How many pushups can you do?

[NewWaveChick1981]

I'm talking about regular pushups, not the bent-knee kind. I've worked my way up to 100! :woohoo: I do five sets of 20 as a part of my regular workout. :D I started off with "girl" pushups (the bent-knee ones), but I'm on the regular ones now and have been for nearly a year.

Just wanted to celebrate! Reached that goal yesterday. Went from doing 80 to 100! :bounce:

[billyskank]

1. A hundred?

:wow:

I'm not sure if I can do any. :blush: I definitely couldn't do ten.

I suck!

[NewWaveChick1981]

3. I've been working on it for quite some time...

:hug: I really started taking charge of my health about four years ago, and it's been a work in progress. :bounce:

Thanks.... And you don't suck, btw! :hug:

[billyskank]

14. I would say it is coming along exceedingly well

:yourock:

:loveya:

[NewWaveChick1981]

17. Thank you, sweetie!

:* :loveya: :hug:

[Mutley]

2. Like... three.

:7

:hi:

[billyskank]

4. Aha. A girl after my own heart!

:rofl:

[Mutley]

9. We who have no upper body strength need to stick together.

:rofl:

billy!!! :hug:

[billyskank]

20. ...

:hug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

6. Hiya, mutley!

:hi: Three's better than zero!

[Mutley]

13. Hey NWC!

Yeah, that's what I figured. :P

[RetroLounge]

5. Does this mean I get on top?

:evilgrin:

RL

[NewWaveChick1981]

7. Of course...

:evilgrin: :*

[RetroLounge]

12. In that case, I can do as many pushups

as you desire. and then some...

:loveya:

RL

[NewWaveChick1981]

16. Why, thank you, RL....

I have a lot of stamina, so if you're not tired, it may take quite a while.... :evilgrin:

[RetroLounge]

23. counting on it...

:hi:

RL

[tjwmason]

8. 1/2

I'm excellent at the going down bit - it's just the getting back up again. :eyes:

[NewWaveChick1981]

10. We'll just have to work on the getting back up part, then...

Here we go...1, 2, 3.... :hi:

[tjwmason]

28. You're not the first to try...

you possibly won't be the last...

but you will fail, I'm afraid.

[RetroLounge]

24. "I'm excellent at the going down bit"

Sex Thread?

:hi:

RL

[NewWaveChick1981]

25. I saw that too and tried to avoid it...

...but there's no avoiding it now! :rofl:

[hfojvt]

26. I thought they had pills

that would help with the "getting up" part too.

[NewWaveChick1981]

27. "Bob enjoys working with wood..."

:rofl: Enzyte? Viagra? Take your pick...

[tjwmason]

31. That's just your dirty mind...

I would never ever think of anything at all like that. O8)

[qnr]

11. Congratulations. I used to do 100 regularly, but that was ages ago.

I'd be lucky to do 25 these days.

[NewWaveChick1981]

15. Thanks!

:hi: I kick my husband's ASS (not literally) when it comes to that... :rofl: He used to do a lot of fitness activities, but in the past ten years or so, he's been a total couch potato. He can do ten with some difficulty and then has to stop. :P

[Breeze54]

18. Sad to say, I doubt to many....

:-(

[NewWaveChick1981]

19. That's ok... We can get you started...

:hi:

[Breeze54]

30. Well, I have a

whiplash injury, so I avoid strain on my neck area.
I just came into a little $, so I've been thinking of getting a 'home gym'
but I'm not sure what to get, what's the best for a small amt. of money.
I want one because of the long winters here. I don't want to join a gym.

Any suggestions? :shrug:

OOPS! Forgot to say "Congratulations!" ;)

[NewWaveChick1981]

33. Not really sure on that one. I belong to a gym that is very

reasonable in cost ($20/month total for me and my husband). But I can see the necessity of having your fitness equipment at home.

[taterguy]

60. Cheap fitness suggestions

If you already own a bicycle then pick up a bike trainer. Mine cost $160 and I added a $40 cycling computer to it so I can keep track of how far and how fast I ride. It won't do much for your upper body but it's great for your legs and cardivascular stuff.

