Napalm's thing that I'll probably barely use

[Napalm]

1x20 reg irreg

just about nothing

this is starting to get frustrating. Yeah I know 1x20 a day is nothing and its not going to get me stronger but wtf am I supposed to do? I've tried just about everything in the world to up my max reps, and I've never done more than 42. Before this, I was dropping and doing 10 every 5 minutes, then after two weeks I quit, then I was doing 4 sets of 15 and building up to 6 sets of 20 and then after two weeks I quit, then I was doing this thing where you just add one pushup every night and I got to 42 and then it became so hard to even get to 30 the next night that I quit. I'm an f-ing quitter then I guess, I've got such a huge mental block on pushups that its just so damn ridiculous. I can bench 20lbs more than my body weight 10 times, and I'm a hell of a swimmer, so why the heck are pushups so hard??!?!?! This isn't fair.

Maybe I'm fat. I'm at like 24% body fat which is disgusting but I'm really tall so I look thin. Guess you don't have to look fat to be fat.

[Napalm]

sorry bout the rant, everyone gets frustrated. I finally got around to timing myself on the plank holds, I suck. I was only able to hold it for 2 minutes.

That's good for a first-time attempt, a 2 minute plank hold.

Now shoot for 3 minutes, a little tougher. I've done a 4 minute hold and that was really tough for me. Eventually I'll train for a 5 minute hold. Really requires that you tighten your entire core area, and also gets the back muscles worked.

With regard to pushups, just do them, all day long, whenever you have a moment. Your volume will eventually increase.

Keep up the good work!

[Napalm]

What are plank holds going to actually do? Are they going to get me stronger or are they just going to make me tone up? If I have to hold if for 20 minutes just to add 3 pushups to my max then maybe there's something better I could be doing? A lot of the bodyweight stuff I do doesn't get me any stronger.

They will help trust me. The bodyweight stuff will get you stronger if you do the exercises with the right intensity.

Before we go to far with this discussion, what are your fitness goals?

[Napalm]

75 pushups in 2 minutes
80 situps in 2 minutes (check)
2 mile run in 12:30 (pr 13:13)

[Napalm]

1x25 reg irreg

3 steak tacos, a starbucks frappachino, single scoop ice cream cone.

Well at least they weren't that hard tonight, I'll do a plank hold in a little bit and see if I do better.

Listening to: "Litium" by evanescence

Plank hold: 2:05

Originally Posted by Napalm

75 pushups in 2 minutes
80 situps in 2 minutes (check)
2 mile run in 12:30 (pr 13:13)

Those exercises make up the U.S. Army physical fitness test. Are you familiar with that? There is a scoring grid out there, 300 points is a perfect score. Do you know what you score is for that performance?

Did you do the pushups and situps unbroken?

I noticed your 2:05 in the ab plank hold. That is how I increased my hold time, every time I tried to improve my time by just a few seconds. It's more psychologically tolerable that way. Another way is to do interval holds with rest sessions. Hold 60 seconds, then rest 15 seconds, and repeat over and over until you have exhausted those muscles.

Also, to improve your pushup and situp performance, you can do intervals or what many call "greasing the groove". Do 5-10 pushups on the minute, every minute, for 20-30 minutes. You get lots of reps in during that session.

Do you have access to a pullup bar? Remember, for every pushing exercise (like the pushup), it's important to have a pulling exercise (like a pullup) to help maintain muscular balance.

When you want some new variety, try handstand holds, using the wall to help you with balance.

You are doing good, keep up the good work and keep moving forward.

Have a great day!

[Napalm]

lol yeah that's where I got it from. My current scores are something along the lines of

42 pushups
80+ situps
13:13 2 mile run

and if we're going by marine standards I'm at around 7 pullups (better than nothing). I have a pullup bar in my doorway that I try to do a pullup on evertime I walk in or out but I forget to a lot so I don't bother to keep track or record them (I'll start).

[Napalm]

1x25 incline, irregular
(I'll do the plank hold later)

I did 25 incline pushups with my feet up on a chair, but my back was bowed heavily even though my chest was going close to the ground, I don't know if that counts or not.

