That's about where I am, high 50's to 60 in a minute. The problem with going all out in the first minute is I have little left for the last 2 minutes. My best results in the challenge is when I do 40 in 40 seconds, rest for 10-12 seconds then sets of 8-12 with a few seconds rest after each set. By the final 30 seconds I'm doing 5-7 only in between brief rests. My chest has always been my weakest body part by far though, so what works for me might not be ideal for some of you PecZillas.
Another Sunday, another 1000 pushups. It's not as impressive as it sounds. It may be a high count, but doing 100 every hour doesn't ever really produce a good pump or lactic acid burn. I'm considering going to higher rep counts in the set, and fewer sets.
If you're not getting a pump or burn from 100 pushups, then you need to slow them down (try the downward part of the movement while counting to five) or just move on to dumbbell presses with heavy weight.
If I can offer some advice. For many of you, the issue is not a weak chest as this exercise is not really a test of strength but endurance. The real culprit here for many is weak abs, not chest. If you guys have weak abs or a weak core, this exercise will be very challenging. Here is how you can test that. http://www.mensfitness.com/weight-l...-to-do-a-plank-a-single-move-for-stronger-abs Try to do planks. Planks are an excellent core builder and since all you are doing is holding yourself in a fixed position, you will see just how hard this is even without doing the actual pushup. Just holding yourself up straight for 2 minutes and not moving is very difficult. First start with planks and try to build up your core and you will find it much easier to do the pushups for 3 minutes.
Do you do 100 non stop or break them up throughout the hour? I did a push-up workout a few months back that basically was take your max number of straight push-ups, multiply it by 4 or 5 (can't remember which) then on day 1 do that number of push-ups however you want throughout the day. On day 2 do all of them back to back in as few sets as possible. Alternate daily for like 2 weeks then take a couple days off and try your max again. I had an improvement in mine. I want to say I got like 15 more reps
Planks are so interesting to me. If I do them a couple of times per week for 4 or 5 weeks in a row, I can work myself up to about 3min 30secs. But if I take just a week or two off from doing them, my time literally drops all the way back down to 1min 40 secs when I come back.
I think I've made it known on here I'm working on going into the army currently, well every Wednesday about 10-15 of us do a workout with the recruiters. It's usually brutal. Ends with a crazy competition that you do not want to lose. Anyways, the other day at the end of our workout they had us all get into a circle in the push-up position. We had to go around 1 at a time and do a push-up, then after everybody went we had to do 2 and so on up to 5 then stopped for a minute then back down from 5 to 1. If anybody dropped or put a knee down we had to start over. Push-ups themselves were easy. Hardest part was my lower back and core were burnt out and my rear delts were on fire also. We have some people in the group that have a very long ways to go before shipping out so needless to say we were in the push-up position for quite awhile lol.
I can always squeeze an extra 30-60 seconds out of a plank by doing something else lol I'll scroll through ET or something to take my mind off of it with the timer running in the background so I can't see it.
Congrats on the Army. Are you right out of high school or older? What specialty are you going into. Many many many moons ago I got accepted into Army Intelligence school.
Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. A distraction is critical. It's almost pointless to do them just staring at the floor because every second feels like 10 seconds of torture.