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The hundred push ups training program

hundredpushups.com

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I dropped 45 pounds and gained a good amount of muscle over the course of 12 months using a simple no-gym-required regimen:

Weight loss phase

For the first 6 months or so I walked at least a mile a day - usually I just got up from my desk and circled my office complex at midday. It only took about twenty minutes. During this phase I ate lightly - small bowl of cereal every morning, dry garden salad at lunch, mid-sized dinner. Drank mostly water and black coffee (a few cups a day) with rare exceptions. I was heavily informed by BripBlap's "101 Thoughts on Losing 100 Pounds" here. [1]

Muscle building phase

For the second phase I added more protein to my diet and started exercising regularly: 3-4 bodyweight strength exercises on Monday/Wednesday/Friday with walking or tabata squats for cardio on off days. [2] The bodyweight exercises (and the walking for that matter) were key to helping me stick with the workout regimen. I could pull it off without needing to commute to a gym and often I didn't even have to shower afterwards so I was able to pull off a 15-20 minute low-intensity strength workout during work hours. The hokey-looking "King's Court" exercises peddled by Matt Furey helped me out here. [3] I also purchased a $20 pullup bar that I installed in my home to add a fourth bodyweight strength exercise to the King's Court.

Maintenance phase

Here is where I've rather screwed it up. I got overzealous about the strength conditioning and began eating more and more to cover the calorie / protein debt I was building up by doing so many pullups, pushups, and squats. I had visions of huge muscles! Unfortunately I came through the holidays in 2009 with a larger diet and a steadily shrinking exercise regimen. I'm now up to 190 pounds, walking a few miles a week, and only able to do 3-4 pullups in a single set. I'm resetting my goals now and just aiming to keep my weight down with a little bit of strength work where I can fit it in. I'd love to be chiseled but I am not quite able to give up the simplicity of my earlier diet and low-impact workout phases.

// Edited to add the grim realities of the maintenance phase //

Bottom line: At age 27 I dropped from 220 pounds to 175 and I built up from 0 pullups and 5 pushups to 40 pullups a day and 30 pushups a day without a gym or a complicated diet.

[1] http://www.bripblap.com/2007/101-thoughts-on-losing-100-poun...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nRgSFShqOU&feature=relat...

[3] http://www.cbass.com/Furey.htm

Interesting links, thanks. The one thing I am concerned about is the maintenance stage too. The 100pushups program is cool, but what to do afterwards? You can't do 100 pushups 3 times a week. That is why I am trying to learn about the options for maintaining a certain level of fitness when I get there, and why I chose a longer term goal of doing a triathlon. That gives me a year to figure out the optimal program for staying fit. Good to hear that you managed the first stages by keeping it simple, as that is the path I am on at the moment, good luck with figuring out the maintenance stage!

Having a long term goal of completing a triathlon is great! One thing I've realized is that I can't do the same exercises week after week forever. I get bored and I have to switch it up a bit. As long as your overall goal is just to stay healthy it's easy to be comfortable switching your short term development plans.

I have just completed week 4 day 1 of this program (plus I am also doing the 200 sit-ups program at the same time). I like it because it is SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time framed. That said, I have spoken to a qualified physical trainer, and they weren't to impressed by it. She said a workout program should be more varied. But it works for me because I am extremely out of shape, so I have been using the program to develop the habit of exercising 3 times a week. Once the 6 weeks are up I hope to move to a more balanced and realistic fitness program.

The outcome of all this is that I have set a goal to complete a triathlon within a year (just the sprint TA: half km swim, 16km bike and 5.1 km run) Its a tough goal for me because I smoke heavily, drink a lot and I love to cook heavy gourmet meals.

All the same, this program (100pushups) is starting to instill the discipline I need to reach my one year goal.

Most people have very different ideas and goals for fitness than a physical trainer. They come from the perspective of already having a minimum level of fitness, so a more rounded regime is necessary. For a bare beginner, the 100 pushup and 200 situp programs are great. They are compound movements, meaning they use lots of different muscles, rather than the typical machine workout you get with most trainers. I would only add a similar program to get you to 300 squats so that you get some lower body workout in as well, especially as your goal is a triathlon, requiring both running and cycling. The buildup should be about the same as the other exercises, so it should be as easy as multiplying the 100 pushup workout by 3. Good job for getting started and if you get really serious, I highly recommend looking up your local Crossfit affiliate (http://www.crossfit.com). They take it to the next level.

