pushups

[jakey_0322]

will pushups build my chest up and make it stronger if i do regular pushups and diamond pushups and then outwide pushups or will it just help with endurance?

[superroger]

pushups will only help you do more pushups. they will shrink your muscles if your used to weights, to get endurance you need to run. i learned this from experience.

[mywetnightmares]

Pushups won't shrink your muscles, they just won't make them grow. Do both weights and pushups if you're training for a sport. If you just wanna look good you don't need them.

[superroger]

you're wrong, im in an academy where we do 200-300 push ups a day and i shrunk close to 20lbs in 6 months. if you do pushups and lift weights you will gain a little muscle from the weights, but the pushups will give you the cut look rather than help you grow. if pushups helped you grow Ronnie would do them too.

[CollegeGuy]

Originally Posted by superroger

you're wrong, im in an academy where we do 200-300 push ups a day and i shrunk close to 20lbs in 6 months. if you do pushups and lift weights you will gain a little muscle from the weights, but the pushups will give you the cut look rather than help you grow. if pushups helped you grow Ronnie would do them too.

um no, you are wrong, no offense. Doing push ups will not cause your chest to shrink. If you have any evidence of this, besides saying that it happened to you, by all means share it.

More than likely what happened is you were doing a lot of exersize (if you do 200-300 pushups I'm sure you do a lot of other stuff) and were burning more calories than you were eating. THAT, not the pushups will also 'give you that cut look'. You look cut when your bf % is low.

However, I don't really think pushups a can be considered a mass building exersize. I personally beleive that flys are a great exersize for building your chest in addition to incline bench press.

[superroger]

ive been in the bodybuilding sport for years, and im a licesed personal trainer. plus ive read about this on flex many times. if you want try this, quit doing your chest routine at the gym for a month or two and substitute it for push ups and see what happens.

[Taekwondo Guy]

i've been doing only push ups for a long while and i've got no complaints about my chest. Its not big by my old bodybuilding standards but still 42".

I use pushup handles and a swiss ball to do mine, it makes things way harder due to the extra depth you can go down and the stability of balancing you feet on the ball.

[Sam_2005]

Originally Posted by superroger

ive been in the bodybuilding sport for years, and im a licesed personal trainer. plus ive read about this on flex many times. if you want try this, quit doing your chest routine at the gym for a month or two and substitute it for push ups and see what happens.

This is because the stress applied by doing push ups, is inferior to for example the bench press. Therefore the stimuli for growth is not there. The point is if you have not trained before push ups will not shrink your chest because there will be no gap in resistance from what would have been applied previously thru bodybuilding. It may even increase size (only slightly) because of a resistance applied to the chest for the first time.

I think your comments are typical of the 'personal trainers' we have today lol.

[CollegeGuy]

Exactly. Im not saying that if you stop lifting and do only pushups that you will not lose muscle, I'm just saying that doing the pushups is not what is causing it, which is what your post made it sound like. If you added pushups to a weightlifting routine its not going to magically shrink your chest.

But if you still feel this is true then back up your arguement with something other than "I say so". For all we know you are not a personal trainer, or you are a bad one. This is the internet after all, and I'm Neil Armstrong.

[TRAZ]

Pushups won't make your chest smaller....that is just ignorant.

I like to do a set or two of pushups after my chest routine to really kill my chest. It has been working great. As a matter of fact, pushups made up the majority of my chest workout until recently and I still had gains.

[superroger]

What would happen if Ronnie Coleman quit doing weight training and did pushups instead? cause the topic is not adding pushups to your weight training, its just doing pushups. You know he'd shrink.

[Taekwondo Guy]

yes he would reduce his lean body mass by cutting out weights totally.
The muscle responds and adapts to stimuli and if the stimuli isnt there as previous at that level, the muscle goes into a state of atrophy and goes through size reduction.

the body wont keep what its not using...

you WILL be using the pecs with push ups but not enough stimuli will be there to maintain exhisting muscle, i say you would lose muscle exponentially over time.

given the choice i would bench any day, i just dont have a bench at home (yet).

[joetelli]

i get what your saying superroger. its vasically the same things as if you were bench pressing 100 lbs. if you never go up in weight you will stop growing, your chest won't need to get any bigger and if you just start benching 50 lbs instead of 100 your chest will slowly get smaller. Its basically the concept to get bigger lift heavier.

taekwondo guy if you've just been doing those pushups and you have a good chest just wait till you actually start benching some weight your chest will be huge!!!!

[Taekwondo Guy]

Originally Posted by joetelli

taekwondo guy if you've just been doing those pushups and you have a good chest just wait till you actually start benching some weight your chest will be huge!!!!

its mainly from muscle memory, i used to have a 46"+ chest long time ago so any stimuli will bring some of the old mass back.

if i start benching i know i will inflate like a balloon lol

[TRAZ]

I agree that if you were doing heavy benches and then totally cut out all weights on chest day and switched to pushups you would lose mass, but that is only because you took away all of that extra resistance...it's not because of the pushups themselves, but because you aren't training as hard.

[BUFFLURP]

Originally Posted by TRAZ

I agree that if you were doing heavy benches and then totally cut out all weights on chest day and switched to pushups you would lose mass, but that is only because you took away all of that extra resistance...it's not because of the pushups themselves, but because you aren't training as hard.

no kidding. If you can bench 400 lbs and you stop doing that and try getting the same results as that while doing pushups alone, you are gonna go ackwards. What kind of an idiot would do that?

push wont shrink your muscles. Not doing proper resistance training will cause your muscles to atrophy(shrink).

[Shaceb]

And what about if you to both. If your to busy 2 go to the gym and wanna train the chest do some pushups.
I usually feel really pumped up, and sore after doing pushups.

Hey teakwondo-guy Ive got a question for ya. ( u are experienced and wise)

ive seen alot of UFC, Pride videos. The fighters, they are really musculair.
So If you do shadow-boxing for the speed, and strenght?
or just punching the punchingbag will you gain muscle mass?
I know some of those guyes work the iron. But I dont think all of them do, cuz they are fast and explosive.

[Classik]

Originally Posted by superroger

ive been in the bodybuilding sport for years, and im a licesed personal trainer. plus ive read about this on flex many times. if you want try this, quit doing your chest routine at the gym for a month or two and substitute it for push ups and see what happens.

It's funny when people claim they are something they arent

[_SaVvY_]

well, this is a bit of a freak thing really, but i use to have over a 50in chest, an i never did bench press, always push ups, followed by flyes using the arms on a bench

how it worked for me is i have long arms at 6'3, plus i did them slow and controlled, using high bars, making them harder - add the fact that im naturally weak at pressing, and that i was always putting weight on at a fairly fast rate - so the resistence was consistently becoming more and more - ended up being 230lbs an doing over 20 push ups like this at that weight is pretty hard work with long arms

the most i would get would be 25 for the first set - my chest would be filled with blood, an i would only rest a minute - after a couple of sets i would be geting maybe 15 tops

then i would do the flyes in the same way, but with heavy weight, for 8-10 reps

worked for me at one time, but generally it will be more for endurance

[superroger]

hey classik can you back that up?