Exercise questions, esp. push-ups / sit-ups

In My Humble Opinion
41

I am not at all understanding why you think there would be any offense taken. I am merely passing on what the experts state, which is not in general that isometric exercise is useless and unable to produce strength gains, but that in general isotonic exercises produce more strength gains and more strength across the muscle’s complete range of motion and that few experts would advise an exclusively isometric program.

That said there is an amazing body weight program that is isometric-centric: Gymnastic Bodies. The concept there is primarily on a progression through static holds, the frog stand to planche holds, the lever progressions … but there are also many many dynamic body weight exercises (also gymnastics inspired) in the mix. Not the level the op is at (and I only fantasize about being able to do good hand stand push up or holding a true planche for more than a few seconds) but you might find it appealing.

42

You can get the same strength games with isotonic, it just takes longer. You can do static holds at different points in the range of motion to make sure you’re challenging the muscle at different lengths.

The great advantage to isotonic is that, although it takes longer, it’s much, much easier on the joints. I’d like to still be able to use all my joints as easily as I use them now, if I’m still alive in 40 or 50 years.

Notice how you don’t see a lot of former Olympic or pro athletes living into their 90s and 100s? It’s partially because they damaged their mobility by overstressing their joints when they were younger. Once the mobility goes, the survival rate drops a lot, for the elderly.

Most people who live to 100 live very, very moderate lives in every way.

43

al27052, first of all, you are confusing isometric and isotonic - isometric is the one that is static.

And honestly that’s fine that you have that opinion, and this is IMHO, glad it works for you, but in the opinion of the experts you are wrong on several counts.

There was a very cool study by NASA that showed “that while isometric exercises did prevent leg muscles from withering, they did not stop a decline in the amount of contractile proteins in those muscles. The muscle was actually degrading on the molecular level.”

Your belief that typical dynamic (isotonic) exercise damages the joints is also way outside the range of normal belief. We are not talking about football. In fact your claim of shortened lifespans is provably false: “It appears that elite endurance (aerobic) athletes and mixed-sports (aerobic and anaerobic) athletes survive longer than the general population, as indicated by lower mortality and higher longevity.” Using joints does not damage them. Even distance running actually may end up being more protective of the knees than harmful: “long-distance running does not increase the risk of osteoarthritis of the knees and hips for healthy people who have no other counterindications for this kind of physical activity. Long-distance running might even have a protective effect against joint degeneration.”

44

Did you just google a few studies and then become am “expert”? What’s your experience with athletics and exercise?

Dude, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen who have damaged their joints through improper exercise. Then there’s ACL tears, etc., etc. etc.
Your study is mainly about endurance athletes. That has almost nothing to do with what we are talking about here. We’re talking about resistance exercises.

The human body isn’t, generally-speaking, designed to last 100 years doing heavy resistance exercise. Some people can do that, if they eat a very healthy diet and treat their joints very carefully during their resistance exercise. Many can’t. If you want to do resistance exercise and have it be a lifelong thing, you have to take care of your joints.

And speaking of endurance exercise, any experienced runner can tell you that injuries are the number 1 reason that runners have to temporarily or permanently stop running.

And I also don’t care WHAT studies you cite about longevity. If heavy endurance exercise were good for longevity, then all those “oldest man/woman in the world” news stories would be about marathoners, Olympians, etc.. They never are. Longevity is about the following things, largely

  1. good genes
  2. good diet
    3.lack of extreme stress (but some stress is good)
  3. support structure and relationships
  4. moderation and common sense in things like sleep, alcohol use, sex, etc.
  5. moderate exercise,NOT heavy exercise
    I’m not developing my strength for longevity. I’m developing it so I can use it, to move furniture, etc. and do other kinds of work around the house, etc.. I’m just trying to make sure it’s not going to impact my ability to use my joints later.
45

Please note, I am not claiming to be the expert, merely referring to the expert opinions, such as Mayo. If you want I can pass onto you The American College of Sports Medicine as well. Isometric exercises are recommended by them as “possibly beneficial”, as a supplement to dynamic exercises that includes a variety of concentric and eccentric movements.

In fact there is a huge body of evidence that progressive resistance exercise is of great benefit for the elderly and none that their joints are damaged by it. If you need me to dig up the cites I can, but you have already stated that you don’t care about things like cites.

Believe what you want though.

46

This has already gone really far afield from the original question.

No, the differences between the two are very well understood and have been well researched. In short, isometric exercise produces strength gains at the joint angle used; isotonic exercise produces strength through the entire range of motion used. If you’re training for any kind of functional strength, you’re probably going to be doing both at some point.

