By Matthew Sims
Altona’s Keane Collier has been busy this month to complete 3139 push-ups for mental health.
As part of The Push-Up challenge, he and a group of his co-workers have been doing push-ups every day this month to reach 3139 push-ups by Friday, June 24.
Based off his first name, Mr Collier and eight co-workers and friends formed the Mustard Push-Up Kings group and have since completed more than 27,000 push-ups collectively.
With an original goal of $4000, the group has since raised about $7500 towards mental health initiatives.
Mr Collier said he was “very happy” with the level of support the group had received.
Each day involved the participants completing the daily push-up goal, which corresponded to a specific statistic associated with mental health.
Mr Collier said the overall goal was associated with 3194 Australians having committed suicide during 2020.
“That number is too big,” he said.
Formerly in the Army, he said he had faced mental health issues and seen the effects negative mental health can have.
“I’ve lost too many friends to suicide,” he said.
Mr Collier said it had been tough to keep up the pace during the challenge.
“I haven’t done any (push-ups) since COVID,” he said.
“I’ve felt every one of them.”
Challenge founder Nick Hudson said the challenge was about bringing the conversation around mental health to the forefront.
“The Push Up Challenge is about raising awareness, in order to break down the stigma attached to mental health issues and let people who are struggling know that they can reach out and receive the support they need without judgment,” he said.
This year’s challenge saw the Push for Better foundation team up with Lifeline and Movember, with the national 2022 challenge total at $8,376,454 at the time of publication.
Crisis support can be found at Lifeline on 13 11 14 and lifeline.org.au.
Details: www.thepushupchallenge.com.au/fundraisers/MustardsPushUpKings
