Pushup 21 day Challenge - advice please

[Bill]

Hello,

This morning after a warmup I did 11 sets of 10 pushups in 30 minutes.

I've got 4 weeks to train and prepare myself for a 21 day challenge, 3046 pushups in 21 days that is 146 a day. My initial reaction was "Blimey Impossible !"

HR graph for my effort this morning is attached. Arms felt fine afterwards. Pushups done after 1 hour on bike hr capped 110.

110_pushups_30min.png (65.02 KiB) Viewed 9108 times

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62yo male just lost 8kg over last 3 months with consistent indoor cycling and various kettlebells & bodyweight sessions.

Would appreciate any advice regarding best way to approach this 21 day challenge - some of you may be interested yourselves.

https://www.thepushupchallenge.com.au/

Am currently thinking 80 each morning and 80 each evening and one day off in every 7 ?

Keen to hear from anybody with experience at similar tasks

Bill

[Ombrax]

I'm no expert, but will throw this out there just for kicks:

How many do you think you can do right now to failure (all in a row without stopping)?

I would base the amount I did in a given session as some % of that. (50%? 60%? something like that)
Then figure out how many sessions you need to do per day, given how many days you will be doing them, with some rest days thrown in.

Good Luck

[Bill]

Thanks for the reply Ombrax,

Intuitively i'd be flat out doing 25 but will have a go and see what happens. Didn't want to knacker myself or hurt my arms with lactic acid buildup.

Heart is a muscle - Can it have lactic acid build up like my quads when on the bike ?

My initial thoughts were to keep the HR down and it becomes a fairly easy aerobic exercise with no chance of hurting arms or maxing out the HR.

I don't really know enough about pushups, the training programs they have on the site look too difficult for me to try ie 3 sessions a day 70 pushups broken down into something like 20 20 15 15 .............. maybe I should man up and have a go.

Bill

[Ombrax]

I very much doubt that your heart will be the limiting factor for this. (unless you're in terrible cardio shape, which I doubt)

Unless your upper-body muscles are in incredible shape, they will surely be what holds you back.

I did a quick search online and there are tons of recommendations out there for how to improve the number of pushups you can do.

I'd poke around and see what seems most appropriate to your situation and go with that.

[Bill]

Will do some physical tests tonight. Couple of videos re technique seem quite good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18vJ1uhK3PU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mbr55h3BeQ

Suggestions on this page seem interesting

https://cardiosmash.com/push-ups-and-si ... heres-why/

[hjs]

Thanks for the reply Ombrax,

Intuitively i'd be flat out doing 25 but will have a go and see what happens. Didn't want to knacker myself or hurt my arms with lactic acid buildup.

Heart is a muscle - Can it have lactic acid build up like my quads when on the bike ?

My initial thoughts were to keep the HR down and it becomes a fairly easy aerobic exercise with no chance of hurting arms or maxing out the HR.

I don't really know enough about pushups, the training programs they have on the site look too difficult for me to try ie 3 sessions a day 70 pushups broken down into something like 20 20 15 15 .............. maybe I should man up and have a go.

Bill

Your Heart plays no role.

Our Heart does not produce any lactic acid, its ment to last as the last man standing, its aerobic only. Any muscle that can produce lactate will be able to fully get locked down, legs can,t walk when you go all in. Ofcourse our heart can,t do that, we would die.
Re Push ups, shoulders/elbows will be the weak link for most, stay away from going to failier like you stay away from Corona

[Cyclingman1]

Hate to inject any king of negativity, but are these "good" pushups. Most people cannot self monitor and their pushups consist of massive amounts of ducking the head down with arm movement being about half of what it should be. Pushups should be done fairly slowly with head up and chest touching floor and arms completely locking out when coming up. Just saying.

[Bill]

Cyclingman,

Thankyou for the response and raising the various points defining a good pushup.

I believe I am doing good pushups.

I will ask my wife to check various points you have mentioned.

Assuming I am doing good pushups or can fix them if they are "bad", do you have any tips for my attempt at the challenge ?

Bill

[KeithT]

The biggest key to doing high volume pushups is to not take any set to failure. Once you hit that point you will struggle to do any even with some rest. Keep sets manageable. If you can do 25 at once, do sets of 10 with some rest and then when that gets hard even go to 5. Once you start failing on pushups its hard to recover.

[Bill]

The biggest key to doing high volume pushups is to not take any set to failure.

Thanks Keith,

I took your advice

Set 1 : 30 in 60 seconds, sensed that failure was close, so stopped.

Set 2 : 12, failure close, so stopped and decreased set size to 10

Sets 3 to 12 : 9 sets of 10 with increasing rests, 9th and 10th pushups always difficult

Failed completely on pushup 132, wasnt expecting it, very sudden dead stop. Finished with some light weights and bike ride.

HR graph attached and as Ombrax predicted HR doesnt seem to be a problem especially on 10 reps.

131 pushups.jpg (31.91 KiB) Viewed 8941 times

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Based on this am thinking 3 sessions a day 4 sets x 12 or 13 pushups should be achievable. Will continue experiments tomorrow. The training plans on the official website starting to look achievable now.(20 20 15 15 or similar 3x a day)

Any tips, comments, websites etc from the combined brains trust would be appreciated.
Bill

[Ombrax]

One comment is that the fact that your peak HR when doing the sets of 10 did not continue to rise and the HR low valleys continued to drop means that x10 for that rest schedule is easily within your cardio capability. If the peaks (and valleys) had continued to climb, then you'd be working your cardio system harder and harder, but that didn't happen. Of course, your muscles were a different story, but that will improve over time.

Have Fun !

[KeithT]

The biggest key to doing high volume pushups is to not take any set to failure.

Thanks Keith,

I took your advice

Set 1 : 30 in 60 seconds, sensed that failure was close, so stopped.

Set 2 : 12, failure close, so stopped and decreased set size to 10

Sets 3 to 12 : 9 sets of 10 with increasing rests, 9th and 10th pushups always difficult

Failed completely on pushup 132, wasnt expecting it, very sudden dead stop. Finished with some light weights and bike ride.

HR graph attached and as Ombrax predicted HR doesnt seem to be a problem especially on 10 reps. 131 pushups.jpg
.
Based on this am thinking 3 sessions a day 4 sets x 12 or 13 pushups should be achievable. Will continue experiments tomorrow. The training plans on the official website starting to look achievable now.(20 20 15 15 or similar 3x a day)

Any tips, comments, websites etc from the combined brains trust would be appreciated.
Bill

Looks good and plan was solid - as I said once you hit failure you are in trouble, so you have to stay right on the edge.

[Bill]

Thanks for the tips and advice.

Have been doing some experiments.

Starting to look like 3 sessions of 4 x 15 may be possible, I will find out in approx 5 hours time.

Following a fairly sore day after a "too much day ", I took 2 days off and then I started doing arm and shoulder stretches in between each little group of 7 10 or 15 (whatever the current experiment was). This seemed to stop the sore day after.

Doing the stretches also turns the whole session into a low end aerobic HR session with HR bobbling along at approx 100 - 120. Doing the stretches doesn't seem to use up any of the muscle fuel required for the next pushups.

Bill

[Ombrax]

Sounds like a good plan.

I'd say the biggest thing is to not do too much, to the point where you begin to have soreness issues that just don't go away, and even get worse. That would definitely be a message from you body that it isn't happy.

Have fun!

[Tenshuu]

For certain - wrist issues can definitely be a concern with high volume pushups.

I may have missed it - but make sure you have some sort of pushup bar - this will help with wrists at least, being able to set the wrists in a neutral position is a major pain relief in the long run.