7 Steps to do MORE Push Ups in 30 Days
Performing pushups down requires strong pecs, shoulders, triceps, and even a strong core.
The number of pushups can measure your overall level of fitness, and your upper body strength depends on multiple continents.
Unfortunately, many people either struggle with pushups or are stuck at a certain number of good, clean reps, even though they do want to do more.
So today we want to go over seven things that you can do to increase the number of pushups you can perform in the next 30 days.
One of the best things you can do is increase the difficulty of regular pushups by adding weight to the exercise. There are a couple of simple ways that you can do this.
You can either add a plate directly onto your upper back or take a regular book bag and pack it with heavy objects.
When performing reps with this heavier weight, you should aim for a moderate rep count of, let’s say, ten to 20 reps.
In fact, the closer you can get to failure when using weights within this rep range while still maintaining good form, the better.
Rather than focusing on reps when doing these weighted push-ups, you should focus on increasing the weight that able to load onto your back.
Of course, there are limits to this, so you’re not going to be able to add an infinite amount of weight to your back.
So if you can’t hit failure within the first 20 reps with the weight load you have available, then aim for a higher rep range that will take you to failure.
You should start with weighted pushups that force you to do fewer reps and do that for at least a few sets before moving on to higher reps.
Body Weight Pushups now, what this is going to do is it’s going to force your muscles to get used to performing pushups with a much heavier load than just your regular body weight.
Your body is going to progressively adapt to doing these more challenging pushups in many ways, but especially by increasing the strength of your active muscles like your chest, shoulders, and triceps.
Even though you’re concentrating on upping the weight load, this strategy is going to lead you to be able to do more reps once that weight load is off.
2- Knee pushups
Another thing you should do is incorporate knee pushups. we know this sounds simple and maybe even overrated, but these are excellent regardless of whether you’re advanced or if you’re a beginner.
If you struggle with regular body weight pushups, let’s say you can’t do ten clean reps all the way down with even your body weight.
Knee push-ups are a perfect way for you to progressively overload and get stronger at pushups when you hit, let’s say, seven reps, and you can’t do any more push-ups without dropping to the floor, drop to your knees instead and complete the number of reps.
Then, during your next workout, try to hit eight reps before dropping to your knees and completing your reps.
Now, if you’re more advanced, knee push-ups are used to hit true failure.
You don’t have to do this on every set, but on your last set of weighted push-ups or even body weight pushups, you can do as many reps as possible on your toes and then drop to your knees to continue doing reps until you hit true failure.
That will again create favorable muscular adaptations that enable them to perform more pushups.
keep in mind when doing knee pushups that you shouldn’t just stick your butt up in the air and do what looks like a prayer. Your hips should still be in line with your upper back and your knees when doing these types of pushups to be effective.
3- Lift weights
Something else that will help you drastically increase the number of pushups you could do is to lift weights and specifically work on increasing the amount of weight that lifts for your pressing and push exercises.
These include compound exercises like barbell bench press, dumbbell press, incline press, barbell military press, and dumbbell overhead presses.
Getting stronger at tricep extensions can also translate to more push-ups on the ground. So exercises like skull crushers, behind the head, tricep extensions, cable rope extensions, and especially dips can help with pushups.
So don’t think because your goal is to improve your push-ups, you should stick only to doing push-ups.
Because focusing on upping just your benchpress, for example, by a couple of pounds, every few weeks should highly improve the strength of your chest, shoulders, and triceps.
Eventually, if you can get to the point where you’re bench pressing a weight greater than your body weight, pushups on the ground are to be much easier.
That is truly one of the best tips that quickly helped me increase the number of pushups.
4- Push your strength
Which is to train your push strength more often throughout the week. I don’t recommend doing push-ups every single day, because whenever you exercise your muscles, you should be training intensely enough to break them down quite a bit.
Your muscles will need time to recover and grow between workouts, so you should try to take at least 48 hours off between your push workouts.