I just got up and did two more to see if I could do it without my back bowing. I can but it feels weird, my chin touches the ground before my chest gets near it, and my shoulders still bow a little bit which is something I couldn't help, they did that when I moved my arms down. So grand total was 1x27 incline.

Also worked out today at the gym, I'm getting a little bigger upper-body wise. I can also feel a bit of mass has been added to my lats because when I was at the peck deck I felt muscles around my lats working that I've never felt before.

(later)

Plank hold- 2:35

I was listening to "Give it to me" by Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake. Its only has three verses so it works like a mental check point whenever one verse ends. I know a lot of people use stopwatches and stuff but I get fatigued when I get distracted and I'm ADD so I get distracted easily. I use music as a time keeper to keep my mind focused and whenever I drop, I look at what the track time was on the song at the point that I dropped to get my offical time (subtact a few seconds if I didn't look up immediately).

I think my biggest challenge working out so far has been overcoming mental blocks. If anyone has any suggesting for those too, I'd appreciate it.

[Napalm]

1x25 regular, irregular up until the last five

hotdog and a donut

I dropped and did some pushups on the kitchen floor to that Varsity Blues song "hero." They were relatively easy and my form was really pretty good. by shoulder blades were bended in a way that it made me lock out 4 inches from the ground and my lower back wasn't sagging because my upper back took up the strain, weird huh. I was doing good until about 16 when I realized I was going to go to 25 instead of 20 and then my mind just farted. Mental blocks.

I'll do the plank hold later.

[Napalm]

1x25 same until last 5

some chicken

I think I did them good enough.

[Napalm]

1x18 (I think)

note to self, don't do pushups to that song by Hellogoodbye.

later

1x25 wide pushups, irregular count

lots of junk food, a few chocolate donuts, a slice of cheescake. I have to get my diet in order.

The pushups felt pretty good, I was doing them wide, so it felt a little different. My back did sag a little on a few, but I think I corrected it. On the last five, my cate was zigzagging out and around my arms, distracting me, darn cat, I just kept doing my pushups though on top of the cat. IT WOULDN'T MOVE!

1x20 wide pushups, irregular count

easy until the last one.

I was pacing around my room thinking about wrestling.

[Napalm]

1x20 regular pushups, irregular count, fairly slow pace

just ate some peas with butter

I'm doing pretty good on pushups today concidering that I haven't had any sleep yet. I was just watching a trailer for that documentary "Jesus Camp," about evangelicals and how they send their kids off to fundamentalist church camps and brainwash them. I'm sorry if there are any who are offended by me saying that, but watching it got me really mad, and the only way I could cope with it was to drop and do some more pushups.

1 wide grip pullup, slow

It wasn't quite dead hang, but then again I'm too freakin' tall!

*Note- today is actually Feb 28, but I haven't been to sleep yet so it's still MY Feb 27.

(later)

1x15 wide pushups, irregular count, slow cadence

I hate a steak a little bit ago and I ate another little piece of cheesecake, I'm thirsty so I'm going to drink water.

Whoa I'm on like a pushup roll today or something. I was watching Def Comedy Jam and thinking about some slam poetry that I might try writing myself and I just felt like dropping and doing some more pushups. They got a little hard after 12, but I guess that's all right.

[Napalm]

Okay, now its my 28th. I'm really sore, I guess I did a lot of good pushups yesterday.

On a sidenote, my SPRAWL shorts came today! Awesome! Any grapplers will know what that means.

1x20 fairly wide pushups, irregular count

You know what I actually am impressed with myself, even though I'm still only doing sets of 20-25 and haven't quite gotten into the higher reps range like I want to. Before the new year, if I was sore or tired I wouldn't be able to make it past 10. Now, I'm really sore and kinda tired and I pushed it all the way to 20 and it wasn't excruciatingly hard or didn't take an insane amount of will power. My irregular counting method seems to be working for me, I'm at 10 pushups and instead of thinking "half way there" I think "okay, only 5 more to go," and 5 doesn't seem like that many (even though it's really 10).