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Old Forum "Grease the groove" for army push ups

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Kencanau

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Hello, I searched around the forum and couldn't find an answer for my particular situation, so please bear with me.

My goal is to ace the army PFT (2mins' push up, and 2 min's sit up).

I haven't excised or trained for a while, and I can do maybe 15 push up in a set now. It seems for this that low reps and high frequency is the key for getting stronger and greasing the groove, but my question is as the training goes on, should I focus on adding repetitions or adding weight (maybe doing weighted push ups and sit ups). Or even better, can somebody familiar with this recommend a training plan?

Thank you
 
Sorry, forgot to mention, my goal is to do more than 60 for the 2mins' push up, and more than 65 for the 2mins' sit up. Thanks
 
Do a search for "Pavel pushup ladders" and you should be able to find some articles.
 
I would think that if your goal is more pushups, then doing more pushups would be more effective than adding weight.

A few months ago, I had a time where I tried to add to my pushups, and used GTG. On my first test, I could do about 12. So, I started by doing sets of six, and tried to do 4-6 sets per day, spread out. Usually 1-3 sets in the morning while getting ready for work, spaced 20-30 minutes apart. Then the other 1-3 sets in the evening after work, probably spread at least 30 minutes apart. I didn't do any at work, but probably could have - though I'm sure many more sets could have become too much.

This worked well, at at the end of week one I tested again, and got 15 pushups. So, I bumped my GTG sets up to seven, and continued the same.

At the end of week two, I tested at 18 pushups. So, I bumped the GTG sets up to nine.

At that point, life happened and I stopped, but I'm sure that the progress would have continued - up to a point at least. But I'm pretty confident that I would have gotten to at least 20 on my next test. So, that would have almost doubled my pushup max in just a few weeks.

tldr: What worked for me was 4-6 sets of pushups spread throughout the day, and the sets were about half my max sets. I tested weekly and increased the work sets accordingly. Basically GTG as described (in Naked Warrior, I think).
 
Beyond bodybuilding has 2 or 3 push up routines designed for exactly this sort of scenario, and last I checked it was only $4 or so on kindle (if you don't have a kindle, you can get the app for free).

If not using one of the above, I would incorporate weighted pushups, just don't go crazy with the amount of weight. I've programmed bench press to increase pushups very successfully in the past.

For tests such as the army uses, a lot of it is also about technique, timing, and fatigue management; just learning to use those can put a lot of reps on quickly.
 
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