However, if you’re only training your chest, shoulders, and triceps once a week, you’re not going to gain that push strength as quickly as if you were training these muscles twice or even three times a week.
If your main goal is to increase your push strength. There’s no reason why you can’t do three push workouts a week.
With these push workouts, you can combine weight training with regular pushups. I recommend that you start your push workouts with your heaviest exercises first.
So start with either a heavy bench press, overhead press, dips, or weighted pushups. And then as the workout progresses, you can slowly move into your body weight exercises.
The point is to start with your heaviest exercise first while you’re fresh, to maximize the number of reps you can do with that heavy weight load so that you can gain that push strength as fast as possible.
5- Pushup variations
Another thing you could do, aside from adding weights to make pushups more challenging, is to incorporate pushup variations.
Many pushup variations either decrease stabilization or increase the load placed on your upper body by shifting your weight in that direction.
A simple example is to perform pushups with your feet up on a platform instead of keeping them on the ground.
That automatically shifts more of your weight towards your upper body, making the exercise more challenging.
It’s much more challenging than a regular push-up. And again, you can also decrease stabilization. So an example of this is performing pushups with your feet placed into TRX straps.
That force more stabilizer muscles, and especially your core to work harder. That makes regular pushups much easier in comparison.
6- Improve Core Strength
That brings me to the next tip. You can increase the number of push-ups you can do by improving your core strength.
Another thing you could do, aside from adding weights to make pushups more challenging, is to incorporate pushup variations.
Many pushup variations either decrease stabilization or increase the load placed on your upper body by shifting your weight in that direction.
A simple example is to perform pushups with your feet up on a platform instead of keeping them on the ground.
That automatically shifts more of your weight towards your upper body, making the exercise more challenging.
It’s much more challenging than a regular push-up. And again, you can also decrease stabilization. So an example of this is performing pushups with your feet placed into TRX straps.
That force more stabilizer muscles, and especially your core to work harder. That makes regular pushups much easier in comparison.
That brings me to the next tip. You can increase the number of push-ups you can do by improving your core strength.
7- Increase range of motion during pushups
Finally, the last thing that can do is increase your range of motion by doing push-ups.
You can do this effectively by having platforms under your hands or even by using regular household objects, as long as they’re stable.
By elevating your hands off the ground, you’re able to go further down and get a nice full stretch in your chest before coming back up.
This strategy can be used to make pushups far more difficult, especially if combined with certain pushup variations.
For example, doing a pike push-up on the ground is nowhere near as difficult as doing a pike push-up with your feet and hands elevated on platforms, because when you’re elevated, you’re able to go through a much greater range of motion, which is optimal for muscle growth.
Let me give you a super simple bulletproof strategy to be able to complete more pushups.
- Make sure you’re training your push muscles like your chest, shoulders, and triceps at least two times a week, and if possible, try to go three times a week.
- If you have access to weights, either start every one of your push workouts with weight training and then move on to weighted and body weight pushups.
- You can do the weight training exercises like dumbbell presses and overhead presses on separate days from push-up exercises.
- Either way, start with the most challenging exercises first and try to keep those challenging enough to where you can only perform ten to 20 reps.
- Make sure to go to failure by dropping to your knees once you can’t do the push-ups on your toes anymore, you can do that either on every set or on the last set of each push-up exercise.
- If you don’t have weights or want to try other ways to challenge yourself, you can perform pushups with platforms to increase your range of motion or try more difficult variations.
Note- There’s no reason why you can’t combine many of these methods in other ways that I haven’t mentioned.
For example- you could perform more challenging pushups, let’s say with your hand elevator off the ground, and you can do that with a book bag full of weight on your back.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you should also lower the weight and switch to easier variations of pushups as needed as your workout progresses.
By the end of your workout, let’s say for your last three sets, I would recommend just sticking with bodyweight pushups until you hit failure to maximize the endurance of these muscles.
After 30 days of trying these tips, you should be blown away at how much your push-up strength has improved and how many more reps you can do with just your body weight.
So that about wraps it up. I hope you enjoyed this article.
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