot of people quit before that. If they make it to that point, it's a game changer. Documenting what you're doing in those first four or five months is really important — a journal or tracking software — so you can see that you did it one second faster or two reps more than the day before. Otherwise you feel like you're not doing anything, but on paper you are. Over time it's not two seconds, it's 30 seconds, a minute, 50 reps, 100 reps.
My philosophy on fitness is consistency, accuracy, intensity. Consistency first: show up every day and develop the habit of getting there — to the gym, your group, the pool. Even if you don't do much once you're there, you're getting there. Then accuracy: now you focus on doing the exercises right, getting full range of motion. Then, once you have both of those, you add intensity — you put weight on it, you do more. That's where you really hockey stick.
Where a lot of people struggle is overthinking. They want to run a marathon, so they do all the research, look for the perfect shoe, try to get everything perfect, and they just don't start. To those people I say: if you don't know where to start, put on your shoes and go for a walk. That's where it begins.
The traveling salesman problem is like knocking door to door selling something. It's a combination of three things: one, the product — do you have a good product or not? Two, are you a good salesperson or not? Three, how many doors do you knock on? If any one of those is zero, that's it — just like consistency, accuracy, and intensity. The most important thing is consistency. 100%.
We're going to have to call this one short today. Look at this shirt: there is no talent, there's only push-ups. All the socials are DoHardThings365 — Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook. It's only the reps that matter.
Rich Hernandez, DoHardThings365. He's been on the podcast before — you can check out the full-length interview we did. This one's in person; we worked out together this morning and we're going to do it again at noon. Next week we'll be back with another great guest.
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