Pushup plateau

[Kevc]

Hey guys I've been training in MT for about 5 months now, and at the start I was barely able to do 20 pushups but now and for the past 2 months i've been stuck 55 - 60..how can i increase this number once again? It seems as though squats and abwork can keep increasing, but i really have a hard time with doing more pushups

[Halfbreed83]

Clap push ups, Incline Push ups, and Weight Training seem like a good way to up your push up count.

[Never_Back_Down]

supplementing right can also slow down lactic acid buildup

[Ziltoid]

Weighted pushups, dips.

[cmburns]

start adding more pushup volume. do clap pushups and pushups with your legs up on the stairs in your house or something. i like to do 3 min rounds of skipping with pushups in between too.

[394Ever]

Pyramid your sets

[halfmoon_]

when you do your sets split it into 3 quarters, start the first quarter with diamond pushups, the next quarter regular, the final quarter wide arm. weighted pushups, incline pushups.

[XTrainer]

First off, why do you care?

I used to have a push up plateau too. My best for a set was 75-80. I really wanted to get up to a hundred, until I realized that was sort of a stupid goal. Unless you need to get really good at push ups for some reason (for example, you're about to join some elite military unit or something in which you'll be expected to do ridiculous numbers of them), I don't see any reason to try to do more push ups than you're currently doing. It's not going to make you stronger...at such high reps, you're not even productively training muscular endurance anymore. It comes down to specificity: With a lot of work, you might get a little better at push ups, but how many dips can you do? I'd rather see somebody do 30 full depth/full extension dips than 100 push ups.

By the time you plateau at 60+ reps of an exercise, I think it's safe to say that you're training to get better at that exercise, not using the exercise as a tool to improve yourself.

There are some many more productive things you could do with your training time than trying to get a few more push up reps. Do you really think you will be a better athlete when you if you crack 70 than you are now?

[Admles]

^^^^^^^ What he said.

Why not start tying to work on the more advanced pushup variations?

Can you do one-armed pushups? Give that a try.

One-arm, one-leg pushups? EXTREMELY difficult.

All you're really training for is to get good at pushups - mix them up and get something useful out of them.

[Cerberus87]

bench press