I am still focused on quantity over quality, and it remains my view that my quality is also improving with the mere fact that I am doing the pushups every day and 5 sets per day.
I am less sore, more push-ups per set, get through the push ups faster and with less pain, less rest time between sets and perhaps some other noticeable improvements. I am probably around 1 second per pushup, and there still might be some point that I am willing to slow down and reduce my quantity by 1/2 or 2/3 or even more, just to start to focus on something else, but right now I am still increasing my quantity per day.. and my last three sets were 50, 45, 50.. .. so that is more than I had been able to do in the past, and so I have two more sessions for today.. ..and so it could end up going higher than my so far 205 daily maximum... which I feel really go about that, since my first several days I could not even do 100 pushups without being very sore.. .. and yeah, today I am still planning on going for a walk so sometimes other exercises can affect subsequent push-up sets.. but I still have quite a few more hours left in the day.
Oh wow, 5 sets and you’ve been able to archive 205 for a day at some point, that’s a whole lot of push-ups and sets.
Yeah. Part of the reason that I am sticking to what I had been doing - in order to focus on quantity over quality is partially because I believe that even focusing on quantity helps to improve quality, and I still think that my form is good, it is just a matter of my doing my pushups quickly rather than slowly... but still able to feel certain breaking points, so yesterday I ended up having 5 sets that added up to 235, so it was 50, 45, 50, 40, 50, and then this morning I was able to do 55 for my first set of the day and 45 for my second set... and yeah, I am breaking at the ends of each of these sets, even though the first half of the sets is getting easier and easier.. and I remember how difficult it was to do 25 or 30 pushups, especially in the first couple of weeks, and I was sore all of the time.. and sure I am still sore all of the time, but seemingly a different kind of sore... a kind of sore that seems to have more (or seemingly deeper) muscle tone involved.
So, yeah, I am on day 45 right now, and there
are articles that proclaim that sedentary folks start to lose muscle mass starting from their mid-30s, yet even elderly folks can regain muscle mass through resistance training, even though it could take a couple of months to really experience meaningful results... but then the above-linked article suggests resistance training at minimum of twice per week, and with these pushups, many of us are doing them daily.. which surely should help with the progress as long as we do not injure ourselves and/or over do it..
Basically, I reserve exercises for a morning and evening session when I can. I say when I can because, I skip days when I over sleep or just don’t feel like doing it for that day but, I still try though.
There have been many times that I have felt like skipping, but since push-ups can be done really quickly, I just decide to do as many pushups as I can, and then I end up either doing close to my full set, or maybe I just end up doing 70% of what might have had been able to do. .and so that keeps the progress going, even maybe if I ended up doing 30% to 50%, that would probably be better than skipping sessions, yet once I start doing the pushups, I usually cannot stop at 50%, so I usually will want to do more than 70%, and so I will find if I get to 70% and I am continuing to have energy and the pain is not that bad, I just keep going and in the end, I feel good about the session, even though I started out by not wanting to do it.. and even dreading getting started.
Meanwhile, I don’t know what 5 sets of push ups might be like. Like how do you split it within the day… it must come with ease but, you must have a lot of free time to session these exercises.
My first few days I was ONLY doing 2-3 sets per day, and then I started to add a 4th set to my days, and I thought that 4 sets was going to be my maximum for the day, but then after about 3 weeks, I was starting to feel as if I could do one more set each day, so I added in the 5th set. I have not gone beyond 5 sets per day, and I have been doing 5 sets per day for about 3 weeks now.
I try to do my first set between 8am and 10am.. and then I do another set every 2-3 hours, and there may be some extra gaps in there too.
I don't think that it takes a lot of time to do them. .You just have to dedicate a few minutes every few hours, so maybe the whole day it is only 15-20 minutes dedicated to doing the pushups and writing them down.
And yeah, 205 is possible with that much session, takes a great deal of discipline too as you have to remind yourself and push yourself to doing the task at hand, not to mention, the pains that would be on your shoulders. Surely you are building endurance as you’ve noted with the numbers your able to achieve which wasn’t the case before.
Even I with a history of push ups haven’t achieved 205 in any particular day. The most I have done and that was in the past was around 170 push ups. Now, I stick around 125 push ups and below. Haven’t really being pushing for more but, I guess the sessions helps and that comes at a great deal of discipline.
Yeah, maybe your quantity depends on what you might be trying to achieve, and maybe balancing your other activities. I am o.k. with increasing my number of pushups per day and even my number of pushups per set.. and it could be possible that I might be able to get into the neighborhood of 75 to 100 pushups in one set.. even though I question if I am going to be able to do that, since I had shared an article about young, in-shape military guys who gets stuck at 75 push ups, and not being able to do more in one set.. so maybe it might be more difficult for me to get up to or past that level, but I am still willing to continue to work at it and to find out if I might plateau at some given number, and then maybe if I plateau, then maybe I will change what I am doing after that.. . .but so far this seems to be working, and I am continuing to feel (and see) improvement.. and may be the main disadvantage is having some soreness and some tiredness and having to spend 15-20 minutes per day in the activity... and maybe will end up adding some more activities, which will take more time to carry out... but so far, it seems to be working out for me.