Something I've wanted to do for a long time but never got around to it was the One Hundred Push ups Training Program. Three days a week, you do 5 sets of push ups according to the instructions on the website. If you keep up with their projected pace, after 6 weeks you should be able to do 100 continuous push ups. It takes about 10 minutes to complete one 'day' of push ups. I think I'm finally going to seriously try to complete this program. I am decent at push ups already which should make getting started easier.
I did the initial self-test and, based on the website's instructions, should start in week 3 in the right column. I did day 1. It seemed like it would be a lot of push ups, but thanks to all the breaks I was able to complete the day. Day 2 looks like it will be really intimidating until I make it past set number two, and then will get easier.
I haven't figured out how to schedule my days yet. I know some people in the training program do all of their push ups MWF, but I'm worried if I try to set such a strict schedule I will encounter days where I'm really busy and won't get to the sets. I think I'll just keep the tab with my weekly training program open in my browser and try to do a set every other day, with the option to bump back the plan a day if I'm really busy.
Does anyone else want to be able to fire off 100 push ups? One of the reasons why I made this blog was to help keep myself accountable. I'll inform TL of my ultimate success/failure in this thread. If anyone else wants to do it, speak up!
I can already do 100 pushups continuously, but I strongly encourage you to do this kind of program. I think 3 days a week is kind of a minimum. You should do it as many days a week as you can so you can feel less guilty if you need to skip a day or have an off day or something. You shouldn't feel guilty at all because sometimes you come back after a couple rest days and it feels good to get back in the groove.
I started from a max of 30 and just kept doing it every day for some time, maybe a few months, before I could do 100 in a maxed out set. I used to test myself on Sunday mornings before brunch with one maxed out set, no re-dos. You'll get discouraged when you hit a plateau or even a dip, but learning to persevere and overcome setbacks like that is character building and it's fine if sometimes you mess up with the wrong motivation or rhythm or something and have to give up early.
I personally also liked mixing in pyramid sets, where I would do 1 pushup, 2 situps, then 2 pushups, 4 situps, then 3 pushups, 6 situps, all the way up to 10 pushups, 20 situps, and then back down to 1 pushup, 2 situps. Going 1-10-1 is a workout with 100 pushups. I also liked the minute challenge, which is doing 1 pushup in minute 1, then 2 pushups in minute 2, 3 pushups in minute 3, and so on until you can't complete the pushups in the given minute. You get a lot of rest early on and it feels simplistic, but the difficulty ramps up quickly because you're doing more work and getting less rest. If you can do 15 minutes, that's 120 pushups, a pretty challenging number in a fun way.
Sounds fun; when I did the initial test, just barely made rank 4.
And the shuttle run test like exercise coverpunch mentioned was fun as well, although I fell over at the 11th minute already ): I started to breath heavier at 8 minutes or so, so it indeed ramps up quite quickly.
We need to hold each other accountable. I guess I'll post in this thread whenever I complete a 'day'. Hopefully that will be on Monday since I already talked about my set today.
One complication is that people won't always end up following the schedule. You might have trouble finishing a week, and repeat it. You might just be really busy one week and screw up the schedule that way. I don't think an overly structured log will work. Having us share our sessions with each other is probably a good idea in a less restrictive format. Maybe people can just maintain a little table in their first post in this thread.
On May 31 2015 00:40 micronesia wrote: We need to hold each other accountable. I guess I'll post in this thread whenever I complete a 'day'. Hopefully that will be on Monday since I already talked about my set today.
Use your hammer for good! Have users make promises here to upload a video after the the set amount of weeks from start time. If they can get 90-100 after the goal time then they won't get banned for a week!
Haha the scary thing is I actually thought of that, but I don't think that's actually constructive. If some other mod wants to do something like that they can feel free, but I won't :p
I've always wanted to do their 100 push ups challenge, as well as the other challenges on the same website (squats, dips, sit ups, etc). Thanks for reminding me to not be lazy and give it another shot .
well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
Good luck dude! Kick some butt with that program! While I'm not up to join you in the pushup endeavor, I just recently finished a similar program for pullups. The daily gradual systematic increases are great for bodyweight exercises.
On May 31 2015 03:02 GodOfWarAReS wrote: well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
anyways better than doing nothing! =P so have fun
Proper pushups are by no means meaningless or anything of the sort. Proper technique is key, though, otherwise you're not really working with the intended muscles.
