100 push-ups per day

[BECABECA]

I’ve gone from having done maybe 100 push-ups total in my whole life to doing 100 push-ups a day in less than a week.

Backstory:

Two weeks ago at a family reunion, I was playing around with my young cousins in a gym. I got soundly out-benched by my 14 year old cousin who weighs the same as me. Granted, I’m a 42 year old female and he’s a male with a part time job as a ranch hand, but still. I’m in decent shape, could basically match him on pull-ups and farmer’s carry, so it was a surprise to me that my bench press was so deficient. Since my normal life seemed to be lacking any exercise of that muscle area, I decided to actively target it with some exercise: push-ups.

Thursday: I did one set of 20 push-ups. It was absolutely miserable. Afterwards, I immediately FaceTimed a friend to commiserate. He had recently taken up push-ups and we had some laughs about it, and then chatted about how to ramp it up. We ended up motivating each other to do another set of 20. To my surprise, not only was I able to knock it out, it was a tiny fraction less miserable than that initial set. Over the course of the day, I ended up doing 5 sets of 20, for a total of 100 for the day. I knew I would be sore the next day and then even more sore the day afterwards, so I planned two rest days.

Friday & Saturday: rest days, was entertained by the tiny seldom used muscles that were especially sore: some lower abs muscles, the muscles behind my upper elbow, and most especially the muscle connecting the shoulder to the chest.

Sunday: did another 5 sets of 20 push-ups throughout the day for another day of 100 push-ups! It was significantly less miserable than the first time, but those last two of each set were still very exhausting.

Monday: rest day

Tuesday: Another 5 sets of 20 push-ups throughout the day, 100 total!

Wednesday (today): No rest day needed, knocked out my 5 sets of 20 push-ups. I’m a 100 push-up a day person now, which is absolutely crazy to me.

Key lesson learned: having someone on FaceTime that first day to compete with and watch each other’s pain faces as we struggled through the last few push-ups of each set was extremely motivating. After that first day, just shooting texts back and forth reporting how many sets we were each up to for the day really kept the motivation up as well. Now that it’s more routine, I don’t think I’ll need the moral support next week aside from just reporting accomplishment at the end of the day. And after that, I expect I won’t even need to do that to keep it up. We’ll see!

[Michael in ABQ]

Sometimes in the Army we ended up doing several hundred push-ups in a day (usually in basic training). Doing more than 50-100 at a time is almost impossible, you will hit muscle failure. But it doesn't take that long to recover and do another set. Sometimes if we were bored on some duty like working the night shift in a command post it was common for everyone to do 20, 30, 50 push-ups every hour on the hour. Something to pass the time and counteract what was otherwise just sitting there for an 8- or 12-hour shift.


P.S. you just motived me to drop down and do 20 push-ups before hitting post.

[LovinPSDs]

This is badass!!! I do this at work as well!!  Believe it or not it's wild how much I've noticed a change.

It's also made me lean into some other office workout type things.  Example my desk is perfect for dips, I have some bands, grip strength, etc. 

Keep it up!

[uniwelder]

Good job!  I honestly don't know any women (those that don't work out) that can do 20 pushups in a row, so you're already far ahead of many.  Its also surprising how many guys can't do 20 either.

A variation of the 100/day that I've tried is to do them all in a single set.  Add 5 pushups per week, starting with 20, or some number that's easy for you to achieve.  After 4 months, one can potentially get to 100. Unfortunately, I never got to that point and can't remember why I stopped.  I remember getting to 70.  Maybe I hit a plateau and got discouraged?  This is good motivation to start up a routine again.

[BECABECA]

Thanks for the props! It’s fun to have you joining in, maybe I should have posted in Throw Down the Gauntlet instead!

It’s been a week of 100/day now and I haven’t missed a day. I’m working on making each set of 20 deeper and more controlled. Once I can get my chest brushing the floor with each one, then I’ll go for trying to get through the hundred in bigger sets at a time.

I had slight difficulty two days ago when my shoulder was hurting and I was worried I had strained it. But it turned out that I just had a couple knots that had built up in my traps. Once I identified the trigger points in my middle traps that were causing the referred pain to the outer shoulder (they were easy to find, they were quite tender) and massaged them out, I had no pain in my shoulder anymore and no trouble continuing my 100 push-ups each day. I feel like I’ve learned so much about sources of pain in the last few years and have really leveled up in my ability to fix anything that starts to crop up.

[Raj]

Always nice to see more people working on fitness, also inspired me to drop and do Pushups until I dropped for a set.

I personally recommend a timer/video as it lets you focus more on form with a camera watching you, that you can check afterwards to see if your doing it properly.

I for example have an awful habit of launching myself up far to quickly, and extending my ass as I arch up unfortunately, that I've worked on correcting.

I use this
https://youtu.be/koMp3ei4xJw?si=eV9tn_BJVDfhCtxJ

One day I hope to hit the full timer, closest I've ever gotten is a sad 1:30 before I collapse. As a comparison, I can do around 35-45 Pushups with decent form if I'm just aiming to shoot them out quickly before collapsing, but like I said focusing on decent form is just easier with the video I find.

[TimCFJ40]

Congrats!
I was on a good 3 days a week trend for several years, and have dropped off in 2024.  I have noticed I feel weaker doing things like loading kayaks on the roof of the car.  Thanks for the inspiration to try and get back to it!