At the moment I work out M-W-Sat. I start with about 15 minutes of loosening up (I still remember my old kung-fu warm-up routines) then I go for a 2 km run. When I get back I do the program for the push-ups and sit-ups together. Its varied and interesting enough that I have been able to keep on schedule so far (even whilst having a bad hangover a couple of times:) The main goal is to really make it a habit, something I will just do without thinking. I am trying to educate myself on different aspects (i.e. I have been reading up on nutrition recently to try to fix my diet) I will look into the crossfit site, but I am currently living in the Czech Republic, (and I don't speak Czech) I don't like gyms and machines, but depending on where my studies of fitness take me, I may well end up using them. But I like the idea of body weight exercising, especially as I have a lot of weight to throw around. Should be good for a while... Thanks for the well-wishes.

I've been doing crossfit for six months on my own. I got good results, but lately I am feeling it is getting harder to do it and i feel I am not improving as much. Today, I am planning to start with MMA training. It just feels like more fun, now that I've got a good general fitness base.

Well, they're right -- a well balanced exercise plan does feature more variety. That said, I'm a HUGE proponent of calisthenic-type workouts, and I think that something like this is definitely more good than bad.

If you wanted to supplement this, without significantly increasing the difficulty, do something similar with situps on the off-days. If you're doing M-W-F for pushups, then do the same incremental workout with situps on T-Th-S.

Better still would be to add some walking to the mix. Walk a mile on Sunday, perhaps.

One other thing that I do to round out cardio (as I am also in horrible shape at the moment) is to start off each 'workout' session with jumping jacks. They're simple, easy, hard to screw up more than a little bit, and do a great job at getting you warmed up. Start with 10 or 20, and again, just keep incrementing upwards as they get easier. I personally would do jumping jacks (or jumping rope as they get easier) before every workout.

Regardless, good luck on your goal. Doing SOMETHING towards achievement is definitely better than doing nothing, regardless of how unimpressed your trainer friend might be.

I see it as doing something right now is more good than bad. I decided to get into this after I realised that I am currently doing a lot of mind work (trying to fix my weaknesses in Math and Statistics as well as programming) so I need to balance it with doing something with my body. You will see in my comment below that I am running and doing sit-ups too. I wanted to do something like squats or burpees, but I have slightly dodgy knees, so I am trying to strengthen them first before putting them under too much strain. (Note, I live out in the countryside here, so I run on grass which has less of an impact on my knees than concrete would. Oh, and to clarify, the trainer was happy I am doing something, and said she will help me balance out the training when I am finished with this 'habit-forming' stage. Thanks for wishing me luck, I know I need all the luck I can get right now as the program is starting to get tougher, but I am going to make it through. Cheers!

Having done permanent damage to my knees on numerous occasions, I can definitely relate. 3 minutes on an elliptical is about all I can stand before my knees start to buckle, though I can easily do MUCH longer than that on bikes or treadmills (as they work the knees and surrounding muscles less directly.)

If you're overweight, obviously, getting the weight off of the knees will help them tremendously too.

And yes, I don't know how I overlooked that you were already doing other exercise tasks, so my apologies for needlessly repeating what you already knew.

Well, I suppose it'll enable you to do 100 pushups in a row, although not much else.

You'd be much better off with a sensible weight training program involving squats, deadlifts, bench press, military press and chinups/pullups along with a decent diet.

That's also much more complicated and requires equipment, so most people probably wouldn't even try it.

Variety is good but pushups are a fantastic core exercise. They really workout much more than your arms and you can do them anywhere. Plus, these workouts do build up a certain amount of aerobic value because they involve multiple sets with shorts rests in between.

I'm up to 75! But best to also do some squats, some situps/crunches, etc.

Related ebook about pushups: http://www.lulu.com/product/download/the-little-book-of-push...

I've found occasional pushups a rather convenient exercise to do when working from home.

Much better to join a gym, this can do more harm than good.

why?

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