Stop Doing “100 Pushups A Day” (I’M BEGGING YOU!)

The classic 100 pushups a day workout has been tried by many, but should you be doing them? That is the question that gets answered in today’s video. The attraction of simple to follow, easy to remember exercise plan that has the ability to deliver a bigger, stronger chest is definitely something th

So, you think this video is going to piss off the 100 push-up per day people? No, I actually think this is going to help those people. As a matter of fact, anybody that does push-ups should watch this video, okay? Because I think it’s probably one of the most misperformed exercises, but has a lot of potential. All right, so let’s talk about 100 push-ups per day.

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that when people do 100 push-ups a day, right, they hear the the routine, they want to try it, they do it for what reason? Uh to get a bigger, stronger chest, right? And it’s interesting because the push-up isn’t just a chest exercise, right? Builds triceps, shoulders, but I think everyone thinks of it or starts that because they want to build a bigger chest. Okay.

Now, you said two things. Bigger, stronger. Yeah. All right. If they do their 100 push-ups a day, right?

It looks like this. Again, in attempt to build that bigger, stronger chest, the first question I would ask you is if we could focus on stronger is I’ve got another number up here for you. Okay? All right. 65 to 75%.

Do you know what that is? Uh my functional brain capacity. Uh yes, it is. That’s very accurate. For anybody that’s worked with Jesse, they’ll tell you that.

So what this is is actually the percent of your body weight that you’re lifting during a push-up. Okay? Cuz you’re not lifting your entire body weight cuz half of it’s in contact with the ground, right? So let’s go to the high end here. All right?

75%. Got another math problem to test and stretch that functional capacity of your right. that brain capacity. If we had 160 pound person, what would 75% of that body weight be? Well, I I’ll give you a hint.

Divide by four, multiply by three. Two-step process. 120. 120. There you go.

So, that means that a 160 lb person, if that resonates with you out there, is doing a 120 lb equivalent of, let’s say, a bench press. Okay, that’s what you’re lifting when you’re doing a push-up. Now, let me ask you a question. Is there a world, and I’m not trying to be insulting in any way, I’m trying to be totally objective. Is there a world where a 120 lb bench presser would be considered strong?

Uh, I mean, probably not. No, I mean, you might start out, we all start out somewhere. I started out with the bar and then 65 pounds, right? So in in some point it’s can it’s going to represent a point where you’ve gotten stronger but as an absolute level of strength 120 lbs is not going to be a representative weight as something that’s a strong lift. Very impressive, right?

No. Now what if I asked you but what if you could do that 20 times? Uh they better I mean a little bit better. Does it get more impressive if you could do that 120 pound bench press 40 times? I would say 50 times.

I would say at that point you should just increase the weight. Okay, it’s a good point, right? Why is it that when we do these push-ups and we have a fixed amount of weight because that’s what our body weighs. Is the goal to keep doing more and more repetitions? Because that’s the same idea is that if you are doing your bench press and you’ve worked yourself up to 120 pounds, at some point you decide, yeah, I’m not going for 135 or 185 or 205 or 220.

I’m not doing that. I’m just going to stick here and keep increasing the repetitions that I’m doing. It doesn’t seem very logical. It’s not something that people really do. You’re also not going to get much stronger doing that.

No, you’re you’re capping out your strength. You might get better strength endurance, but you’re not getting an overall maximal increase in strength because that overload isn’t there. You’re just adding more and more repetitions. So, as a strength builder, this approach is not a good approach. Okay?

For most people who are intrigued by this, even if you’re a very rank beginner, the strength benefits are going to be very shortcoming. However, now we can start asking about the hypertrophy benefits though because you can still build muscle without necessarily getting strong. Yeah. Okay. If you have the right level of stimulus.

So, if we’re going to do these, well, we know we’re likely not doing, especially if we’re beginners, we’re not doing 100 repetitions straight out. We’re doing them in sets. Okay? So, if you’re doing sets of them and breaking them up, you have two options anytime you do a set of anything. Are you taking that set to failure or are you stopping short?

Okay. Are you going to stop a few reps short? How or maybe very many reps short? You just going to kind of do a few and stay very submaximal and then you kind of get back into it again or are you taking each set to failure? Well, here’s where an interesting part of this comes in.

Why the 100 push-ups a day starts to become a problem. If you’re going to take your sets to failure, this whole thing falls apart. Because there’s no world where the natural lifter who’s trying to build muscle should should subject a muscle to multiple bouts of failure every single day consecutively without rest. Yeah, you need recovery because as we know muscle building occurs or the most growth occurs during your recovery period when you’re you stimulate in the gym, you grow outside the gym from that stimulus. So that approach doesn’t work.

So, if you’re sitting there right now and you’re doing your 100 push-ups a day and you keep taking each one of your sets to failure and then stringing them day after day after day after day, at some point you’re going to start to dip down into your body’s recovery capabilities and make it impossible to actually come back bigger and stronger from the last session. You’re just going to continue to pile on this volume that’s not going to allow you to recover. Jump volume. Yes. Now, if you did the opposite, here’s where something interesting starts to happen.

So you’re stopping shy of failure. How short of failure can that be before it’s even still an effort that’s that counts? Because there is an understanding out there that stopping short of failure is okay if the effort that you put forth is really close to failure within one or two repetitions. And that means a true representation of what that is, not where you thought it was. Then you actually could have done four or five more.

Well, there’s another part of this that becomes a problem. And that is when we’re trying to build muscle. I mentioned this curve over here. There’s different energy systems that kick in when you’re talking about those really short rep ranges 1 2 3 4 five or so. We have primarily a system called the ATP phosphocreatin system.

This is where the benefits of creatine supplementation come in because it helps to recycle this. But this is for the higheffort strength bouts that you’re doing in your exercises. Very quickly, if your sets are surpassing five or six repetitions, you’re going to start to move past the benefits of this system for feeding the effort that you’re doing. So, that means that as a as a strength system, once you’re doing more than five or six or seven reps in a set of these, you’re not really going to be tapping into this or benefiting from this. So, as I told you before, only the real ranked beginners who really don’t even have an appreciable bench press where the 120 would be an improvement for them are going to see any strength benefits from the exercise early on.

But then it starts to shift into this glycolytic energy system, right? And here it’s about those anorobic exercises that feed off of this. But this is where the sweet spot tends to be in that 8 to 15 rep range or so. eight to 17 reps even where you’re