Exclusively isometric exercise is an extremely artificial form of exercise. Static holds are usually used as a training tool to get past sticking points, for holding a particular form, or for purposely building strength at a particular joint angle. The emphasis in any kind of exercise program should be focused on movement, not simply gross strength. Natural useful movements might have brief isometric points, but the goal in any kind of exercise is normally in skilled, graceful, forceful, fluid movement from one position to another.

Where isometric training is unquestionably inferior is in force production (applying strength over a distance). If you want to run faster, jump higher, push harder, lift heavy things from ground to your shoulders or over your head, you’re looking at force production. Basically, doing anything useful requires that you be able to generate strength at all joint angles through a full range of movement.

I have no idea where you’re getting this, but it’s dead wrong. Mobility is the main problem for the elderly, which is a function of both strength and flexibility. Maintaining mobility requires going through a full range of motion under resistance. Loaded movement of the joints is part of what helps keep your cartilage from thinning with age or disuse.

Additionally, loss of calcium from a relative lack of weight-bearing exercise is a factor with an older sedentary population. That can be offset through weight training, walking, and running, or other activities that require resistance to gravity. Swimming and bicycling, while good for cardiovascular health and other conditioning, do not seem to provide the same benefits.

Proper weight training is very safe. You’re at far more risk of injury by playing soccer or basketball (and probably from moving furniture or doing gardening) than you are from weight training. I’ve never been seriously injured in training, nor have any of my students, nor have any of my teammates in various sports and activities over the decades. Proper training is prophylactic. You get injured when you can’t move properly, don’t know how to absorb external forces correctly, when your connective tissues aren’t conditioned well or are degraded from overuse injuries (usually from training extensively in limited movement pathways and modalities), or when bad shit just happens to you and even great general conditioning can’t save your ass.

Oh, yeah, my qualifications. Horseback riding and archery as a child, as well as tree climbing and other general mayhem. Gymnast from age 10–14. Competitive swimmer and springboard diver in high school, placed at state competitions in both. Competitive springboard diving in college also. Various martial arts from age 16 to present. Picked up rock climbing in college, but never had the time to get to competitive level. Am currently practicing some basic parkour skills along with getting my gymnastics up to snuff; they’re very similar in many ways.

Following a non-sport related injury at 26 and some other problems that led to a large amount of weight gain over 3+ years, I had to get myself back in shape at age 30. I’ve spent the last 8 years further educating myself, training, and improving all levels of fitness. I’m probably in better shape than I was in high school; I have a lower resting pulse and more muscle mass. I move better and feel better than I did ten years ago when I was overweight, but still in my 20s. I can still outperform most of the kids I coach, who are half my age. I coach an after-school high school fitness athletics program that I founded two years ago.

So, I might know a thing or two about fitness. :wink:

47

You’re missing the high rate of joint problems that happen with repetitive motion of all types.

Some people are just more prone to these problems. Fuck studies, I can point to plenty of people, including myself, who’ve had joint problems from various overuse/misuse issues. I don’t need studies to tell me what I can see and feel.

I also don’t need studies to know that I am gaining strength steadily. I don’t know how the people are actually doing the exercises in the studies, but I don’t NEED to know, because what I’m doing is accomplishing what I want.

And it’s quite easy to gain strength through the entire range of motion. You just do static holds at 4 or 5 points within the range of motion. Calling it “artificial” is merely obscuring that fact.

48

Fuck studies. Fuck the expert panels. Fuck data. I got me my anecdote man! I got me what I have heard! I got me what I can make up!!

You sure this board is for you?

Anyway, Dr Drake, your question

wasn’t really answered, and it is a good one.

Let us assume that you achieve stage one and exercise daily gradually increasing how many you do. More and more volume of the same thing does not seem like a good idea. Some do that though. Some have the 100 consecutive push ups as their goal. (And there’s an app for that!) The consensus you have gotten here is to move into greater difficulty and/or variety earlier than later. But a magic number of reps or sets has not been given to you. I’ll offer my arbitrary shot at it: once you can do three sets of 30 with less than a minute rest between then it is for sure time to add in some variety and/or increased difficulty.

49

Cool. Thank you.

50

Yeah, but what I do works, and I can guarantee it’s less likely to cause joint problems.

You don’t seem to care about the ability to keep your joint health beyond a certain age, and that’s fine. Don’t expect me to join you on that.

51

Just to make sure this is clear to you: improper form, be it with isometric or isotonic exercise, can cause problems to joints and tendons. Isotonic (dynamic/full range) exercise with proper form is highly *protective *of joint function. You seem to think that repeating a false statement makes it more true but the fact remains that progressive dynamic resistance exercise is even an important part of the treatment plan for arthritis.

I know “fuck the studies” … fuck the facts.

52

I agree, form is probably a bigger issue than overuse. I doubt you have anywhere near my level of awareness on the form issue. I figured I wouldn’t even bring it up.

But if you really think that static holds are useless, then why can I do far more pullups and handstand pushups now than 4 or 5 months ago, when I started doing the static holds? Every few weeks I’ll do a day of actually pushups and pullups, instead of static holds, to keep track of my progress.

It’s working. Why?

You are speaking from studies, I am speaking from experience. We will never agree, because you think Googling something about an issue this complex is enough to let you keep arguing. Meanwhile, I know that these kinds of issues are highly complex, and recognize that direct experience is very important.

53

Do you think you could make your own thread that’s all about your personal experience with your body over the past 4 months?

This was a really interesting thread when it was about general exercise questions and it’s become a thread about your body and how it’s more important than everything we know about anatomy and exercise and sports medicine.

54

I could make such a thread, and it would be far more useful and informative than the bunch of armchair athlete Google-informed ignorance here so far.

Look, if you want Google knowledge, Google. If you want real-world facts, in some areas, like this one, you simply have to experience it, or at least talk to people who have experienced it.

The reality is, this topic isn’t like finding out who was VP under Taft, or some simple matter.

There’s a lot of biochemistry, especially epigenetic biochemistry, that is still very poorly-understood. Until it’s better understood, real-world observation is still a very important part of this sort of stuff.

Whatever. I know that what I do works, and is relatively safer than regular resistance exercise. I’ll let biochemistry catch up on that. Until then, I’m going to do what works until it stops working, you bunch of dilettantes.

55

Once again I do not believe that static holds are useless, nor do I dispute your personal experience. I merely state that a program consisting exclusively of isometrics will lead to less gains than one that includes isotonic exercises as well. Only you can decide what works best for you. If you cannot manage the basic movement based exercises with adequate form and holding perfectly still mid-range is the only thing you can pull off without risk of injury, fine. Do whatever you want. But claims that isotonic exercises will damage the joints need to be corrected as they are without any factual basis.

Trust me, I have no shortage of experience, a bit more than you I think … though sleel’s experience qualifications put me to shame … and am a bit more well read about this area than you may think.

These posts are really getting entertaining.

Seriously, you’ve been around this board for over a year now; you should already have learned something. Arguing from alleged expert opinion, "my post is my cite,’ does not get one far here, no farther than being laughed at. Experiences of one as the basis for categorical statements (not just what you prefer and what works for you) followed by willful ignorance as evinced by fuck the studies, fuck the expert panels thoughts, will only get you to the point where others only read your posts for giggles. Oh don’t get me wrong: experience counts. And the fitness expertise that some who post in these threads bring is very impressive. Hang around and read along and you will learn a lot from the likes of sleel, Ambi, TP, fuzzy … and those who haven’t posted in this thread too, runner pat comes to mind and many others … But think that your little bit of “stillness training” makes you more expert than all of them and the experts (Mayo, American College of Sports Medicine, NASA even …) as well and you will be the lesser for it.

56

You’ve been hanging from a bar for 4 months and it’s done wonders for your physique. Trust me, we get it.

Have you managed to go back in time 4 months and do the same thing with sets of pull ups in between? If not I don’t see how anyone could conclude anything about the superiority of your approach. Nobody, especially DSeid, has said your hanging approach is useless or can’t yield benefits.

Have you traveled forward in time 40 years so you can confirm your joints actually do feel great? If not your personal experience doesn’t give me any confidence it’s not horribly dangerous to hang from a bar for 4 months.

Now if there’s some actual evidence of that, that might be interesting to read, but your personal 4 months of experience isn’t particularly compelling.

And I really don’t mean to be a jerk. I love hearing what worked for people and why they liked it. The condescending attitude based on your couple months of completely personal experience is annoying though.

57

I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The one problem I can see running into is that, eventually, I’ll be spending 20+ minutes just doing a handstand hold and a pullup hold. That’s a bigger time commitment than I’m interested in, and I think I might start wearing ankle weights or something like that, eventually, to increase the load on my muscles so I don’t have to spend so much time doing the holds.

I’ve also thought about switching to free weights and doing a military press, instead of doing a handstand. That way I can more easily increase the weight.

58

Sorry about not addressing your actual question earlier. The problem is that there is no magic number. Some variables are: What your capabilities are now. What your goals are. How often you work out. What you do for that workout.

Variation in and of itself is a stimulus that can bring improvements. Doing the same thing for too long is counterproductive as your body quickly adapts to new stimuli. Even increasing work in small increments so that you build volume over time doesn’t work quite as well as variation, either deliberate or semi-random.

Two schemes that have been proposed so far are:
[ol]
[li]Do exercises to just short of failure several times a day, building volume over time. That works, and works well. The variation in times and volumes day to day makes for some good stimulus. Best practice is to keep most efforts short of failure, except for the times when you’re intentionally going for your current max. That’s where people talk about doing 500 or 1000 reps a day. They’re usually doing sub-maximal efforts 10x or more a day, with one day in 3–5 being a max effort day; just one workout, but as many as you can possibly do, all the way to failure (can’t complete the last rep.)[/li]
[li]Work up to 3 sets of 30 and then move to something else later. That’s a good starting point. You will reach this fairly quickly, which might be motivating for you.[/li][/ol]

Personally, I get bored easily, so I don’t like doing the same workout more than a few times. I’ll add a couple more variations that you could either make into a rotation or insert as needed for fun.

Time challenges:
“Tabata” intervals: 20 on 10 off, 8 sets. Tabata’s original research was on aerobic interval training, but this scheme does push you to put a surprising amount of volume in only 4 minutes per exercise. I’ve also seen 50 on 10 off intervals. I like these because they really push you to do work as fast as you possibly can. I usually do Tabatas in a set of 4 exercises: pull ups, push ups, sit ups, squats. Finish all 8 rounds before moving to the next exercise. It’s a total of 16 minutes, and you will be very fatigued and probably gasping for breath. Fun!

You can also try to perform a set amount of work in as short a time as possible, broken up however you wish. If you can do 20 push ups at a time, you can probably start with something like 50, with a suggestion to break that into 5 groups of 10 and see how long it takes you to do all of them. Under 3 minutes, you definitely need more volume for the next challenge. Over 5, stick with 50 a time or two, interspersed with lower intensity workouts in the 2–3 days between.

Rounds:
Combine a few exercises into a workout. Recovery for one muscle group happens while you’re doing work on another group. You can do more reps than you think by breaking things up this way, and you get some aerobic conditioning in as well. Deceptively simple example: 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats. You can challenge yourself for total rounds in 15 minutes, or give yourself only 1 minute per round and count the number of rounds until you can’t perform the full set within that minute.

You’re doing push ups and sit ups right now. I would add pull ups or some variation like a body row, and squats or lunges. You don’t have to do all of those on the same day. Mix and match. If you do squats one day, you can do lunges the next, but you can do upper/lower splits to avoid working the same muscle groups two days in a row. Remember, though, to mix things up. Sometimes bombing yourself with exercises that work the same areas twice in a row makes for more progress.

If you don’t have a pull up bar, you can improvise with body rows. Close a towel in the door (jamb side is stronger) put your feet near the base of the door, grab towel, lean back keeping your body straight, pull. Your front door is usually stronger than interior doors, and may be sturdy enough for towel pull ups. Check your area for playgrounds. Monkey bars and even very low bars can provide opportunities for rows or modified pull ups.

Burpees are a workout all by themselves. They’re a squat thrust, push up, back to squat, then jump. Try 50–100 for time, scaling depending on your current capabilities. Try a set of 10 and see how horrible it is, and decide a total challenge based on that.

59

Interesting thread (well, it WAS up to a point…;))

A couple of weeks go my wife suggested I need a goal for the rest of the year. I don’t know why, but out of the blue I said “I’ll do 50 push-ups!”

Man, I hate push-ups - always have. But for the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing them every evening.

What I’ve been doing is trying to do one set of as many as I can, and then several more sets of fewer. I’ve been able to add one to my first set every 2-3 days. My highest first set so far is 22, and my highest nightly total is (I think) 92 - something like 22, 16, 16, 14, 14, 10, 10. Yesterday I felt like crap and only did 17, 10 - 27. But at least I didn’t take the night enitrely off. So I’m going to have to crank it tonight.

50 is a fine goal for me at my stage in life. I’m 51 and in OK shape, but my really physical days are behind me. I’m just trying to do various things to keep the carcass moving.

Had a jiu-jitsu teacher once whose theory was that you should not do more than 10 push-ups - but that you should find the style of push-up of which you could only do 10. Just one thing I heard one guy say a couple of decades ago.

Never had much in the upper body department - long and lean. But cranked out hundreds of crunches daily for decades.

An aside - and just my personal opinion, but I don’t really understand why so many “average” people join gyms, when they could just as easily get down on their floors and stretch and do cals while they watch TV or listen to music, and then head out the door for a walk or bike.