Last year a good friend of mine embarked on a monstrous push up challenge.
Starting on January 1st he would perform a single push up. Everyday thereafter for a full calendar year he would add an extra repetition to this daily total.
Don’t be fooled by the relatively comfortable start to this challenge. A few months in and you are already having to hit some pretty radical totals.
By July 1st you are doing 182 push ups. July 2nd 183 push ups. And you are still only halfway through the year!
Each days reps could be broken down into chunks spread throughout the day but no matter which way you slice and dice the daily total… it’s still an awful lot of push ups.
In fact… it’s way too many push ups!
From the outset I knew how it would end.
With injury.
The sheer volume of daily push ups coupled with zero recovery was always going to grind on the muscles and connective tissues in the wrist, elbow and shoulder.
Sure enough by August my friend had to call it quits.
I’m actually surprised he lasted so long.
The underlying lesson here is: high doses of daily push ups is not a good idea.
It exceeds your body's capacity to recover from each effort.
Much better to throw in some rest days so your body can rest, recover, rebuild and ultimately come back stronger the next time around.
If you really want to make push ups part of your daily routine you will need to take a low volume approach. This means performing shorter, easier sets where you finish with plenty of reps left in the tank. You shouldn’t feel at all drained by your efforts.
This type of sub-maximal training is particulary popular with strength-skill movements (like gymnastics) where mastering the muscular coordination of an exercise benefits from more frequent practice but for regular push ups, personally I don’t see the point.