Or: volunteer for Habitat For Humanity. Swinging a hammer is great exercise.

[RevolutionaryActs]

21. Not very many, but I have really bad tendonitis in my elbow

So if I use it too much, it's not so good. x(

[NewWaveChick1981]

22. Definitely understandable...

:hug:

[RevolutionaryActs]

32. It's sad really, I'm only 20 and I already feel old.

:silly: :7


:hug:

[hfojvt]

29. that was the problem I always had

if I did push ups my shoulders would kill me the next day. Bench pressing even 120% of my body weight (if you can believe a machine weight) never seemed to bother me.

[Dangerously Amused]

34. Have you SEEN my toothpick arms?

Darlin', I'm lucky to blowdry my hair!



But I am seriously impressed with your accomplishment! WTG!!


:applause:

[NewWaveChick1981]

36. Thanks, DA!

To look at me, you wouldn't think I had well-developed muscles at all, but when I flex them....watch out! :yoiks: I can open my own jars and everything.... :P

:hi: BTW, toothpick arms can be trained...

[Giant Robot]

35. Was up to 120 a couple weeks ago

But had a biopsy done and took some time off for the stitches to be removed. Will be starting back up tomorrow.

[NewWaveChick1981]

37. Cool!

And I hope the biopsy turned out OK. :hi:

[thefool_wa]

38. Excellent Job!

You should show us "the guns" (bicepts, not pecks :)) - I'll bet they are toning up well.

I'm not sure how many I can do anymore, and finding out sounds tiring :)

[NewWaveChick1981]

39. Thanks!

That'll be the subject of my next pic... :P

[Spaceman Spiff]

40. 75

Back in the early 90s when I was in the Army.:shrug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

41. That's still good, though...

:hi: And welcome to DU, Spaceman Spiff!

[nuxvomica]

42. I just tried and I wiped out at 15

I rarely do pushups so anything above 10 is probably pretty good for me, especially considering I'm dead: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5526937&mesg_id=5527556

[NewWaveChick1981]

43. Well, that was 15 more than you had done today, so I'm glad

we motivated you! :hi: And if you're dead, how did you get the strength to type? :rofl:

[nuxvomica]

51. I don't know

Considering the primary evidence of my death is a free Internet evaluation, I'm wondering if I should not take it too seriously. :D

[LeftyMom]

44. I did 60, but the grinding sensation in my right shoulder made me stop

Damned if I know what that was all about. I feel fine otherwise and could have done more.

[NewWaveChick1981]

45. Oh, if it hurts, definitely stop!

:hug: Sorry that happened. :pals: 60's really good, though.

[LeftyMom]

47. It didn't really hurt, it just felt odd and wrong somehow.

Sometimes that shoulder works itself a little bit out of socket. I just need to stop and stretch and move around a bit until it seats itself a little better.

[tinfoil tiaras]

46. 1 1/2 presisely

I always failed the damn fitness test in Middle School. So glad that High School doesn't have gym class!! :party:

[NewWaveChick1981]

48. I could only do two situps in second grade when the President's

Fitness Test was administered (Thank you, JFK :sarcasm:), and I had a choice in high school of gym or science. Naturally, I chose science. :P I was pretty much a non-exerciser until a few years ago, and I've come a long way since then. :woohoo: If you start doing little things now, like a few situps here and there and a few pushups, or walking, you'll be better off as you get older! :hug: There's a lot of wisdom in learning from my big mistakes. :rofl:

[tinfoil tiaras]

50. I know I should like exersise and all

but the only thing i like to do is the fitness bike my mom has. Bike a mile on that and your legs feel like so tight and all. Its cool! :D

WTF. JFK made up the Presidential Fitness Test? He is SO not my favorite president anymore!! I thought it was some idiot like Regan or something....grr... :P

[NewWaveChick1981]

56. Keep going on the bike!

:applause: :woohoo:

Yep, I remember the TV ads when I was growing up about the new President's Fitness Test started up by JFK himself. He was dead by that time (I saw the ads in about 1966 and 1967), but his fitness legacy lives on, much to the dismay of schoolchildren everywhere... :P

[billyskank]

49. Will you train me?

:)

[NewWaveChick1981]

53. If you want.

:*

[billyskank]

55. ...

