Lets say, I want to do 100 pushups daily in one go, or improve my overall ability to do Pull ups.
I am not strong enough now to do that now.
If I do 100 pushups, spreading over the whole day, will I get less benefits that doing 100 pushups in one go?
What would be a better way to give Load & Recovery to my body for best results?
To understand the problem, let’s look at two extremes. Suppose that Person A does 100 Pushups in 100 Seconds while Person B does 100 Pushups in 100 Hours. If we assume that both persons are equally fit, then we can conclude that Person B isn’t even being challenged. Why? Because a single pushup every hour is hardly enough to sufficiently challenge this person’s muscles if they are capable of doing 100 in 100 seconds.
Now let’s bring this back to the realm of the reasonable. If you can do 100 Pushups in less than an hour, then you should do them all at once. Why? Because your muscles will continue to feel the effects of consecutively doing more. If you spread it out too much, you start to not challenge yourself. Your body completely recovers between sets, and you never need to push yourself further than what you are comfortable with. It’s in the challenging parts that your muscles will grow and improve, so embrace it and you’ll continue to improve.
I was posting a brief comment and as I submit I realised it had become longer and maybe I might as well post as answer.
From what I've read from various sources including Pavel, working at 50% of ones max capacity and not to failure is best for growth, recovery & repeated stimulus/ training.
We don't know if 100 is your max to failure. But let's say if you can do 1 set of 10 pull-ups max, the.
You're better off doing multiple sets of 4/5 that are spread out to prevent failure; the spread can be over a workout or a day or many sets through the week; provided you get recovery between the 50% Sets.
So spread is on your recovery ability to work again while avoiding the negatives of working to failure.
So you get to overall put in more work, resulting in greater growth in capacity.
Of course the caveat is don't do heavy workout during lunch or around hot afternoons. It's better work the body mornings/ evenings when body & nature are both less prone to heating up; timing for better capacity and recovery.
Ps: Don't negative vote if you just want references. I will post some when I'm at a PC. Doing it from the phone is a pain. But I figured if I start the post it will help
There lots of books with chapters on this concept and articles but finding them and reading them is gonna take longer. So I am linking to experts who are actually talking about it for now; they also mention Pavel's concepts
And for all your focus on 100 push ups I am wondering how you missed this:
