<p>Anyone know a bench routine to improve pushups?
Do you do a lot of a little weight, or the opposite? Please go into further detail. Appreciate the advice.</p>
<p>
[quote]
what's a medicine ball and where would I buy one???
[/quote]
A medicine ball is a weighted ball. You can get one from a soccer specialty store.</p>
<p>You can probably get one at any sporting goods store, actually. As long as it sells weight equipment (Dumbbells, etc), it should be there</p>
<p>"Anyone know a bench routine to improve pushups?"</p>
<p>Before cross country, I used to lift religiously. At first I just went for the big weights, but that didn't affect my pushups very much. Go for a manageable weight and lots of reps. I can bench 225ish for 4-5 reps, but instead I find my gains are much better when I go around 150-175 for about 20 reps. This is a good pushup simulator.</p>
<p>Something that makes the workous a little less boring for me is doing pyramids on the bench. Say I want to max out on the weights at 15 reps, I'll start at one, rest...go on to two, rest some more and so on. Getting up to 15 or so can be horribly grueling, and as you go down, you'll be amazed at how much those last one or two can hurt. </p>
<p>Managable weight, lots of reps is the best!</p>
<p>Also, don't ignore the triceps. Depending on how you move your arms during pushups, they can be more important than your peck's. If your elbows are close to your body, that's a tricep intensive pushup. If your elbows seem to be out further away, that's probably pecktoral intensive. Personally, I'm a tricep pushup person, and can get more gains when working on those than my peck's.</p>
<p>I agree with falconhopeful. Less weight, more reps is best. I'm a girl, I'm not looking for a ton of muscle gain, just strength. I do 10-12 reps 3 or 4 times, it worked very well for me. It also seemed to help my pull ups.</p>
<p>Less weight and more reps is a workout geared towards endurance. Pushups are all about endurance (once you have the strength to do around 10-20 of them easily, it becomes a matter of endurance). Benchpressing a weight that is "easy" and doing more reps (though it may not necessarily be easy, just less than what you would normally press) is doing nothing different than just doing lots of pushups, except that you get a slightly higher strength benefit and a slightly lower endurance benefit than just doing lots of pushups. Getting good at endurance type things (whether it be running, calisthenics, etc.) is just a matter of time and effort. You have to put a lot more time and effort into doing lots of push-ups than you do just doing 3 sets of 20 benchpress on a lighter weight. Granted, it is usually easier for people to do the thing that takes less time and effort, but though you may see significant results, you are probably not seeing perfect maximization of what you could be doing, because benchpress doesnt exactly emulate the movement of pushups. Doing lots and lots of pushups will get you good at pushups, but you've got to be willing to put in the time to actually do them, and as you start getting better, it will require more and more time to get an adequate workout in.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice guys. I wish my father would understand shin splints more....when I stop he tells me to work through it, but I know its not like a cramp or sore muscles. Unfortunately, I have little time left before my CFE and I have to work on it, I'll tough it until after the test I suppose. </p>
<p>I'm working to get my shuttle run and pull-ups as best as possible to help make up for weaker areas like b-ball and running. I hope it helps. </p>
<p>Anyone know anything about a running "minimum." I haven't seen anything on this anywhere.</p>
<p>just took it today, just got back, i'm a girl</p>
<p>bball throw: 37 ft
pull ups: 2
shuttle run: 10.0
sit ups: 61
push ups: 99
mile: 8:38</p>
<p>what a crappy mile, but the conditions were horrible, im from TX and this is the very first cold front, just wednesday, it was 99 degrees, when i was taking it, it was 50 degrees, cold, windy, and drizzling....upset about it...REALLLY upset, but i don't relaly have much time to take another one, so, i'll have to pray that this is good enough....i know my grades are fine, stellar even for academy requirements, and my SAT scores are awesome....just hoping for a nomination and that my CFA score is good enough.....</p>
<p>pleased with my push ups though....</p>
<p>I don't think you can take another one under the new system.</p>
<p>Why did you do 99 pushups??</p>
<p>unless it matters for navy</p>
<p>Nice scores! Where in Texas are you? I'm in Houston/Katy. Cold front came through this morning, it was 62 outside. Helped take another 10 seconds off my mile. :) </p>
<p>I will take mine, hopefully, by next weekend.</p>
<p>plano, a suburb of dallas....it was way too cold.....i don't perform well in the cold...i'd rather run when it's 95 degrees and hot....i duno, maybe i'll take it again? what do you guys think? </p>
<p>falconhopeful06: i did it, just, i kept going....and i figured it would make up for my basketball throw and shuttle run....and now, my mile :(...i really hope i'm ok...i'm just sick to my gut because at swim practice a week ago, i went a 7:55</p>
<p>You're fine, quit worrying. My scores will be worse in guys terms lol. Your academics are strong, and if your extracurriculars are too, then you will be fine. Quit sweatin' it.</p>
<p>i hope so, i'm just sorely dissapointed in myself...i know my academics & extracurriculars are fine..</p>
<p>i just really want to get an appointment, and i dont want my CFA to be the factor holding me back....debating whter to take it again or not</p>
<p>if anyone wants to know my push up training, i'll post it up here....it works for guys too, i did most of it with my younger brother, who's 15 now, and a fantastic swimmer...:)</p>
<p>gluck to all of you taking it sooN!</p>
<p>I want you to post it. Push-ups are my weakest part, I only did 45 on the test.</p>
<p>this is going to be a very long post: </p>
<p>every night/day, whenever you have about 20-30 minutes, my brother and i do this stuff together, we have very weak shoulders, due to swimming, we got injured & now have tendonitis, it's 3 different work outs. here's work out 1: </p>
<ol>
<li>stretching our shoulder/arms.</li>
<li>do a couple 'girl' pushups, with your knees on the floor, bend about 90 degrees....we did like 15-20
rest for 30 seconds or so, stretch out</li>
<li>do 25 push ups when you bend your amrs 90 degrees...that's what you need for the CFA
rest again, stretch, etc, i'm just going to put rest from here on out</li>
<li>stack 3 kick boards on top of one another (we're swimmers, so that was easy...if you don't have kick boards, you could probably use 2 phone books, or a couple heavy textbooks, like that calculus book, it's a monster :) )....then do 25 push ups, go down until your chest hits the boards or w/e you're doing
rest....</li>
<li>repeat, take away 1 board each set of 25, rest inbetween until you've got no boards and your chest hits the floor.