:woohoo:


:evilgrin:


:*

[miss_american_pie]

52. Good for you!

I can't do any. :D

[NewWaveChick1981]

54. Thanks!

:hi: I had to work my way up to this, but it's been worth it. The down side is that sweating makes your makeup melt and a good hair day can go away quickly. :rofl:

[miss_american_pie]

57. Yeah, the sweating part is icky

I can't do push-ups, but I can do fifty plies in second position. :hi:

[NewWaveChick1981]

58. Now THAT's cool!

:hi: I took ballet growing up, and I regret not doing more with it. I don't exactly have a dancer's body, but ballet can be very strenuous and really good for you.

You go, girl! :woohoo:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

59. Probably about 25. Only about 10 fingertip pushups though.

When I was training for my blackbelt I was able to do about 100 with 25 of them being fingertip and 25 being knuckle.

[NewWaveChick1981]

61. Cool! Mine are palm pushups.

Open hand with palm flat on the floor. I haven't reached the stage of anything fancier yet. :rofl:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

65. Well, the knuckle and finger ones were required for my black belt.

They impressed the hell out of my fencing coach though. As long as your hands are strong, finger pushups aren't too bad (it's on all five fingers), but knuckle pushups suck. If you start to lose your balance, you hurt your wrist and the knuckles on a hardwood floor supporting your body weight hurt, though they do toughen your hands for punching.

[KFC]

68. Remind me not to fuck with you

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

69. KFC, just a reminder not to fuck with me.

I have a black belt, plus I am skilled in the use of my collection of weaponry.

[KFC]

96. Thank You

It is a good rule of thumb not to fuck with black belts. That goes double for black belts with motherfucking weapons. Shit.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

97. At least the guns are just for show.

Actually, unless someone was trying to really harm me or my family, I'd never use any of it. I just find it fun. I only fight in sanctioned events.

[WCGreen]

62. It depends on what is underneath me as I do the push-up....

[NewWaveChick1981]

63. I'll bet...

:hi: :*

[WCGreen]

66. In my prime....

I use to do one handed one's...

But since the onset of my "delicate condition", I can only do about ten....

[ForrestGump]

84. Darn. I was gonna say that. And not just because there were 69

replies when I posted. :o

Congratulations, Ms Chick1981!!!! :headbang:

I hate pushups. I used to be good at them, when I was teaching martial arts in my youth (nothing like doing them with the students, whole counting them off at the front of the class, to inspire superhuman effort), but I really think there's something about my body structure that makes them more difficult for me than for others...I mean, I do have strong arms, but the linkage just seems to work against me. In fact, I'm wondering if this is why I am actually better at one-armed pushups than at the regular kind. Spreading my legs seems to help, too.

I had one kung fu teacher, for years, who came up with the most heinous variations on the humble pushup imaginable. I hated that part of the training. No, please, anything but pushups. Among his catalog were varieties of the not uncommon clap-as-you-push-up kind as well as doing pushups with toes on a chair (again, for some reason this makes it easier for me) or between chairs or concrete blocks with the body going beneath the plane of the chair or block's surface (this was decidely not easy) and then, somehow, back up. And, of course, all of the pushups that we did -- two-armed, one-armed and moving -- we did with the usual palms-down configuration as well as on our knuckles, on the backs of our wrists, and on our fingertips.

