The record for the most push-ups non-stop was 10,507, set by Minoru Yoshida of Japan in October 1980.[14]
Minoru Yoshida’s World Record was the last of its category for non-stop push-ups to be published by Guinness World Records. A new category, “Most Push-ups in 24 Hours,” has since been introduced.
The current world record for most push-ups in 24 hours is by Charles Servizio (USA) who achieved 46,001 push-ups in just 21 hours, 6 minutes on 1993, April 24 to 25.[1
I just don’t get it. Pushups are hard. I can do 20 with pushup bars; that’s nothing great but is still probably better than 99% of the population can do. The point being that I have no idea what kind of training would allow someone to do tens of thousands of these things in a row. Even well-trained athletes, like marathon runners, start to lose their shit after running for two hours, and running is a much more natural and easy motion than doing pushups.
Well, here’s a video of Charles Servizio’s record. You’ll note that he does sets of 50 and sits up in between. Still an incredible feat, but also make not of his form. Arms spread wide, doesn’t go past 90 degrees in the elbow. Very disciplined.
I do what I call “Air Force” pushups, which I’d always considered cheater pushups but they look exactly what I see in the video. When you’re actually trying to work out, you want your arms pulled in more to work your triceps, but when you’re just going for numbers, you want do look like the video, and you want to do them as fast as possible. The Air Force standard is to do as many as you can in a minute; 35 or less is failing for my age group, I think, so if you’re maxxing out at 20, you’re putting in too much effort.
My record is 65 in a minute, and I’m what you’d call “extremely scrawny.” In this case, the scrawniness helps. I’ve seen normal guys drop down and bang out 200; they’re fit, no doubt, but they’re not exactly training for a record.
10,000? Seems really tough, especially since “non-stop” makes me picture resting in the “up” position. I don’t really have an answer for that level.
Yes, the bars make them a lot more difficult. Again, I know I’m nothing compared to a real athlete, but a lot of people could not even do one with the bars.
When I was 18, I did 1000 push-ups in an hour or so. I had longer breaks, stopping from 10 seconds to a couple of minutes to sit, stand, lay down, stretch, whatever. That video is exactly how I ended up doing most of them. I think I started doing proper push-ups but said screw it, I’m going for numbers, no need to touch my nose to the floor, just rapid up-and-down just enough that I’m technically doing a push-up. The faster the better.
Once you get a good up and down rhythm going, you’re not exerting yourself as much as you’d think. During a slow push-up, you’re supporting your weight the entire time and your arms will slowly become quivering piles of jelly. But with this style, you’re sort of tossing yourself up and down and your muscles get a little break in between.
Of course they’re still tiring. I know the last 100 or so were real killers that took everything I had, but I don’t recall being tired or sore after I finished and had rested for a little while. I probably couldn’t have done any more push-ups that day but if I remember correctly, I went about my non-push-up business normally afterward.
I still don’t see how you could do 10k non stop or 46k in a day, but I’ll vouch for being able to do a lot more with that method than doing slow, proper push-ups. If you can do 20 on the bars, I bet you can do 50 of these rapid push-ups without stopping. A lot of it is mental. Do them fast and if you start getting tired at 35, tell yourself “Heck, I’ll be to 50 in just a few seconds. Surely I can go just a few seconds longer.”