Pushup Bet - Need Ideas

laneer75
laneer75 Posts: 45 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
So my bf and I were talking last night on Skype (we live in different states.) I was telling him how on Sunday I was doing a bodyweight strength training routine and that one of the exercises was just not happening - the pushup. I had been able to do (barely) 3 knee pushups, but had to do the remaining 7 as wall pushups. The end result of our conversation was that I bet him that I could do ten regular pushups by May 1.

So ... do you think it's possible to go from (barely) doing 3 knee pushups to ten regular ones in five months? I don't have access to a gym, and the heaviest dumbbell I own is 15lbs. I'm female and about 239lbs right now.

Any ideas on a good plan to build up my strength enough to do regular pushups?

Thanks for any ideas!

Replies

  • Smallc10
    Smallc10 Posts: 632 Member
    You can totally do that. Last May I was doing knee push ups and now I'm doing push ups on a Bosu.

    Just keep doing them. You will see big gains. Chest Presses also help but you need to have larger weights for that to work.
  • Ainar
    Ainar Posts: 858 Member
    I'm pretty sure 5 months is way enough to do it. You don't need gym or to do bench press or anything like that. If you wanna get good at one particular exercise the best way how to do it is by doing THAT exercise, so just do pushups, not dumbbells, resistance bands, bench press or anything else... push ups.

    This method is called "Grease the Groove", it's very popular when it comes to increasing strength with bodyweight exercises and endurance. Google it for more detailed instructions if you want.

    Anyways, basically you should do 50% of your max every day, many times a day. So if your max is 3 knee push ups then 50% of it is 1.5 we will round it up to 1. So do 1 knee push up every day. One set every 3 hours is a good start. If you feel like it is too much for you and you are too sore or tired decrease to every 4 or 5 hours or more, if you feel like it's too easy you can do them every 1 hour even. So you need to experiment with that part. But general idea is to do them every day many tomes a day with minimum 1h of rest between a single set. And not go to failure. Only 50% of failure. After you finish a set you should feel like you still got a half in.

    After a week you will be able to do more than 3 knee push ups. Do a test and go to failure then do the same thing for another week with 50% of that failure number. Eventually you will be able to do 1 normal push up. Once you can do it do 1 normal push ups every day in same manner until you can increase it up to 10. 5 months should be enough. ^^
  • laneer75
    laneer75 Posts: 45 Member
    Thank you both!

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