How Often Should I Do Push-Ups/Pull-Ups?

S

Soosan

Cathlete
My birthday fitness goal this year is to do one pull-up. (I've given myself until December.) I've been doing the following strength-focused rotation for about seven weeks:

MONDAY: PLB Standing Only plus second half of Yoga X (starting with balancing poses and omitting yoga belly 7)
TUESDAY: Core Max "Tough Core" Premix plus Chest and Back at Y (3 Drop Sets done in a push-pull fashion)
WEDNESDAY: 1/2 Imax 2 or 3 plus Yoga
THURSDAY: P90X Shoulders & Arms plus Ab Ripper X
FRIDAY: KPC (CC Premix) or 1/2 Low Max plus KM Leg Conditioning Drills
SATURDAY: Power Yoga
SUNDAY: Boot Camp
MONDAY: Rest

I have made significant strength gains in my upper body but am no where near doing a pull-up. I use the Gravitron at the Y and have gone from using 50 to 40 lbs of assistance (I weigh 130 so I'm essentially pulling up 90 lbs of my bodyweight). As you can see, I'm only doing this once a week. Should I be doing more or would that be detrimental to the amount of recovery my body needs? I'm also doing three sets of push-ups (started with 3 sets of 8 and now barely eeking out 3 sets of 12). Should I increase the frequency of these? If so, on which days should I do the additional pull-ups and push-ups?

As an aside, reducing the duration and frequency of my cardio has helped me to gain strength and definition but hasn't seemed to hinder my cardio capacity.
 
OK - here's my suggestion:

1. Get a door gym or some other kind of pull-up bar for at home. You can get them really cheap lots of places.
2. Instead of trying to do pull-ups, try chin-ups. They are a little bit easier, but still work the same muscles.
3. Add dips to your upper body line-up
4. For the time being, make push-ups, chin-ups and dips your only upper body exercises
5. Try the drop-set method Cathe uses for push-ups in Gym Style Chest - if you don't have it, she does 16-14-12-10-8-6-4-2 for a grand total of 72. This is a good way to build up your numbers.
6. Be very careful of your form for push-ups - think plank position and keep your weight over your hands. Pretend that you have a board strapped to your backside that goes from the top of your head to the your ankles, and it's strapped on with a big elastic band wrapped around from your hip line to just below your chest. Come straight up and straight down - don't let your legs and stomach sag, and don't let your butt stick up.
7. Work up to dips with your feet elevated when you do them at home. At the Y you can use the assisted pull-up/dip machine.
8. Do upper body 3 days a week for now - later you can move to 2 days a week. When you do Boot Camp, when Cathe does the upper body exercises, you do only push-ups, chin-ups and dips, and alternate these throughout the tape. I forget how many cycles she does, but for instance, if she does 6 cycles, you'd do push-ups/chin-ups/dips for 2 sets total.
9. It may be very hard to get your mind to accept working without weights and doing only 3 exercises for upper body, but it's VERY effective.

I hope this is clear enough - ask me if you want anything explained better.

Just Do It! :)
 
Wow, Honeybunch! Thanks for the great tips!

A couple of questions/comments:

1. If I can only do 12 push-ups in one set, should I start with that and keeping dropping down by 2 reps until I get to 2? I do have GST and always wind up dropping to my knees after the second or third set because I literally cannot do ONE more on-the-toes rep. Is it better to just stick with the amount of reps I can do on my toes and forget about the knees even if it means doing fewer reps?

2. Thanks for the form pointers on push-ups!

3. How many sets/reps of pull-ups and dips should I do each session?

4. I work out in the den and we don't want to screw a pull-up bar into the doorway. I looked into door gyms and our trim is too wide (house was built in the late 1800's). In other words, any pull-ups I do will have to be at the Y.

5. When I do my upper body workout, should I try unassisted pull-ups first before moving on to the assisted pull-up/dip machine, even if I can pull myself up a centimeter?

6. I HATE doing push-ups and pull-ups, but I might give this a try for 4 weeks if I can talk myself into it.

If anyone else has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!:)
 
I don't have any tips for you Soooooooooosan(hope I got all the o's in there), but your rotation looks great and I've printed it off for when I need a change from my TLT/Cathe rotation.
Angela:7
 
Thanks, Angela. I've really been enjoying it and feel as though I've made some good strength gains. I'm a little sick of it by now but am going to hang in there one more week for a total of 8 weeks.

I LOVE doing the second half of Yoga X after a strength or cardio workout. It hits everything and the poses are held for a nice long time.

If you decide to try it, let me know how you make out. Do you have access to gym equipment?
 
Susan...I gotta tell ya...you are motivating me girl!! I am in the toughest exercise slump I've ever been in (it seems). Everything is making me bored and I just don't feel like doing anything for some reason.

Honeybunch....great suggestions. I think I may just try to stick to these three for a while for all my upperbody stuff (and add some shoulder work in).

