Hello, my name is Page Sturgill and I ship out for active duty for the Navy in 19 days. I am 17 years old, 5'11 tall, and weigh 201. My biggest concern is pushups. I have to be able to do 42 in two minutes, and I can do about 17 as of right now. I'm pretty close to my goal on situps and running, but what should I do about pushups? Should I just do as many as I can every day, or would benchpressing help me out more? Also, I weigh 201, and my max weight is 196. I can't seem to lose those 4 lbs. I make tape measurements, but barely. Should I go for making weight? But even if im only a pound off then i wont make my tape anymore cause I will lose it off my neck. Please help me out on this, I have no idea what to do, and I'm starting to freak out with my ship out date coming up so soon.
If you're going to boot -- then I wouldn't stress too much -- trust me you'll lose it.
But what I suggest is, 1) no soda or sugary drinks. OF ANY KIND. You'd be surprised how much weight you can loose, if you stick to water, tea, and milk.
2) Do as many push ups as you can daily. Set a timer for two minutes, so it beeps when the time is up, and just focus on doing as many as you can. We all did this during basic and later at OTS, during our off duty time, and 99% of us passed. I'm a spindly little thing with long arms, and push ups are hard for me even when I'm in A-1 shape, and I beat my min by 20, and I was 27 at the time.
Benchpressing, will just build muscle mass, which will add more weight, which is not what you want, doing more push-ups will build the endurance, which is the issue most likely.
Don't worry so much about weight right now, as long as your BMI is fine, they can waiver weight. But if you just cut out the sugary drinks / snacks, the little you need to lose will come right off.
Thank you so much for responding and so quickly. I will follow your advice to a T, but one more question, just to make sure. You said pushups every day? Because I've heard something like your supposed to do it every other day, or every two days, so your muscles have a chance to heal. Is that true, or should I stick to doing them every day? Thanks again
We all did them everyday. It's not like lifting weights. If you find you are sore, then of course wait a day, don't hurt yourself, but doing push ups and sit ups everyday isn't a big deal. Even marathon runners run everyday, they just alternate long distances with sprinting.
Don't over do it of course, like don't try to do it 10 times in a day, but a couple of times everyday, for 2 minutes, isn't going to hurt you. Just remember, if you feel pain, or soreness, STOP, and let yourself rest. Never over exert yourself.
if you cant do anymore pushups just hold yourself in that postition. this is not the actually workout, just the pushup portion. try doing once mon, wed, fri, and three times a day on tues, thrus. weekends run, strecth anything but pushups. try mixing up the butterfly machine if you have one. hope this helps.
when you reach your exhaustion point in situps go to your knees and do as many more as you can. it is lessening the overall weight you are putting on your arms but the muscle memory will be huge for you. The beauty of the push up is that it does back, chest, tricep all at once where in a gym it would take several different excercises to accomplish that.
If you do want to emulate more weight like a bench press there are 2 options. One you can alter your angle like putting your feet on the first step of stairs or if you are really feeling froggy the couch or your bed. Another one is more of an isolated one. you prop one arm up on something like a stepper or a couple stack mats something stable and you do pushups, they are kinda lopsided but the point is to force weight on one arm, and then you swap, again its isloation.
For situps do regular situps and when you hit exhaustion toss a small throw pillow under the small of your back, it actually raises your down point and you do a couple more situps, again muscle memory and it works a little diff area as well.
I know your on a short fuse, best thing you can do is a few push ups at a time, constantly, you may do several hundred a day, but only a few at a time. This is a technique called greasing the groove. If you had more time I would suggest getting the DVD called THE NAKED WARRIOR from Dragondoor.com