After I move into my sublet one of my summer goals is to not be a fat shit, so I'm totally down for this as a good way to get some exercise without going to the gym.
a few years ago I set a goal for myself to do 1000 pushups in one day. I set out to be able to do 20 sets of 50 in about 12 hours. I got up to about 700 with sets of 35, but then I strained my rotator cuff... gg
haven't done a pushup since. maybe I'll try this with you. My advice to you is to stay REALLY loose. If you spend 5 minutes doing your pushups spend 5 minutes stretching before (gently, don't over stretch) and a bit afterwards. I stretched a ton when I was going for 1k, but not often enough. I couldn't even play starcraft my shoulder was so fucked for about 2 weeks. This program looks nicely paced so you should be fine though.
On May 31 2015 03:02 GodOfWarAReS wrote: well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
anyways better than doing nothing! =P so have fun
Proper pushups are by no means meaningless or anything of the sort. Proper technique is key, though, otherwise you're not really working with the intended muscles.
Good luck with this, micronesia! Keep us updated
I heard from someone that the position of your hands on the ground were influencing which muscles you work out as well. He said putting your hands closer together would be much heavier on your shoulders, while widening the gap would be heavy on the breast muscle (pectoralis major in wiki). It seems pretty believable, but I haven't actually tried that out; could someone confirm/deny this?
On May 31 2015 03:02 GodOfWarAReS wrote: well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
anyways better than doing nothing! =P so have fun
Proper pushups are by no means meaningless or anything of the sort. Proper technique is key, though, otherwise you're not really working with the intended muscles.
Good luck with this, micronesia! Keep us updated
I heard from someone that the position of your hands on the ground were influencing which muscles you work out as well. He said putting your hands closer together would be much heavier on your shoulders, while widening the gap would be heavy on the breast muscle (pectoralis major in wiki). It seems pretty believable, but I haven't actually tried that out; could someone confirm/deny this?
You could find it out just by doing both and feeling?
For reference, I'm doing push ups with hands aligned such that my thumbs are below my arm pits, and going down until my elbow is at about a 90 degree angle.
On May 31 2015 03:02 GodOfWarAReS wrote: well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
anyways better than doing nothing! =P so have fun
Proper pushups are by no means meaningless or anything of the sort. Proper technique is key, though, otherwise you're not really working with the intended muscles.
Good luck with this, micronesia! Keep us updated
I heard from someone that the position of your hands on the ground were influencing which muscles you work out as well. He said putting your hands closer together would be much heavier on your shoulders, while widening the gap would be heavy on the breast muscle (pectoralis major in wiki). It seems pretty believable, but I haven't actually tried that out; could someone confirm/deny this?
From my experience, putting your hands farther apart is heavier on the breast muscle. Putting your hands close (so that the thumbs touch eachother) feels heavy on the triceps (unsure about shoulder)
On May 31 2015 03:02 GodOfWarAReS wrote: well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
anyways better than doing nothing! =P so have fun
Proper pushups are by no means meaningless or anything of the sort. Proper technique is key, though, otherwise you're not really working with the intended muscles.
Good luck with this, micronesia! Keep us updated
I heard from someone that the position of your hands on the ground were influencing which muscles you work out as well. He said putting your hands closer together would be much heavier on your shoulders, while widening the gap would be heavy on the breast muscle (pectoralis major in wiki). It seems pretty believable, but I haven't actually tried that out; could someone confirm/deny this?
It's true that the positioning of your hands determines which muscles work the most in pushups. Close together puts the most strain on the triceps, whereas farther apart strains chest/shoulders (depending on where your hands are relative to your shoulders, broadly speaking). It's something better
I tried this program around five years ago, and got to 55 consecutive push ups and then gave up, because I just couldn't keep up with the program any more.
Being able to do 100 push ups is kind of meh, doesn't really help you that much, except being good at push ups.
On May 31 2015 03:02 GodOfWarAReS wrote: well.. being able to make 100 push ups wont make you alot stronger or have more stamina, if youre already able to make more than 30. your body will just adept to the motion, making it easier for you to do a push up. at the end you will be amazing at push ups, but thats basically it..^^ look at really good calesthenic guys.. they can do really crazy stuff but still only can make like 80 push ups at a time, because they just dont do them as often. of course they could get up to 300 at a time in like 2 months by just doing lots and lots of push ups, but they know it would be just a waste of time.
anyways better than doing nothing! =P so have fun
Proper pushups are by no means meaningless or anything of the sort. Proper technique is key, though, otherwise you're not really working with the intended muscles.
