Why am I so bad at push-ups?

Slacker16

Hi, I'm 27 (nearly 28) and was fairly athletic in my late teens and early 20's. My activity level has fluctuated since, but I've tried to do calisthenics semi-consistently.

Overall, my upper-body strength is good and I do push-ups, pull-ups and L-pull-ups regularly. Got no problem doing pull-ups or ab exercises and can do a decent number of them, but I'm pretty tired out after 20-25 push-ups and my max (in the last few years) has been 32 consecutive.

If I do more than ~50 push-ups in one day, I have extreme soreness in my shoulder and underarm, occasionally irradiating all over my chest. The soreness persists for a few days during which I am unable to do any upper-body exercises. It's bad enough that I've considered the possibility of ligament or joint damage on more than one occasion.

This doesn't seem to have abated with time. I was always worse at doing pushing exercises than other ones, but I remember I could do sets of 40-50 when I was younger (although I already had a problem with extreme soreness afterwards).

Can anyone give any suggestions?

bumblebums

First of all, "irradiating" does not mean what you think it means.

Second, that's a lot of push-ups. I would not say you are bad at them if you can do 50. And that's certainly enough to exacerbate an injury; shoulders are an easy joint to injure. Lots of small muscles there.

You need to vary your routine--add pull-ups if you can, vary the angle, maybe lay off push-ups for a while until the shoulder heals. Good luck.