Surprised by progress on bodyweight exercises

[mikhou]

So I've been a TB user for at least 5 years, and it is by far my favorite program that I have used. I remember reading TB the first time and when I got to the section that talked about bodyweight exercises, I kind of scoffed a little bit at it. You see I've always believed that the best way to progress bodyweight exercises was to do them daily ala Pavel's push-up program or some other type of GTG program. I didn't really think that doing a percentage of max reps 2-3x per week would do that much for bodyweight exercises.

Well, I've been battling shoulder pain with the bench press for awhile now, and I've finally just decided that I don't have to bench press. So in place of it in my Zulu-ish template, I subbed in push-ups. That had me doing push-ups 2x per week, and I decided to do 5 sets in the first week, 4 sets in the second week, and 3 sets in the third week - decreasing the number of sets as the intensity went up. Well let me tell you that in 6 weeks, my push-up total has gone from 60 to 90. In all fairness you should know 3 things. 1) I probably could have done more than 60 in my first max test, but I didn't want set myself up for failure, 2) when doing 90 push-ups yesterday after getting to 70, I did take a break where I went up into a downward dog position for a 5-count and then cranked out 8 more until I needed a break and continued with the 5-second breaks and continuing on until 90, and 3) if I would have continued taking 5-count breaks in the downward dog position, I probably could have gone on for awhile past 90 but I decided to stop at 90 so that I had a good max rep at which to base my next cycle.

So while I was skeptical about that way of progressing bodyweight exercises, it worked quite well.

[Maxrip13]

Great results mate. This are some excellent push-up numbers.

Someone i follow in the training world that used to be high up in the dragondoor system pre split also told me this once. I thought GTG etc was the way to go for years and it’s great for beginners, but like you have found eventually you just have to do some hard work.

I look forward to the post about cracking 100.

[mikhou]

I look forward to the post about cracking 100.

Thanks. I look forward to making that post.

[mikhou]

I look forward to the post about cracking 100.

Hey, maxrip13. I posted this in my log today.

I'm on an easy/test week. So today I tested DL and pulled 124kg for 5 reps. At 47 yo and 64 kg bodyweight, I'm pretty happy with that. I also tested push-ups and got 100 straight push-ups without coming off of my hands. At 82 and 94 reps, I did go into the downward dog position for 5-count rest and then got back at it until I got to 100. The rest of the time I did some easy reps at deload percentages for SQ, pull-ups, and OHP. Overall, I'm happy with it. I'll take tomorrow off, probably do an easy run the next day, take one more day off, and then start my next cluster.

So I got to the 100 consecutive reps, and frankly, using this percentage of reps scheme wasn't really the grind that I thought it would be.

[Maxrip13]

I look forward to the post about cracking 100.

Hey, maxrip13. I posted this in my log today.

I'm on an easy/test week. So today I tested DL and pulled 124kg for 5 reps. At 47 yo and 64 kg bodyweight, I'm pretty happy with that. I also tested push-ups and got 100 straight push-ups without coming off of my hands. At 82 and 94 reps, I did go into the downward dog position for 5-count rest and then got back at it until I got to 100. The rest of the time I did some easy reps at deload percentages for SQ, pull-ups, and OHP. Overall, I'm happy with it. I'll take tomorrow off, probably do an easy run the next day, take one more day off, and then start my next cluster.

So I got to the 100 consecutive reps, and frankly, using this percentage of reps scheme wasn't really the grind that I thought it would be.

Awesome to hear. That's a bloody brilliant number of push ups and a very respectable deadlift for that many reps. Doing both together is an even more impressive achievement. Great results.

[TBPenguin]

Dang it mikhou, not you have me thinking about trying this.

Awesome job.

[mikhou]

Dang it mikhou, not you have me thinking about trying this.

Awesome job.

Ha! I don't have the pure strength like a lot of you guys, but TB has me as strong as I've ever been.