Good luck with this, micronesia! Keep us updated
His point is that at a certain point, you're not actually getting stronger. You're just getting better at doing pushups.
Here's an old thread which had a lot of interest. You can check my progress between pages 10-12. I basically got to week six and gave up. I think the website has since modified the program a little bit to make it easier.
I recently read Convict Conditioning which had a section on push ups. Rather than just trying to do more push ups of the same difficulty level, the book emphasises increasing the difficulty of the push ups (and other bodyweight exercises in the book) once you are capable of doing a few medium length sets of your current level.
This means you'll be focusing on building strength rather than just endurance. Rather than aiming at 100 push ups, the goal of the push up series of exercises in the book is to be able to do 1-arm push ups. The book presents a nice progression of 10 steps from really easy exercises, through normal push ups and up until the final 1-arm push ups. Being able to do 1-arm push ups is a very distant goal for someone like me but it's nice to have a long term goal I guess, and the there's plenty of other more attainable short term goals in the form of the other 9 steps.
Tbh I haven't really made any progress getting started recently and have a variety of excuses, gonna try and start again properly tomorrow.
those people who do those super fast push ups are those the way to go when doing massive amounts of push ups (while mainting good form i guess?) or those who go slowly down and then slowly back up because the latter seems much harder or is there just a good standard time for doing a push up (something like 2 seconds per up and down, idk im making up a number)
Call me when you can do 100 military push-ups. Its not like they are very different, its just that your instructor goes "doesn't count - doesn't count - doesn't count - okay that one was fine - doesn't count - doesn't count"
On May 31 2015 20:47 Tufas wrote: Call me when you can do 100 military push-ups. Its not like they are very different, its just that your instructor goes "doesn't count - doesn't count - doesn't count - okay that one was fine - doesn't count - doesn't count"
Just out of curiosity, I've been doing pushups and I've also been doing bench presses. When I think about it they seem like the exact same exercise except inverted, and maybe with pushups you have a little bit of stress on the body and legs to keep everything straight. So my question is are they basically the same? Will they train the same muscles? If not I might choose to focus on one more than the other.
On June 02 2015 02:26 radscorpion9 wrote: Just out of curiosity, I've been doing pushups and I've also been doing bench presses. When I think about it they seem like the exact same exercise except inverted, and maybe with pushups you have a little bit of stress on the body and legs to keep everything straight. So my question is are they basically the same? Will they train the same muscles? If not I might choose to focus on one more than the other.
In some respects they train the same muscles, but the push up works stabilizer muscles and involves good posture i.e. a good core. I personally prefer to do push ups and a core routine every morning before showering. The bench press gets a little more hardcore in my opinion because with the higher weights being lifted, you need to compensate that by doing back exercises to balance it out, otherwise you can run into posture problems.
Yeah I just tried doing day 2 of this week, and after the first couple of sets my arm is kind of bothering me. I think I will listen to my body and stop. I'll pick it up again in 2 days.
For about a year now, I've been doing parkour, and basically all of our exercises are bodyweight exercises, so I'm quite familiar with these types of challenges and such. For instance, one of the guys in the parkour group I train with is incredibly in shape, and very often he'll just give us random challenges like 100 squats in a row and stuff.
I used to do up to 100 push-ups (plus more) in a single workout by doing a simple 3-exercise rotation. I'd just chain together 3 random exercises and then decrease reps by 5-10 every set. So for instance, I'd do 20 V-sits, 30 push-ups, and 50 squats, take a 60-90 second break, and then the next set I'd do 15 V-sits, 25 push-ups, and 40 squats, etc., and repeat until I got down to 5 or less of each exercise. It's a really good way to do comfortable sets of exercises without straining yourself while still surprising yourself when you do over 100 push-ups in a single workout .
On June 02 2015 16:37 helpman176 wrote: What are good numbers for pull ups and handstand pushups? What about the legs?
Is this a question for me?