But he also had all sorts of drills like one that required us to leap, in push-up position, forward along a line of heavy bags on the floor while doing a one-armed pushup and smacking the other arm, bent, down on the bags in a powerful elbow strike. And then there were the ones with us doing the same kind of leapfrogging in pushup position, but this time with our bodies aligned between two rows of concrete blocks, the idea being that we had to propel ourselves from one set of blocks (feet and hands on top of the blocks at every step) without touching the floor, and for an added twist he'd sometimes make us clap our hands while we were in flight...much trembling ensued, of course, as we (by which I mean, especially me, being generally pushup-challenged) contemplated each leap. I lost a lot of blood on that one. And then, believe it or not, he'd have us do it backwards. By which I mean, jumping backwards in pushup position while blindly hoping to land atop the concrete blocks...even the best up-pushers in the school turned that into a cavalcade of tumbing bricks (oh, yeah, in all these drills the blocks were turned with their smaller side up, that made the targets smaller, our height off the ground that much greater, and the surface far less stable).

I remember at least once also doing pushups on top of one another -- palms to palms and feet to feet with the person doing the pushup supported in midair only by the person beneath them. And I have vague recollection of some weird manner in which we somehow linked linked legs and did a tandem pushup that was perhaps the most severe abdominal exercise ever conceived.

But the worst was yet to come: vertical pushups. Yeah, baby. Absolutely vertical, against a wall in handstand position. But that straight vertical one was not the worst...there were variations on that, and the one that I could just never get right was the one wherein we were supposed to push our feet against the wall while our torsos were aligned vertically (in other words, bent 90° at the waist with feet presed against the wall, legs parallel to the ground, and torso perpendicular to the ground with our arms in handstand position) and then do a push up such that out heads almost touched the ground...I just couldn't keep those feet on the wall. No way, man. They'd slip every time.

One-armed pushup on the fingertips, no problem...vertical pushup, big problem.

That's why I hate pushups so vehemently... :D

But we were well-trained, I'll give it that. There's no such thing as good martial arts training that is easy. Nope.

EDIT: forgot a few important variations

(1) palms, wrist, fists, or fingers held with hands together at the body's centerline, right about at solar-plexus level, and going down in a pushup on top of that narrow footing (what the hell?)

(2) Arms stretched out all the way in front of the head with hands again held together, and going down in a pushup from there (getting any strength on the return was even more of a challenge than usual)

(3) A kind of a compromise with hands held palm down more or less beneath where the head was going to be, thumbs touching to form a diamond shape similar to that used in a lot of chi kung exercises, and doing a pushup (sort of) from there with elbows bent (prallel to the floor) at about 90°

(4) Arms held almost as wide as you can get 'em, either with legs spread as wide or held tight together -- two different drills -- and doing the pushup from there (I was not bad at these ones)

(5) The opposite, with hands together in line with the centerline in one of the three ways mentioned above and legs spread all the way apart

(6) Every one of these with hands, feet, or both on concrete blocks or chairs

(7) Every pushup in the repertoire also done with feet extended so that the floor/block contact is on the instep, the top of the foot, ratehr than on the ball of the foot...makes it quite different

[NewWaveChick1981]

85. OMG, if I had to survive doing pushups like that, I'd quit.

:yoiks: That sucks. No wonder you hate them. :scared:

[ForrestGump]

92. Everything else was more than worth the pain of the pushups but, still,

every time he said "down for pushups" I just died inside... :-(

What new torture would he come up with tonight?

Unfortunately, much as I detest them (in general), they are an excellent form of exercise...any kind of isometric exercise that relies on the body's own weight and resistance tends to be good. I mean, I wish I liked pushups. Maybe I'll start doing them again, at least the onehanded kind (and, yeah, I have no idea why I find those easier). I need to get back every ounce of the fitness I had and then some -- I really want to be in the best shape of my life starting now, in my 40s (even better than I ever was at my best in my 20s or 30s), and I don't see why that's not possible...in fact, you're proving it every day. :D

[ForrestGump]

94. oh, and how could I forget THIS?

All of the above variations on the pushup (including the jumping kind, in between jumps) done to a count down and a count up.

