i do push ups 3x a week. i started the 100 push up challenge a week a go. i will be doing this challenge for the next 6 weeks so that by the end of the challenge i will be able to perform 100 push ups or atleast close to 100. after i complete the challenge i plan on doing push ups 3 days a week with more reps.
will doing push ups 3 days a week for the next 5 months give me bigger pecs
This a troll job correct?
no its not a troll
[quote]Reed wrote:
This a troll job correct?[/quote]
I thought so too, but post history just shows young and uninformed.
Push ups can be productive, but (genetic freak Herschel Walker aside) they will only take you so far …
100 push ups isn’t some holy grail to physical development - even though it’s a feat most people can’t do legitimately
If you don’t have access to weight equipment, bang them out for now as they can add mass and strength to a point … But are very limiting (IMO) long term for muscle mass in and of themselves …
Work on your push ups for now, but transition to a gym or weight equipment as soon as possible to multiply your gains
Here’s two photos of me. I want you to decide for yourself about the pushups.
For the photo on the left, that’s the result of several months of pushups and situps. Eventually I was doing 300 pushups and 300 situps every other day. That’s how I looked.
For the photo on the right, that’s the result of just a few months of bench press training.
Hopefully that helps you make your decision.
My recommendation… get to know your weight room.
^ Bench press makes your hair shorter and you run out of towels
Agree with Velvet Elvis, traditional push-ups can build some strength and muscle, but like anything else you need to be progressive with them if you want your body to continue getting stronger and building more muscle.
Volume can be a viable progression tool, but beyond a certain point all you are really doing is building endurance, which isn’t going to directly lead to muscular gains. Imagine if you took a person and replicated them (two identical people) and had one of them never go beyond a 95lb bench press, but instead just build up to doings tons of reps and had the other one build up to doing 300 lbs on the bench for moderate reps (8-12). There would likely be a noticeable difference in muscularity between the two versions of that person.
In other words, eventually you need to increase the resistance if you want the muscles to continue to grow, regardless of whether the resistance is in the form of barbells, bodyweight, sandbags, kettle bells, bands, etc…). With bodyweight exercises the best ways to do this are to decrease leverage, decrease stability, or both. You could also add additional resistance to the body (i.e. weighted pull-ups), but to me you are not really doing bodyweight exercises anymore (otherwise you’d have to classify barbell back squats as a bodyweight exercise, and nobody is going to agree with that classification).
My advice is to focus on really doing your push-ups correctly rather than just chasing some arbitrary number (like 300). Most of the push-ups that I see people doing are with terrible form, which makes it no mystery why those people aren’t seeing any physiological adaptations/increased musculature from them. Once you get up to being to to do several sets of 15-20 with perfect form though, you’ll need to switch to harder variations of push-ups, add weight to your push-ups, decrease the stability of your push-ups (i.e. do them with hands on medicine balls or on rings/TRX/Blast Straps, or move on to bench press variations.
Good luck.
[quote]MaazerSmiit wrote:
^ Bench press makes your hair shorter and you run out of towels[/quote]
Bench press makes you hungry.
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
In other words, eventually you need to increase the resistance if you want the muscles to continue to grow, regardless of whether the resistance is in the form of barbells, bodyweight, sandbags, kettle bells, bands, etc…)[/quote]
This is the most important part.
It’s not that bench pressing is superior (and in a lot of ways, I’d say pushups are actually superior), it’s that bench pressing allows you to keep increasing resistance in a very straightforward manner.
I used to do the same thing, just try to get a gym membership from your parents for Christmas or something. If you can’t get two chairs and start doing dips. Try to add weight on your push-ups. Get someone to lay on you, books, a backpack full of stuff, anything. You never going to get that big with just a bunch of push-ups, you need to improvise. Look up those ghetto work out vids on YouTube.
[quote]LoRez wrote:
[quote]MaazerSmiit wrote:
^ Bench press makes your hair shorter and you run out of towels[/quote]
Bench press makes you hungry.[/quote]
Also makes you take clearer photos and causes your jeans to fall down a little…
Good pic though - illustrates the point well.
To the original OP, looks like you would probably respond well to weight training. I’d encourage you to progress to the weights room when you feel ready if you want to be more muscular. Also read. Lots. This site is a great source of information and there are others as well as numerous books and publications that can give you the right advice.