rest about 2 minutes or so after this, stretch </li>
<li>then do as many push ups as you can in 1 minute
stretch out/cool down</li>
</ol>
<p>the rest of the push ups are regular 90 degree push ups
work out 2: </p>
<ol>
<li>stretch out</li>
<li>do the girl push ups, like work out 1
rest 30 seconds or so</li>
<li>do 25 '8 count push ups', vary it up a little, you dont have to go 1-8 straight, switch around, my bro & i switch saying the count, so it's diffrent every time
rest like before </li>
<li>do 2 x 15 sets of push ups with your hands under your chest, make your thumb and index fingers touch, its like a triangle/kite...rest 15 seconds between each set
rest</li>
<li>do 2 x 15 sets of push ups with your hands out and forward, between 6 in-12 in, depending on your strength, rest 15 between each set
rest</li>
<li>do 30 'divebomber' push ups
rest 2 minutes</li>
<li>do as many push ups, like #4 in one minute
stretch out/cool down</li>
</ol>
<p>work out 3: </p>
<p>start w/the same #1 & #2 as the previous 2
1. do 2 x 10 push ups with one arm, then do another 2 x 10 with the other, rest 15 sec between each rep
rest
2. do 20 push ups with your hands in a fist, so on your knuckles
rest
3. do 8 'clap' push ups, do a regular 90 degree push up, but when you push up, push hard enough so you can clap your hands, and return them back in time...these are difficult
rest
4. do 15 push ups on your finger tips
rest
5. do 10 push ups with weight on your back, my brother and i usually push down with a foot on one anohter....if our little cousins (3-5 yrs) are in town, we play 'horsie' and let them sit up there
rest 2 minutes
6. do as many 'clap' push ups as your can in 1 minute</p>
<p>***ok, we do these three work outs in that order every other day (like, wkout 1 on monday, wkout 2 on wed, wkout 3 on fri)....if you're weak, like we were, start with only 1 & 2, work 3 in eventually.....and as you get stronger, do more push ups, add 5 every time you feel stronger to each set.....on the days inbetween, we usually do arm circles out, front, and above... have competititions who can hold out our arms the longest.....we do lots of shoulder strenght stuff, just to prevent injury</p>
<p>a big helper is on the 'rest' days, do planks/super man....</p>
<p>...oh, and we have found that bench press does very little, we still bench, for chest strength, but for push ups, very useless because it requres no balance, and it is an inverted excercize for push ups</p>
<p>if any of you have questions, please post them and i will answer them...hope this helps all of you! it sure helped me & my little brother for strength back into our pathetic shoulders :)</p>
<p>there was other things i did, but this was the majority of what i did</p>
<p>Nice post.</p>
<p>I plan on wed for the test. I did a mock test today and got this:</p>
<p>b-ball: 57
pull-ups: 11
Shuttle: 9.0
Sit-ups: 62
push-ups: 40
mile: 7:58</p>
<p>My mile and b-ball are the real killers. I feel I'm ok for the rest for now.</p>
<p>It was funny, a couple hours later I did two back to back Taekwondo demonstrations at the Katy Rice Harvest festival (LMAO) and now I'm so sore from that. I love it.</p>
<p>good luck hornet guy!....nice pull up number!...i'm so jealous X)</p>
<p>Thanks, I'll let yall know how it goes!</p>
<p>Holy crap!!! I just got back from it. Little background, today all my joints were still overstressed from having done a taekwondo demonstration three days ago. But, while doing less on the b-ball and pull-ups than my usual, I did 4 personal bests!!</p>
<p>b-ball - 55 ft
pull-ups - 9
shuttle- 8.6 s
crunches - 69
push-ups - 41
mile - 7:47</p>
<p>Omg, I am extremely happy with me mile, I have been working up to that for the last month and a half from scratch! HOOAH!</p>