Just had to jump in to tell ya all your hard work will pay off Susan and it's motivating me!!!

Briee
 
Thanks so much for the encouragement, Briee! I hope it will pay off but I still don't know whether I'll try Honeybunch's idea of only doing push-ups, pull-ups and dips. Dips I don't mind so much, but I truly loathe the other two and it would take all the enjoyment out of everything. Like I said earlier, though, I guess I could suck it up and try it for 4 weeks.
 
I need to suck it up and try ANYTHING for 4 weeks. Do you ever have this happen? You get intense for quite some time, but then you hit this wall, and then you don't feel like doing anything because anything less than intense is...less than intense. So, I start feeling like I'm wasting my time doing the "not so intense". I am in deperate need of someone to come and kick my butt back in gear (and that's getting to be an easy target as it's growing).

Thanks for letting me get that out of my system. Even my dh is telling me to get down there and do a good workout as I'm SO moody when I don't get it in!!!

AND TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE...you're going to be doing major pullups and pushups and I'm going to be doing bicep curls with 5# weights if I don't get my act together soon!!!}( }( }( }(

Briee ---thanks for letting me jump in here and whine.

You're doing great Susan!! You need to stick a pullup bar SOMEWHERE in your house and use the purple band to assist you in pullups - these work pretty well. I use this at times and I weighed myself with the purple band just to see how much "assist" I am getting. I weighed about 80 pounds at the bottom, so I'm guessing that get about 25 pounds of assistance, at least near the bottom :7 :7 . How about a steel bar with braces at either side placed in your high doorways??
 
For some reason, I rarely fall off the exercise wagon. I listen to my body and take breaks when I need to and that seems to keep me on track.

Have you ever taken a recovery week? A lot of people here swear by them. I don't schedule them, but sometimes I'll do a week of nothing but yoga, light cardio and Pilates if my body is beginning to lose steam. I've also been known to cut the duration of my workouts (e.g. standing leg portion only of PLB, 1/2 Imax, ...) during busy weeks and this helps prevent burnout too.

In other words, less than intense is okay and, IMO, actually more beneficial than pushing, pushing, pushing. Your body will get the rest it needs somehow, either by hitting a wall as you described or by getting injured. In either case, it's harder to get back into it than if you had just taken it a bit easier.
 
1. I'd do just as many pushups as you can for the first set, and work down by 2's BUT - I'll just bet you CAN do 16! Just make that your very first exercise of your upper body workout, even before you do any cardio. Then, later in the day, do it again!

2. For your chin-ups: After you've tried to do whatever you can unassisted, do as many as you can on the Gravitron for your first set, then keep doing them until you can't do any more. For example, if you can do 10 for your first set, make you subsequent sets 5's for as many as you can manage.

3. There's got to be a way you can put up a bar of some sort so you can do chin-ups at home. You may have to resort to a free standing jobbie like I've read they use in Power 90X.

I found a lot of good links about how to do pull-up which I'll compile and post later. Trust me, when you really get into this body weight only form of upper body workout, you'll be just amazed at what it does for your upper body definition! And NO, you won't get big and bulky, just really nicely defined. Believe me - I don't love doing pushups and chin-ups, but I love what they do for me, and I love the amount of time it saves me in workout time.



Just Do It! :)
 
I'll post the pull-up sites if you really think you want to pursue this quest of yours:

"My birthday fitness goal this year is to do one pull-up. (I've given myself until December.)"

Unfortunately, there's only one way to increase the # of push-ups and pull-ups you can do, and that's to DO THEM. I've read countless sources on this, and they all agree. You don't increase your numbers by wishing you could do more and not doing what needs to be done.

That being said, this is my push-ups day and I'm going to do 400 total.

Just Do It! :)
 
i would love to have a pull up bar for my p90x workouts. is it still ok to use if i live in an apartment? does the bar go over the door like a clothes rack? the bar from beach body is $40.where did u get yours?

laura
 
i just wanna add that its $44.95 plus $14.95 shipping. majorly expensive.maybe there's one for less?

laura
 
>Unfortunately, there's only one way to increase the # of
>push-ups and pull-ups you can do, and that's to DO THEM. I've
>read countless sources on this, and they all agree. You don't
>increase your numbers by wishing you could do more and not
>doing what needs to be done.
>
Darn it!!!
 
I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this. And don't worry, I have no qualms about getting big and bulky. With my body type, I'd never even get close.
 
yes,i would like the pull up sites. which one do you have? i just want to be sure that i get a good one for cheap price.

laura
 
Laura,

The sites to which I was referring are How to Do Pullups, not where to buy pull-up bars. Are you still interested?

Just Do It! :)
 
you can do push ups and pull ups every single day. they are only bodyweight exercises. don't let anyone tell you about over training with these type of exercises.... push ups and pull ups can do so much for your body.
 
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