Liek this:

One

(drop down an inch or two)

Two

(drop down a bit more...and he's pausing even longer on the count this time)

Three

(drop down more..again, that pause sure seems longer, even if it isn't)

Four

(drop down more...oops...went too far, almost to the floor...adjust back up again, a little...arms trembling, whole body tense, sweat puddling on the floor...don't forget to breath...don't hold your breath...man, he's talking forever on this count...what'd I ever do to him?)

Five

(all the way down...just off the floor...oh, man...oh, please, God, I know I don't talk to You very much, and I know I may not even necessarily believe in You all that much but, please, please...)

Six

(oh...okay...never mind, Creator, I think I'm going to survive this one...but, man, is it hard getting back up now)

Seven

(up a bit more...it's bad, but it's not quite AS bad)

And so on, until you're again at full arm extension.

But then he does it to you all over again. And again. And again. And so on...

Sadist!

[buddhamama]

64. damn!

that is impressive. I'd be happy with 30. Good on you. From now on, instead of refering to you as NewWaveChick1981 I am gonna call you ReallyHotChick1981. :toast:

[NewWaveChick1981]

70. Thanks, buddhamama!

:rofl: :hi: 30's damn good too!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

67. A big fat ZERO, my dear NWC!

I have nasty spurs in both shoulders, and anything like pushups just kill me......

I find it easier as I get older to accept my limitations.......

And live as well as I can within them......

I think you need congratulating, though!

YOU GO, GIRL!


:yourock: :woohoo: :woohoo: :hug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

71. Thank you, CP!

:hug: You definitely don't need to do pushups if you have bone spurs. :scared: I know you do fine without pushups anyway. :D

And a big thank you for the cheering section! :bounce: :hi:

[sakabatou]

72. 50 average

Once did 75

[NewWaveChick1981]

73. That's great!

:hi:

[Starbucks Anarchist]

74. Depends.

I could probably do 100 over a period of a few minutes, though I haven't tried in years, though I can definitely knock out 25 pushups really fast in roughly 20 seconds and then collapse.

:D

[NewWaveChick1981]

75. I'd hope you don't normally have to do pushup sprints...

:rofl: But that's impressive! :hi:

[Starbucks Anarchist]

76. LOL, nope.

That's just the way I operate -- I go fast right out the gate and use up everything in one shot. :D Otherwise, I operate at a very low level of energy for a long period of time.

[Nicole]

77. Zero

My workout is limited to walking & water aerobics.

Congrats to you! :toast:

[NewWaveChick1981]

80. Thanks, Nicole!

Your workout sounds like a good one! :hi:

[HEyHEY]

78. "Many" Like plural?

[billyskank]

79. I don't get it either

:shrug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

82. ...

:*

[billyskank]

83. Oh, I understand *that*

:*


:loveya:


This thread of yours seems to have caught the mood. :D

[NewWaveChick1981]

81. Yep, plural---as in more than one.

:hi:

[wildhorses]

86. as many as I need to ...

luckily I don't NEED to do ANY:P

[LadyoftheRabbits]

87. Um...

I have no upper body strength whatsoever. :blush: One, if I'm lucky.

[ZombieNixon]

88. 200.

225, maybe 250 if I'm feeling good and really push myself.

[LadyoftheRabbits]

90. Seriously?

Wow... that reply looks great after mine.... -.- :P

[bikebloke]

89. Not sure....

I do 30 as I get ready for work, though I've never taken it to my limit. So I can probably do much more.

[kedrys]

91. With lingering inflammations in both shoulders, none

The only time I'm not in pain is when I'm very warm and toasty. It really sucks.

Congratulations! :woohoo:

[flvegan]

93. In sets of 20?

I dunno. Probably a lot, but who cares, as I live in the gym anyway. Congrats to YOU on reaching this goal, and it is cause to celebrate.

The question remains...you gonna shoot for 120 now?

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

95. lol, currently? 30.

I don't exercise much :(

[sendero]

98. Wow..

... that's impressive :) I can do 30/25/25, have never tried to do more than that as that's a pretty good pec/tri workout already. Maybe I'll try next time just to see :)