Recently I have started doing 100 press ups (4 sets of 25) a night. I found it made my arms and shoulders feel a little tired the following day, so I am thinking about only doing them when I know I’m not going to the gym the following day.
2 questions.
Firstly, Does that sound ok? Will dropping the press ups before I go to the gym slow down my progress in any way?
Secondly, and probably more importantly, as a sprinter, are press ups any good? Should I be doing them? I understand they don’t particularly promote the high intensity, low reps philosophy, so is it ok to do them?
Second, when you go to the gym, are you meaning a lifting workout? If you are doing bench, or any upper body work that involves the triceps, pecs, and deltoids you are wasting your time with press ups or push ups, and hindering your progress in the gym.
If press ups are your only upper body work, you shoud not be doing them every night.
When I say gym, yeh, I mean stuff that involves bench press, incline bench press. My goals are to reach my maximum potential as a sprinter. hat’s long term. Right now it’s too cut my body fat right down, and also improve my power. My start and acceleration is the weakest part of my race.
Carson:
I’m not so sure about that. Every form of challange may have a role. This also leads us to a look at Allan Well’s training as well. We always found that bench results were stimulated by the inclusion of “depletion push-ups” once per week- usually on Sat, after lifting M,W,F. This consists of doing the maximum no of push-ups possible, waiting 90sec and repeating, waiting 90sec again and repeating for a final set. I think that, though tough, this fits into the low intensity catagory and is complementary to the high int bench press. Thoughts??
Charlie:
Good point. You´ve got me thinking outside the box again, thanks. It´s easy to criticise a program when the pegs doesn´t fit into the normal holes.
Maris, you should post your training schedule and let people have a look at it, what you have given is probably too vague to give decent advice.
In terms of body fat reduction, check nightmare4d´s diet, and if you have the time and/or patience, check out the sources he gives in that thread.
P) I think that push ups are quite good becuase I think they can contribute towards organism strength (depends how you do them.) I go for very strict form whenever I’ve done push ups, I go for the straight line from neck-hip-knee-angle ALL the way down and all the way up. I “tuck the tail bone between the legs”
(cue), abdominal isometric contraction and my abs used to tire out before the pecs!
Q) Could this depletion reps thing work with squats? E.g if I do as many bodyweight squats as possible, rest 90secs and do it again, once per weak, could that help my lower rep/higher force squat strength days? It seems to work o.k for wrestlers who need both the strength endurance AND the brute strength. (Anybody who has read Kurt Angle’s “it’s true” will be truly inspired or left awestruck by some of his workouts.)
Surely doing that would stimulate hypertrophy. Putting the muscles under that much stress, under they can no longer function must cause an adaptation. However, I would think a lot of rest is essential afterwards to gain the benefits. Having ‘depleted’ the muscles, they will need a long time to repair/recover. I’m no expert, but I’m trying to apply what knowledge I do have. If I’m along the right lines, great! If not, could someone steer me in the right direction please? Am I nearly right?
Charlie has mentioned something in Speed trap about the muscles taking less time to recover that the C.N.S. If I was to do depletion push ups, and any where near depletion bodywght squats I would be opening up the glucose/protein cupboard straight after!
I’m deffinately hoping Charlie will answer my question about depletion bodyweight squats. Also, seeing as your group would do depletion push ups, did they ever do high rep bodyweight squats Charlie, or perhaps relied on their tempo running for that?
You may want to check out Matt Fuhrey´s website. He does hundreds of Hindu squats, but I don´t think that he uses weights in combination with his bodyweight routines.
Ian King sometimes uses breathing squats in hypertrophy programs, you would find this on T-mag by doing a search.
Mon - weights (upper body)
chin ups to failure
bench press 3x6-8 80%
arm curls 4x8 80%
tricep dips to failure
incline press 3x6-8 80%
abs
Tue - track
Whatever my coach sets
Wed - weights (lower body)
squats 3x6-8 80%
powercleans 3x5 90%
leg curls 3x12 50%
leg press 3x6-8 80%
calf raises 2x20 on each leg with 15-20kg weight.
abs.
Thurs - track
Whatever coach sets
Fri - weights (upper body)
Sat - weights (lower body)
Sun - rest.
That’s generally what I do. However, I am considering the press ups on Mon, wed and Sat nights. Also, I have a slight hamstring problem at the moment. Well, it’s cleared up in that I’m not feeling any pain, but I’m resting it a few more days before I start stressing it.
Also, I am moving back to England soon, and that may well mean track work, Mon, Tue, Thur and Sun, so things will change a little bit. But I’ll update you as things progress.
Goose1
I wouldn’t go with high vol squats, since the role of depletion work with these muscles is already filled more specifically by special endurance and strength endurance work (long running A’s)
Glad to hear that you won´t be doing press ups every night now. As far as going to failure, you may want to consider that failure´ is something an athlete should try to avoid in training, and instead strive for success´.
Some have thrown out the idea that going to failure teaches us to fail. You don´t have to constantly challenge yourself to the point of failure to see improvements.
