Bonfiglio, a student at the Princeton Theological Seminary, has gained a modicum of fame since May, when he broke fitness guru Jack LaLanne’s 52-year-old record for the least amount of time to do 1,000 push-ups. That accomplishment has been mentioned in the pages of Sports Illustrated and various other magazines. Bonfiglio’s exploits have even transformed him into a minor internet celebrity: A youtube.com video of him breaking LaLanne’s record has registered about 12,000 hits.
In many ways, Bonfiglio’s success wouldn’t have been possible without Princeton, where his journey to the Guinness Book of World Records began.
Bonfiglio was originally a walk-on member of the wrestling team, but he improved rapidly, eventually becoming one of the team’s stars and earning All-Ivy honors his junior year. Bonfiglio said he believes that his undergraduate wrestling training, which involved long, high-intensity workouts, helped instill the endurance and strength necessary to set push-up world records.
“I think that my wrestling build and my wrestling training set me up for this type of insanity,” Bonfiglio said.
While his undergraduate years laid the foundation for his future success, Bonfiglio’s pursuit of fitness world records didn’t begin until after graduation.
Bonfiglio became an assistant coach for the wrestling team. He was known for his extraordinary athleticism and strength, so one day at practice, one of his wrestlers asked if he thought he could do 1,000 push-ups in under an hour. Bonfiglio said he thought he could, and, at the end of practice, he went to the corner of the room to give it a try. Fifty-nine minutes later, Bonfiglio completed his 1,000th push-up.
From there, Bonfiglio’s achievements and reputation grew. In 2004, he ran a marathon in which he averaged less than seven minutes per mile. Later that year, he set a record for the most pull-ups in an hour. That record no longer stands.
Bonfiglio’s fascination with push-ups began in earnest last March when he read an article in The New York Times called “An Enduring Measure of Fitness: the Simple Push-Up.” The article mentioned that LaLanne set a world record by completing 1,000 push-ups in 23 minutes in 1956.
“I thought, ‘Gosh, I’ve done a thousand push-ups before. I wonder if I could beat Jack LaLanne,’ ” Bonfiglio said.
Bonfiglio set out to do just that. He began training five to six days a week by doing hundreds and sometimes thousands of push-ups a day. Training to break LaLanne’s push-up record was like training for a marathon, he said.
After two months of training, Bonfiglio said he thought he had built up enough endurance to beat LaLanne’s half-century-old mark. On May 5 of this year, a crowd of mostly seminary students gathered in the Princeton Theological Seminary’s gym, just off Route 206, to cheer on Bonfiglio’s attempt to break the record. After 20:50, 40 sets and 1,000 push-ups, Bonfiglio made history.
After setting the record for 1,000 push-ups, Bonfiglio learned that the Guinness Book of World Records, which recognized his feat, would not print his record: They only printed the record for most push-ups in an hour. Determined to get his name in print, Bonfiglio set out to break that record as well.
Three months and one failed attempt later, Bonfiglio found himself in the Seminary’s auditorium, again in front of a cheering section of friends and supporters. This time, though, Bonfiglio could not be sure that he would succeed. A month earlier, he had come seven push-ups short of breaking the existing record — 3,416 — and he feared this attempt might end in a similarly gut-wrenching way. In the end, Bonfiglio cleared the old record by a relatively narrow margin of 16 push-ups.
“It came down to the last 15 seconds,” Bonfiglio said, “so it was fairly dramatic.”
Incredibly, setting the record for the most push-ups in an hour required Bonfiglio to do on average 57.2 push-ups per minute, almost one each second.
Having conquered the push-up world, Bonfiglio has decided to take a breather from record-setting. He’s currently focusing his athletic talent on intramural sports. But that doesn’t mean that the 30-year-old has given up on setting records.
“I just haven’t been inspired yet,” Bonfiglio said. “I’m looking for suggestions right now.”
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