Yahoo News A Trainer Argues That the 100 Pushups a Day Challenge Needs to Stop
YouTube is flush with videos of athletes and fitness influencers doing 100 pushups each day, often for periods of 30 days or more, to see what kind of effect the simple bodyweight move will have on their physique. In a new video on the Athlean-X channel, strength coach Jeff Cavaliere C.S.C.S. explains why he doesn't necessarily see the value in this as a workout challenge, pointing out what he believes to be a simple flaw in the concept, and offering an alternative.
Ultimately, he asserts, when you're doing pushups at a certain point of volume, you're going to reach diminishing returns.
"My issue with the pushups is that when you can do 30, 40 or 50 of them in a set, then you're not choosing a hard enough variation of the pushup," he says. "In order to keep the gains coming, you're going to want to do something with that." If you're cranking out classic pushup reps at such high volumes with relative ease, Cavaliere suggests switching to a more difficult variation which will have you maxing out at a mere 20 reps.
Otherwise, he suggests a different approach which he has found to be more effective.
"Instead of thinking of it in terms of doing 100 pushups in a day, think of it as doing 5 sets of pushups to your ability level," he says. Rather than performing pushups to failure in each set, Cavaliere recommends doing 5 reps short of failure each time, in order to avoid nasty side effects such as inflammation or irritation in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
Then it's up to you as to whether you do your 5 sets in quick succession, or spread them apart throughout your day. Splitting up the sets might require an additional element of discipline when it comes to getting back down there, although Cavaliere concedes your reps might be "fresher" if you've allowed yourself that extra bit of recovery time between rounds.
And if the appeal of the 100-pushups-a-day lay in challenging yourself, then Cavaliere recommends an alternative: 100 reps of the Superman pressout. Doing 20 repetitions of this move after each of your 5 sets of pushups will help to work the rhomboids and rotator cuff, the back muscles which can get overlooked and which can help to avoid muscle imbalance.
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