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I have made another thread a month ago and I need some new guidance. Here's some info about myself.

Age: 15 Weight: 70kg Height: 184cm

Pushup PR: 13 Pushup AVG: 6-8 Pullup/Chinup: 0

3/4 times per week

Current workout routine:

50 pushups 50 squats 25 explosive squats 50 bench dips 50 situps 50 crunches 100 short bridges

What should I do next to improve? Should I be doing the same workout? I've been doing this one for a week now but don't see much improvement so I would like some honest opinions and different workout options I could use. If you have anymore questions for me, I'll answer them.

Edit: Goals: 20+ pushups as I've been stuck on 10+ for about 3 weeks now. 1 pullup/chinup and that's about it. Nothing to major as I don't wanna make unrealistic/hard goals.

Edit 3/1/2022: Recently came back to stackoverflow for coding advice and found my old post, so I would like to update you guys. I've tried many different workout routines, but what I do is just the one that I personally like and the one that works for me.

I have hit my goal of 20+ pushups (30 pushups now), and my goal of 1 pullup/chinup (5 pullups / 8 chinups) thanks everyone for the advice and I hope to get even better as time goes on.

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  • What you should do next is completely dependent on your goals. What do you want to achieve? Edit that into the question.
    – C. Lange
    Sep 7, 2021 at 15:37
  • @C.Lange Done, sorry.
    – Outcalled
    Sep 7, 2021 at 15:55
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    How many times per week are you working out? How many sets are you doing to get all those reps with how long of rest between them? 50 pushups with about 13 between each of them is about 4-5 sets, right? Are you in a calorie surplus, are you getting 8-9 hours of sleep?
    – Eric Warburton
    Sep 7, 2021 at 16:01
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    I'm betting fixing your sleep schedule will have the biggest impact. We sleep in 90 minute cycles, the first several cycles primarily repair your body from the previous day. The last couple dump hormones into your body that will help promote growth including testosterone and HGH and various others. Since you are young, it is good to get an extra cycle in there. Try to have at minimum 7 hours 45 min from the time you start to go to sleep (15 min to go to sleep), and 9 hours 15 min optimally. I understand that sleeping that much is often difficult, but it is necessary to get optimal results.
    – Eric Warburton
    Sep 7, 2021 at 17:08
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    A week is insufficient time to see much improvement. Try elevated or weighted pushups for awhile.
    – Dave Newton
    Sep 7, 2021 at 19:23

2 Answers 2

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We can first try to find out what’s the issue preventing you from hitting 20 reps in a set:

  • Is it fatigue in your shoulders, chest or triceps?
  • Your hips sagging as you progress into the reps?

Like what others pointed out, give yourself more time and enough rest. I’ll recommend alternating between strength and endurance days.

Mon (strength): Weighted push ups / 4-5 sets of 3-4 repetitions Wednesday (endurance): Bodyweight push ups / 3-4 sets of 5-6 repetitions Fri (strength): Same as Monday routine

Repeat for next week. You can try this routine for 4 weeks and see how it goes.

As a general rule, you should stop at the number of reps where you can still go 1-2 more. I will not advocate going to fatigue as of now, and the effects of training to fatigue is debatable. If you find that you can still rep out 3-4 more times with proper form, increase the load or reps for your working set.

*im just focusing on push ups for now.

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  • My arm/shoulders persay, my chest seems fine but my core is super bad and I don't know any good core exercises to fix that. And I don't have a way to do weighted pushups execpt for backpack if that's fine.
    – Outcalled
    Sep 18, 2021 at 22:08
  • Yes backpack is great. In what context do you feel your core is weak? If you can provide images of you doing push ups, I may be able to better help. Generally, if your hips tend to sag, you will want to train your lower abdominals, isometric exercises like plank
    – Jun
    Sep 19, 2021 at 3:06
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I want to start by saying, it's not a bad thing to have goals that might take you a year to achieve, so don't be afraid to set seemingly unrealistic goals.

You can do a couple of things to reach these goals. You can alternate between training for strength (heavier sets with lower reps) and training for endurance (easier sets but more reps).

You can also dissect the movement to find out which part of the movement is holding you back. Do you need to work on your shoulders, triceps, or maybe even core strength or glute strenght?

By doing different variations of the pushup, you can target certain muscles better. i.e. if you want to target triceps more, do pushups with a narrow stance, or even try diamond pushups. All the while you keep your elbows close to your body, not letting them flare out.

Do you need to work on shoulder activation? Perhaps scapula exercises like scapula pushups or scapula dips will help you.

You can apply this advise on every movement there is. Pushups, pullups, muscleups, handstand, front lever, plance, you name it.

I hope that helps.

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