It's hard to give good advice without more info - how many are you doing now? How often? How long have you been in a plateau, what have you tried so far?

But... in general, here is some info that may help:

Pushup plateau is often caused by not enough core strength, aggravated by poor form... Eventually as your core muscles soften, your back breaks plane, putting more strain on your shoulders, triceps and pectorals, until they fatigue, which eventually forces you to stop. If your core can hold good form longer, that allows the arms to keep doing their job (pushing the earth down repeatedly.)

If you augment your pushups with other core-building activities, it can do wonders for your pushup #'s. Plank, v-ups, bicycle crunches, and even squats will help you get to a better pushup, which will help you do more.

When doing pushups, pay attention to your form. Imagine a board lying flat against your back - keep it perfectly straight. Keep your arms just over shoulder width apart, not allowing your elbows to flare to the side too much. Don't allow your hip to flex upward or downward throughout the pushup, and keep your head forward and face down so that your nose is the first thing to touch the ground (not your chest or forehead).

Here are 2 methods of increasing your pushup count:

1 - Pushup to failure method: Basically do as many as you can in a single set - until you are physically unable to continue. Wait 2 minutes, and do it again.. wait 3 minutes and do it again. If your current max is 40, then you would probably do 40, then 35ish, then probably about 25 (depending on your pain threshold), for a total volume of ~100 pushups. Theory is that over time, your muscles will adapt, get stronger, and more efficient, and you will be able to do more. I hate this method, but it does work for many people up to a point.


2 - Broken sets method: Do half of your current max, 5 times, rest 2 minutes between sets. Alternate increasing # of sets or # of reps every week (week 1 increase to 6 sets. Week 2, increase reps by 10%, Week 3 increase to 7 sets, etc). So as example, if you max is 40 pushups, you would do 20 pushups, rest 2 minutes, 20 more, rest, etc - for a total of 100 pushups.

Starting volume should be 2.5x your current max, and work up from there. Retest your max no more than once every 2-4 weeks.

Repeat no more than 3x/week. Rest is very important to allow for muscle recovery and strength building.

I like #2 a lot more - it's a little slower than #1, but it allows you to really work on keeping good form while doing the pushups, which is really important to avoid future plateaus. If you find your pushup form is bad, then you're doing too much too soon... reduce the quantity and improve your form, and work back up from there.

amackg wrote: »

AllanMisner wrote: »

Is your goal just to be able to do more pushups? Or do you want some strength gains?

I would like to get as much strength out of this as possible.

If strength is your goal, doing more push ups isn’t the way. You’ll need to add progression. How many regular push ups can you do now?

Push-ups are no different than any other utilization of stimulus to increase strength. If you are stuck and have been stuck for a while, you probably have come to your genetic point of being able to take advantage of using linear progression for said movement and now it time to change things up. Just like weight training, you will need to incorporate, other methodologies in your training. So for example (and I have no idea what your push-up regimen is) let's assume your regimen is 3x (M,W,F) a week. Then you could periodization that week so that you are doing your volume sets the first day; then on the second day, you change the angle of your body (maybe put your feet on a chair) where you shift more focus to your upper chest, being weaker so your volume will go down; then on the third day, you wear a weighted vest (or whatever method you can find to increase weight) to work on a few heavy sets. And this is just one example. Looking at intermediate weight lifting programs for strength will give you some ideas of different variables and tools you can use to provide continuing stimulus for gains and advise on fatigue mitigation as you become more trained (which is probably a major component of your current problem).