Everyday might be a good idea too, based on one of MMM's recent posts.  I fall easily into the "I'll do it tomorrow" or "I climbed/biked/ran today so I don't need to" trap. 

[GuitarStv]

Nice job!

Having done something similar, I think you'll find that it's difficult to keep progressing your strength with regular pushups alone.  If you have a set of dumbbells and a bench or stepladder or something, you can significantly improve the strength benefits of doing pushups by raising your legs on the bench (allows you to increase the weight that you're lifting by reducing the weight going through your toes) and elevating your hands on the dumbbells (which allows you to go much deeper and get better stretch of the muscles at the bottom).

Alternately you can also try putting weights (or just something heavy) in a backpack and doing the pushups to increase resistance, or moving to clapping variations (to increase explosiveness) or one handed pushups (for much more balance and strength required).

[BECABECA]

Congrats!
I was on a good 3 days a week trend for several years, and have dropped off in 2024.  I have noticed I feel weaker doing things like loading kayaks on the roof of the car.  Thanks for the inspiration to try and get back to it!

Everyday might be a good idea too, based on one of MMM's recent posts.  I fall easily into the "I'll do it tomorrow" or "I climbed/biked/ran today so I don't need to" trap.

Thanks! Yes, I have noticed it is much easier to just do them every day than to take a rest day and then try to get back into the routine. And since it’s just body weight exercise, I think it’s definitely something I can do every day without needing a rest day.

After just this one month of daily push-ups I have noticed a significant improvement in my posture (something that I’ve tried my whole life to improve and failed at until now!)

@Raj - That’s a fun YouTube challenge! It sent me down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole and I came across this video, which I thought was very helpful for explaining the form pitfalls of sloppy push-ups and how to counter them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IODxDxX7oi4

@GuitarStv Thanks! After I get strong enough I plan to move onto diamond hand position. Not sure how much difficulty past that I will plan to go, but here’s a fun video of all the push-up variations as they go up in difficulty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1W1BGpPGMo

[ca-rn]

Congrats! 

I've been doing 60 push ups 5 days a week and recently added deep squats w/feet together to build more leg strength/ankle flexibility. 

100 push ups sounds amazing!

[TimCFJ40]

Day 1, Monday August 19th 100 push ups scattered through my afternoon meetings in 3 sets.  (30, 30, 30+10 struggling to finish)

Not too bad, but consistency will be the key.  Fully expecting similar soreness and rest requirements you noted to get through the first week.  Thanks again for the push!

[jeromedawg]

I started getting into the same habit (but scaled down to 20-40 per day most days currently lol) after signing up for a push-up challenge with St Jude. I really ought to ramp back up because I was getting at least 50-100 per day pretty consistently while doing a couple of the challenges. Have gotten lazy about it though. Next thing I need to work on is pull-ups. And maybe jump-rope too... if I can finally clear our garage out lol.

[BECABECA]

Always nice to see more people working on fitness, also inspired me to drop and do Pushups until I dropped for a set.

I personally recommend a timer/video as it lets you focus more on form with a camera watching you, that you can check afterwards to see if your doing it properly.

I for example have an awful habit of launching myself up far to quickly, and extending my ass as I arch up unfortunately, that I've worked on correcting.

I use this
https://youtu.be/koMp3ei4xJw?si=eV9tn_BJVDfhCtxJ

One day I hope to hit the full timer, closest I've ever gotten is a sad 1:30 before I collapse. As a comparison, I can do around 35-45 Pushups with decent form if I'm just aiming to shoot them out quickly before collapsing, but like I said focusing on decent form is just easier with the video I find.

I just started using your recommended video this week… each time I get to 1:07 and collapse so far. That double count in down position is brutal! My form looks and feels good though, until the collapse of course :P

@ca-rn @TimCFJ40 @jeromedawg How’s your progress coming along? Have you stuck to the routine?

[41_swish]

This is a habbit that has stuck with me forever. I am not perfect about working out, but I always try to get 10,000 steps in a day and 100 pushups in a day. If I just do these things and eat a solid diet, I stay in good shape.

[Fru-Gal]

This is awesome. A good challenge for me for January… I’m currently finishing up walking 20k steps a day for December. May continue with that, who knows.

Question: I saw somewhere there’s a “trick” in how you roll your shoulders or arms to make doing pushups easier? Anyone know what I’m talking about?

[41_swish]

This is awesome. A good challenge for me for January… I’m currently finishing up walking 20k steps a day for December. May continue with that, who knows.

Question: I saw somewhere there’s a “trick” in how you roll your shoulders or arms to make doing pushups easier? Anyone know what I’m talking about?

The "trick" I learned way back in high school was to try to put most of the weight on the outside of your hands. Your hands should be a little farther than shoulder width. I guess this helps transfer the weight more efficiently or something like that. I learned that in PE class

[Chris Pascale]

Nice. One year I decided to do 10 push-ups every day at the office. Sounds trite, but that's close to 3,000 push ups in a year I'd have done about none.

At first the floor was pretty far away, and then after a while it was like doing nothing.

[BECABECA]

It’s been a little over a month since I switched to doing the Bring Sally Up pushup challenge that @Raj suggested daily instead of doing 100 pushups in sets of 20. I am happy to report that my best time before collapse is now 1:28, much better than the 1:07 that was my best from December. If I can keep this rate of improvement up, I could be doing the full 3+ minute timer within 6 months. That’s a bit ambitious, so I’m setting a hopefully reachable goal of doing the full timer by the end of the year. Fun fun!