How to get stronger at pushups?

[GatorAuD]

I'm going to be doing BW exercises for about 6 weeks while traveling - pushups, pullups, box pistols and reverse crunches. I'm going to use Mehdi's programs to increase strength on pullups (the 15/22/30/38 cycle) and box pistols (5x5 6 days per week).

Can someone outline me a pushup program to go along with this? It really helps me stay focused to have hard numbers. Right now I can do 20 pushups. Should I just do as many as I can every day? Add a resistance tube?

[Young Athlete]

Do sets of 10 through out the day every day

So like when you wake up lunch dinner

then the next week add in another set before you go to sleep

Then another set the next week

and so on

[Zander]

I was very much into doing pushups last year. What worked for me was 3 sets until failure at two different points in the day, every day(I wasn't lifting any weights whatsoever). This eventually brought me up to sets of 65, before I got lazy and stopped doing them. My only goal was to increase the amount of reps per set. I want to start up again, though, and I figure this is as good a place as any to add-in the question: should pushups be done only on workout days, and entirely avoided on rest days?

[jerbearw]

Last year, as part of the physical fitness portion of my black belt (karate) test, I had to do 100 pushups. To get there, here's what I did:

Ten day cycle (work day, rest day, repeat, etc). Double the amount of your goal (100 pushups is the goal, so 200 pushups is our working number in this example).

Day 1 -- 200 pushups, in as little sets as possible. If this means 20 sets of 10 reps, so be it.

Day 2 -- "Rest day" -- you still do 200 pushups on your rest days, just spread out all throughout the day. Wake up, do 10 pushups. Make breakfast, 10 pushups. Brush teeth, 10 pushups. Before you leave the house for work/school, 10 pushups. Sneak away at work, 10 pushups. 10 pushups for lunch. Afternoon break, 10 pushups. Get home from work, 10 pushups. Keep doing this so that the 10 pushups you do right before bed make a total of 200 for the day.

Day 3 -- 200 pushups, in as little sets as possible. If this means 20 sets of 10 reps, so be it.

Day 4 -- "Rest day" -- you still do 200 pushups on your rest days, just spread out all throughout the day. Wake up, do 10 pushups. Make breakfast, 10 pushups. Brush teeth, 10 pushups. Before you leave the house for work/school, 10 pushups. Sneak away at work, 10 pushups. 10 pushups for lunch. Afternoon break, 10 pushups. Get home from work, 10 pushups. Keep doing this so that the 10 pushups you do right before bed make a total of 200 for the day.

Day 5 -- 200 pushups, in as little sets as possible. If this means 20 sets of 10 reps, so be it.

Day 6 -- "Rest day" -- you still do 200 pushups on your rest days, just spread out all throughout the day. Wake up, do 10 pushups. Make breakfast, 10 pushups. Brush teeth, 10 pushups. Before you leave the house for work/school, 10 pushups. Sneak away at work, 10 pushups. 10 pushups for lunch. Afternoon break, 10 pushups. Get home from work, 10 pushups. Keep doing this so that the 10 pushups you do right before bed make a total of 200 for the day.

Day 7 -- 200 pushups, in as little sets as possible. If this means 20 sets of 10 reps, so be it.

Day 8 -- "Rest day" -- you still do 200 pushups on your rest days, just spread out all throughout the day. Wake up, do 10 pushups. Make breakfast, 10 pushups. Brush teeth, 10 pushups. Before you leave the house for work/school, 10 pushups. Sneak away at work, 10 pushups. 10 pushups for lunch. Afternoon break, 10 pushups. Get home from work, 10 pushups. Keep doing this so that the 10 pushups you do right before bed make a total of 200 for the day.

Day 9 -- 200 pushups, in as little sets as possible. If this means 20 sets of 10 reps, so be it.

Day 10 -- "Rest day" -- you still do 200 pushups on your rest days, just spread out all throughout the day. Wake up, do 10 pushups. Make breakfast, 10 pushups. Brush teeth, 10 pushups. Before you leave the house for work/school, 10 pushups. Sneak away at work, 10 pushups. 10 pushups for lunch. Afternoon break, 10 pushups. Get home from work, 10 pushups. Keep doing this so that the 10 pushups you do right before bed make a total of 200 for the day.

Take a couple days off, then see how many pushups you can do at once. You should notice a somewhat drastic improvement. Repeat the cycle if you need to -- giving yourself however much time you need to recover before starting up again.

This is a kind of "Grease the Groove" program, and it works. I needed to take plenty of Ibuprofen throughout the cylce to keep inflamation down, because all those reps really brought on the tendonitis and other repetative movement soreness.

[Mandylion]

Depending on equipment that will be available to you...you my consider to practice pushups with a loaded backpack...
you could mix that and elevation of feet to maximize stress on upper body...

[mutt]

Just found this:
http://hundredpushups.com/index.html

not sure if its any good, but it seems like i could be.