I don’t care how long you’ve been doing them. I don’t care if you do them every day, once a week, once a month, or once a year. I don’t care if you 5, 25, or 125. Push-ups never fail to make you sore. Add them to the rest of your workout and it is like you have tweaked everything else you did. I threw in just one set of 25 yesterday with the rest of my lifting and I feel them today all the way from my back to my front and down my arms.
A guy came up to me in the gym one day and said, “I used to be in the Marines, and do you know that your push-up form is what they call perfect?” Well, that was news to me. I couldn’t even do one in high school, and failed my Presidential Physical Fitness test. I remember feeling so dismayed, like the president was actually going to be disappointed in my score.
But when I started working out with Becky and I told her I couldn’t do push-ups, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I said, “I can’t do those,” and she just said, “Sure, you can.” And what do you know? I can.
Start out small. Use a stability ball and roll out only as far as you feel comfortable. I started with my thighs on the ball, then gradually moved out to my knees, and then my ankles before I started doing the “real thing.” And you don’t have to do a whole bunch to feel the results. Try a set of 8. Then when you can do those, bump it up to 10. You may find, as I have, that the number you can do depends on when in the workout you do them. I can do them all day if they are at the beginning of the workout, but throw in a set at the end of the workout and it can be a real struggle. Sometimes for a real challenge we have a push-up contest or do 3 sets of 25; once we even made it to 100 (4 sets of 25). Mix them up, keep at them, and eventually you will grow to love them as much as we do (well, maybe you won’t love them, but you will love what they do for your muscle tone).
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