Hi everybody,
my pushups are a desaster. I can do approximately three in a row and then I’m maxed out. I’d like to improve that. Would it be a good idea to do submaximal sets on GPP days instead of the extra arm work? Or how would you approach this? Or will my capacity to do pushups improve just by benching and pressing and the GPP arm work?
I’m very open to suggestions
a rather clueless Mica
While I’d hesitate to replace all of the prescribed arm work with them, pushups are an excellent BW exercise and well worth doing IMO. There’s obvious carry-over for pressing, plus you get in some isometric core training.
Here’s an idea for a pushup NLP: start with a variation that you can do three sets of 4-6 with decent form (resting 2-3 minutes between sets). Do this three times a week, trying to add a rep or two each set. Once you can do three sets of 10, move to the next variation: wall pushups, kneeling pushups, incline pushups, pushups, diamond pushups, decline pushups, decline diamond pushups, one-arm pushups.
It shouldn’t be too hard to get these done between sets of squats or deadlifts, for example.
mica, can I ask why you have a desire to improve your push up capacity? It’s likely that as your bench press goes up, you will notice some kind of increase to your pushup capacity. However, if you want to get better at a particular movement, you need to prioritize practicing that movement.
Are carrying around excess weight and/or are a novice in regards to benching?
Thanks for your answers guys.
@ropable Great suggestions. I’ll implement these in today’s workout.
@ericjspencley I want to “have” push-ups purely for reasons of vanity. I have karate training twice a week. And though our trainer doesn’t do much of conditioning work, once in a blue moon he has us doing some body weight stuff like push ups, squats, planks, etc. I can keep up with everything else quite nicely. But those bloody push ups have always been a total pain for me. Where the other guys dish out tens of them I colapse on the mats after three.
And yes I am rather a novice with the bench press. I can press about 50% of my body weight. No, no overweight here.
ahhhh that makes sense now. Yes, without a doubt your push up capacity will rise as your benching comes up. In that case, if push ups are a priority to you, there is no harm implementing them in your training. I am in a similar situation where for some reason, being able to do a lot of chin ups and pull ups are important to me. Therefore I always do those movements on the AMRAP sets on GPP days. I wouldn’t see any harm in adding something like an AMRAP set of pushups on GPP days or doing what @ropable suggested.
Just keep training and your capacity will rise!
For now I did those 3 sets of 5 during my last workout and it went well. Thanks again for both of your input.
This is coming from a guy who trained pushups in the Army, going from barely passing in Basic Training to a maxed score 3 years later (72 in 2 min was max at my age of the time), but I was a skinny 145lb runt who never did any serious barbell training until a decade later.
I don’t recommend doing pushup work to the deteriment of your bench work. In the long term, I think your bench will transfer better to increased pushup capacity, strength, and astetics more than the other way around. This isn’t the same thing as saying “don’t do pushups.” Just do them smart.
For a general recommendation on how to keep GPP work from being detrimental to barbell training, The Bridge recommends limiting GPP work of a particular type to no more than 7 minutes total, and “Sub Maximal Sets” which is defined as not going to failure. I know what it’s like to be driven to colapsing on the mat, but try to avoid that for better GainzZz.
If you can only do 3-5 pushups, they’re a pretty poor candidate for GPP work.
I’m going to disagree with people here. If they’re a priority for you, you might as well do them instead of benching until you’re stronger. The argument that “bench is better for general strength” isn’t actually proven.
I think even Rip suggested in one of the editions of StSt that weighted pushups would be superior to bench pressing if you could load them safely due to the potential for greater range of motion.
Regardless of what you choose you may end up having to gain some weight (muscle mass) to keep up with the other members of your class.
Programming aside, how’s your push-up form? E.g. if your arms are 90 degrees out from your body, you’re leaving a lot on the table right there and could improve immediately.
Hmmm, I didn’t get all the way through the SBS article, as my toddlers just woke up in their room and I’ll have to get away from the computer. You follow up the bolded statement with Rip’s comment about the difficulty loading the Pushup. Thus if you are like me and ascribe to the doctrine that to drive strength gains, progressive overload is necessary, since the load on the bench can be precisely and incrementally increased on the Bench, and it can’t be in the Pushup, the Bench is demonstrated as better for training general strength with no further proof necessary.
You can overload pushups, per the Nuckols article, with bands. This turns out to be as effective as overloading bench with plates. Similarly hex bars are just as good, if not better, for general strength as deadlifts. As are high bar and ssb squats as compared to low bar.
Rip wouldn’t be caught dead with that pu*** sh**. Rip is also suffering from dementia, so I wouldn’t bother listening to him. I threw that statement in there for effect. Even the barbell-over-everythang guy has admitted pushups are legit.
Plus the OP is even in the magical/fictional optimal rep zone for strength.
I suspect you know this but enjoy arguing a nuanced yet flawed point. I’ll indulge anyways.
I emphasized “precisely and incrementally” because I recognized that the referenced article advocates bands (hey look pictures!). Such progression is prohibitively difficult with bands compared to doing so using plates on the Bench. Heck, Nuckols states the study didn’t even use progressive overload AT ALL.
Plus the overload added by bands emphasizes the lockout, not the entire range of motion, and thus does more for the triceps than the pecs and “general strength development.” You seem well read enough that I’m sure you already knew that. Having actually spent 4 years training the pushup with nearly no time on the bench, I can assure you that my triceps were already more trained than my pecs, without adding in the overemphasis on tri’s that bands would introduce.
You don’t need to convince me that the Rippetoe doga isn’t the end all be all. Progressive overload isn’t a Rippetoe thing though.
But as you are advocating pushups, how has your own experience been using pushups for strength training? What standards have you tested? Your highest resistance band? Total rep count? Difficult variants?
I like benching. So I bench a lot.
My point was simply the op really cares about a push-up number. He should train pushups. And he can’t do enough reps for gpp push-ups anyway. The benefits of bench over pushups are vastly overstated imo.
I don’t disagree with your points. Just the conclusion that the op should therefore bench.
my specific experience with pushups recently is block pushups as gpp. They seemed to grow my chest better than bench probably because there’s less technical proficiency needed to properly use your chest. I did 3 sets of 15 reps without bands to start and ended up with 20 reps across after a month. You can overload volume too.
now I’m doing tricep work instead because my sticking point is pretty high in the ROM now. It was close to the chest for a while.
additionally before starting proper strength training I did lots of pushups, decline pushups. And curls. While losing weight. I just added reps every week until I couldn’t. Went from like 10 to 15 doing that.
As you probably know, strength is specific. If the op cares more about his pushups total right now I would focus on doing pushups. Personally I care more about not being out benched by my 16 year old cousin. So I bench