• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Why are my push ups hitting a brick wall?

skidz

adrenaline junky
Try doing push ups on a set of parrallel bars. You can go down way past the plain and work quite a few different muscles.
 

jus2mch

MOTIVATOR
Contributor
Every day I do 5 sets of maxing out on push ups. Despite this, my numbers are not improving. Yet the same workout with sit ups is increasing my numbers drastically.

Has anybody tried this program? http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Smith_082405,00.html

Growing up, I was always told to work out hard one day, then take a day off in between to give the muscles a day to heal and become stronger. Yet this link recommends working out every day. Additionally, most of the workouts people have discussed on this forum also say to work out every day.

Here is a link to help train

https://otcn.netc.navy.mil/boost/sta21_physical_training.htm
 

WVUBetaHornet

Sweep the leg..
I'm familiar with this workout routine, and to be clear..since I saw it nowhere on the program page, the "100% test" that the push up program is describing is your 2-minute max.
The rest is straightforward....30%/45%/60%/whatever % of how many push ups you can do in 2 minutes.
 

RAS

retired but still flying
None
What does the 30/45/60/90 min refer to? Time between sets? How many sets?

I do what feels good that day. Start with a set of 30 then four sets of 40, finishing with a set of 30. The only set that maxed was that last set of 40 and the final set of 30. Total 180 push-ups, not bad for an old fart.

Stew Smith's workout info looks like good gouge.
 

shivvyman

Registered User
What does the 30/45/60/90 min refer to? Time between sets? How many sets?

I do what feels good that day. Start with a set of 30 then four sets of 40, finishing with a set of 30. The only set that maxed was that last set of 40 and the final set of 30. Total 180 push-ups, not bad for an old fart.

Stew Smith's workout info looks like good gouge.


For example, say your max in 2 minutes is 60 (that is what you do first thing Monday morning).

Every 60 minutes you will do one set of 18 pushups (30% of your 60 max). You do that until you go to sleep at night. Typically, I would cut it off at 10:00 p.m.

Tuesday, you do 30 pushups every 60 minutes (50% of 60).

Wednesday, you get the idea.

Some days aren't too bad, others are killers. However, the good thing is it really only takes a minute to jump down, push out a set, and get back to working or whatever currently occupies your time. There will be times when you simply can't jump down and push out that set ever 30 minutes, but for the most part, try to stick to the schedule and you will be amazed at the results. I think I went from 58 to 72 after one week.
 

RAS

retired but still flying
None
Cool. That adds up to a lot of push ups. Back when I worried about the PRT I'd typically just max out on push-ups and sit-ups every other day -- max required was 67 p/u & 100 s/u, so that's what I did. Then I went for a 3-4 mi run. I wasn't worried about improving since I was already doing the max.

Now that I'm not doing PRT's, I'm just interested in staying in shape with no artificial goals/limitations. So sometimes I do 150 s/u. . . then I pump iron. Push-ups are good tho', very underrated.
 

WVUBetaHornet

Sweep the leg..
Push-ups are good tho', very underrated.

Couldn't agree more; they're phenomenal at isolating the upper arms/chest area...and any exercises that you can do w/o the need for equipment are great for the simple fact that they can be performed literally anywhere all while getting a nice workout..
 

MarkD

New Member
Because I'm applying for BDCP and I was a lanky, shapeless sack of crap when I decided to do so, I've been training for PRT for a few months now (happy to report that I'm no longer shapeless, jury's still out on sack of crap-itude)... for a while I was following a basic 3 day a week plan (I think I found it on navy-prt.com) but I started hitting a wall on pushups. So, I just started doing it every day - inspired by Stew Smith's write-up, but not following it exactly - and it seems to be working well; I've started to improve again and now I'm not worrying about PRT any more.
 
Top