In general, it's best to start with whatever is comfortable and move from there. In other words, if 5 pull-ups is comfortable for you, just start there, and drop it by 1 rep every set; alternatively, you could do something like 5-3-1. I literally just make up numbers when I work out and see if I can achieve them rather than follow a super structured program.
ALSO, for anyone who really enjoys bodyweight exercises, I highly highly recommend QM (quadrupedal movement)! Just practicing this on flat ground, up and down hills, and on stairs will greatly improve your entire body; it looks a little weird, but I'm convinced it's the best and easiest exercise on earth.
On June 05 2015 20:52 micronesia wrote: My shoulder was better yesterday so I did week 3 day 1 again. Tomorrow I plan to do day 2.
How is anyone else doing?
I did Day 1 and Day 2 for Week 3 consecutively instead of taking a break, and was surprisingly sore...therefore, I've been delaying Day 3 for quite a bit lol. Tbh, this program looks like it's built on repeating weeks because the scaling is insane. For instance, Week 3 in the 3rd column is 50 push-ups (+max set) for the first day, 75 push-ups (+max set) the second day, and 92 push-ups (+max set) the third day. Now, I'm not an athletic scientist or anything, but it seems a bit ludicrous to go from ~65 push-ups to >100 push-ups in a workout in just one week. Maybe the first two columns are more reasonable?
I only just now did day 1 of week 3 (14-18-14-14), and I had quite some trouble finishing it. My arms nearly quit at the last 2 pushups. I'm already scared for day 2 :')
As I expected, I couldn't handle the second day. And I saw I did the first day wrong as well, as i overlooked set 5. It´s probably best to start at week 2 next time.
On June 08 2015 22:37 Yorbon wrote: As I expected, I couldn't handle the second day. And I saw I did the first day wrong as well, as i overlooked set 5. It´s probably best to start at week 2 next time.
I think it might be a good idea to start a week down or a column over from the recommended. As I said earlier, the scaling, especially in the 3rd column, is just crazy. If you want to avoid repeating your first week over and over, it would be better to just start a bit lower.
On June 08 2015 22:37 Yorbon wrote: As I expected, I couldn't handle the second day. And I saw I did the first day wrong as well, as i overlooked set 5. It´s probably best to start at week 2 next time.
I think it might be a good idea to start a week down or a column over from the recommended. As I said earlier, the scaling, especially in the 3rd column, is just crazy. If you want to avoid repeating your first week over and over, it would be better to just start a bit lower.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. I will go down further if necessary. I started where i should according to the initial test, but i think personally think that doing 30 pushups is easy compared to week 3 3rd column, so it seems a bit strange one should start there.
I started the 200 squats program as well. I ignored the initial test there, but started at column 3 week 1. That seems quite doable, at least at the beginning.
It is pretty rewarding. I felt super tired after at first for a couple of days, now i do these before going to bed and the next morning im perfectly fine. I've started doing these every day and scaling up every ~3 days, i can do it without any problem so far (mid of week 2) and i think it might be a decent idea to offset the crazy scaling.
So i started this program in june. At the beginning i could only do 16 steady push ups, so i started at week 1 column 3.
First 2 weeks were no problem to follow the program and i did 39 push ups after 2 weeks. I could bearly manage week 3 at column 3 and at day 2 of week 4 i had to drop down to column 2. At the next test i did 55 continuously push ups, but i'm not able to follow week 5, column 2 are 145 push ups at the first day..
So my plan is to try 3 days a week to finish day1, then move forward to day2 and so on. Feels like progressing to the next level :D. I realy want to do 100 pushups but right now it feels like a long way.
On July 11 2015 19:00 Geiko wrote: So what column are we supposed to do, I don't understand ? Left column is much easier, but will we reach 100 push-ups if we only do the left column ?
The instructions told me to do the right column, but I ended up overdoing it and hurting my shoulder a bit. After resting it a week or so it was better so I'm easing back into pushups again but I don't think I can keep up with the pace of the program!
EPT
maybe I'll try this with you. My advice to you is to stay REALLY loose. If you spend 5 minutes doing your pushups spend 5 minutes stretching before (gently, don't over stretch) and a bit afterwards. I stretched a ton when I was going for 1k, but not often enough. I couldn't even play starcraft my shoulder was so fucked for about 2 weeks. This program looks nicely paced so you should be fine though.
