I do not have the upper body strength to do either, so I have been skipping them. Help. Does it make a big difference in my overall look if the are skipped for the entire 90 days?

Someone please help!

[This message was edited by Fitness Advisor on 06-13-03 at 01:04 PM.]

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Originally posted by LynnW:
Someone please help!

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What do you need help with? Try your best and don't worry about the number of reps - do what you can do and always strive for more...

The Kingster†

Does it make a difference? Absolutely! When Tony Horton explains that a pushup burns more calories than most any other exercise, he's not just trying to motivate you. He's telling you the truth. A pushup is really one of the greatest exercises you can do for the body in terms of increasing lean muscle and burning calories. My girlfriend absolutely hates pushups...and by hate, I mean absolutely despises them! But, I showed her a little way to increase her amount of pushups in about a week. I can't take credit for this little workout adjustment because I learned about it myself in Men's Health Magazine, but it works equally as well for men and women. My girlfriend is my living proof.

You'll need a barbell and weights to do this exercise, or a pushup stand (you can get them for cheap at Sports Authority).

Sunday: Do a single set of classic pushups to establish a baseline to work with. Do as many as you can and record the number.

Monday: After doing your normal workout, do three sets of 10 to 15 barbell pushups. This is just a classic pushup with your hands on the barbell.

Tuesday: Do three sets of 5 to 10 plyometric pushups. These are just like classical pushups but on the up motion of the pushup, push as hard as you can so you actually come up off the floor. You may have seen movies where people do these and clap their hands on the way up. Same thing, except you don't need to applaud yourself on this one unless you want to.

Wednesday: Do as many pushups as you can do in 5 minutes, but do not exceed half of your maximum value as recorded on Sunday.

Thursday: Do 1 to 3 sets of walking pushups. These are where you put a towel underneath your feet and basically use your arms to walk across the room. Imagine you are a mermaid and can't use your feet because you're on dry land. Just use your arm strength to work your way across the room, keeping yourself in pushup position.

Friday: Do 3 to 5 sets of classic pushups, doing about 40 percent of your maximum in each set.

Saturday: Do three or four sets of eight to ten pushups, except do these as slowly and as easy as you can.

Sunday: Test your maximum again. I guarantee you, you will be able to do a lot more than you did on last Sunday.

(Adapted from Men's Health Magazine, June 2003)

This should get you back up to speed on the pushups and should greatly increase your ability to do power yoga. My girlfriend went from being able to do only 5 pushups, and now consistently builts out 30-40 pushups when it comes time to doing maximum pushups. I myself went from doing 40 pushups during maximum pushups to doing about 60-70 in the time alotted, and could easily do more if there were more time.

Hope this helps and gets you back on track with one of the greatest no-weight exercises ever. Let me know how it turns out. And remember, if you tell yourself you can't do it before you even try, you're only cheating yourself. You can do it. I know you can.

Cheers,

reality PhD

That's a good routine, Reality Phd. Not only do pushups burn calories, but they are also important for building upper body strength.

Lynn, here's another couple things to try that are a little simpler:

1. Do your push-ups with your knees on the ground. Some people call them "Girl Pushups" but just ignore that. I have a bad shoulder that flares up from time to time, so I find myself doing them like that.

OR

2. Start by doing them standing up. Stand about two feet away from the wall and do pushups against it. If that's easy, try them against a counter or desk. After that do them against the seat of a chair. Keep doing them at lower and lower angles until you're doing them on the ground.

As you work through this process, periodically try to do them on the ground.

For the yoga, just focus on form. If you have to lower yourself to the ground faster, that's ok for now, as long as it looks pretty.



Keep it up. You can do it!

So we've got two good options for people of varying levels trying to increase the number of push-ups they can do.

Push-ups are so effective because they can be considered "cross-chain" or synergistic movements, meaning that instead of isolating muscle groups, many must be used in combination. While they target the chest, almost your entire body must be utilized to some degree, like a yoga move. They are essentially plank gone wild.

To bridge the gap between these two workouts try this.

Each session start with the hardest push-up that you can do one of. For example, many women can do some regular push-ups but not an entire set, so they do the entire set on their knees. Instead, start with regular push-ups til failure. When you fail don't stop but drop to your knees and continue. If you fail again before you reached your target number of reps, prop your arms on a table for leverage and continue. Understand? The same protocol can be used to transition anything from one-armed push-ups, like GI Jane, to wall push-ups on the other end. It's a simple way to maximize each workout by causing momentary muscle failure but not compromising volume.

Since this type of work takes you beyond the point of failure for more than one set, I don't suggest doing it everyday. Give yourself a day in between to recover and watch your strength curve accelerate.

And another yoga tip: don't think it's cheating if you need to use some props, like furniture, in order to hold the poses. There are actually things called yoga blocks that you can buy for this purpose. They are just little blocks that you can balance on until you get the flexibility or range of motion to do a movement. But, if you're creative, you can use other household items to the same advantage.