Follow Up to 200 Pushups in 5 Minutes

I know, it's been awhile since I blogged but, August was a busy month and had a number of projects that I was working on and it's the last full month of summer and just wanted to soak it all in.

But, it's back to the grind since Labor Day is only a few days away.

I mentioned awhile back about how I was doing 200 pushups in 5 minutes where basically I was spreading the pushups out over the course of the day and not just doing them in one session.

I continued doing this for a few weeks and I thought it worked great.



I changed things up a bit. Three days a week I would do pushups, and 3 days a week I would do pullups.

With the pullups, I didn't quite do 200 of them in a day. With pushups, you can do them anywhere, but with a pullup, you obviously need to have a pullup bar and since I'm on the go most of the day, I'm limited to when I can do pullups when I'm home and have access to my Iron Gym.

So I started off with just doing 50 pullups throughout the day. I would do 10 sets of 5.

After a couple of weeks of doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week and 50 pullups, 3 days a week, I add more to each exercise: I increased the number of repetitions per set of pushups that I was doing from 10 to 15 and the number of repetitions per set of pullups from 5 to 7. So I ended up doing 300 pushups a day, 3 days a week, and 70 pullups a day, 3 days a week.

I was really impressed by how simple this routine was, how it doesn't take long, and quite frankly, how great the results are for your upper body by just following these two simple movements.

I'm really starting to think that if you just used these two movements, added in some interval training, got your diet in line, that you wouldn't need much else.

So just remember to try and not complicate things too much. Stick with the basics, eat better (and less food if fat loss is your goal), and you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

If you haven't already, give this routine of pushups and pullups (if you have a pullup bar) a try for a couple of weeks and let me know how it goes.

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200 Pushups in 5 Minutes

The other day I talked about Starting a Fat Loss Program and I used pushups as an example of a great exercise that uses a lot of muscle that when done, will lead to your body need more calories for the recovery process, thus burning more fat after the workout is over.

That got me thinking about pushups some more and how I really like doing them. I still think the pullup is my favorite but, the pushup comes in at a close second.

So I decided when I woke up yesterday, that I wanted to get 200 pushups done in 5 minutes.



There's a catch though. I wasn't going to just get on the floor and muscle out 200 pushups in one session. I was going to do them a little bit at a time over the entire day.



By my calculations, it takes me about 15 seconds to do 10 pushups.

So if I were to do 20 sets of 10 pushups throughout the day, that would mean I was spending just a total of 5 minutes a day doing pushups.

If you assume that you are awake 16 hours in a day, that would mean you would have to do 12.5 pushups an hour to reach 200 pushups.

So I woke up in the morning, jumped out of bed, got down on the floor, and did 10 pushups.

Got ready for the day, and after my shower, did another 10 pushups.

Throughout the entire day, I just stayed cognizant that my goal was to do 200 pushups for the day, and when the desire hit me, no matter where I was, I would drop down and do 10 pushups (I was in a parking lot and dropped and did 10 right in front of my car....Got a few crazy looks for that...).

I drink a lot of water during the day and found a nice routine in that when I had to use the bathroom, I would drop on the floor and do 10 pushups first. Considering I probably have to use the bathroom every 45 minutes or so, that means over the course of 3 hours I would have done 40 pushups.

By the time I got to my last set of 10 pushups at the end of the night, my form and intensity were exactly the same as when I did my first set of 10 in the morning. I felt great. Didn't feel depleted at all.

Woke up this morning and have a tad bit of muscle soreness in my chest, but feel a really great pump in my arms, shoulders, and especially my lats.

I was doing pushups on my toes. But that doesn't mean this won't work with other variations of it. You could do them against the wall, or on an incline, and on your knees.

One suggestion though: If you've never done a pushup before, or you only do them from time to time, don't try and hit 200 over the course of one day at first. Work your way up to it. Try shooting for 50 first. Then if that feels okay, the next time you do it, try and shoot for 75 or even a hundred throughout the day.

The larger point of trying to do 200 pushups spread out throughout the day is to show that short workouts can do wonders for you. I talk a lot about doing a 30 minute workout and how I think that if designed correctly, can be even more effective than a 60 minute workout. But even doing short little burst of an exercise (such as 15 seconds), can still be beneficial. This shows that there truly is NO EXCUSE for saying you don't have time to do a workout. Spread the workout over the course of the day if finding a block of 30 minutes isn't going to work for you.

I'm going to continue doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes (and if you're going to do this, I would recommend only doing it 3 days a week to start). I'll let you know how my progress is going in a few weeks.

www.30-minuteworkout.com
www.leanbodytraining.com
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