10 Day Push Up Challenge

Having the right combination of exercises, intensity, volume, and frequency is the way to progress over time. However, there is always room for an old fashioned intense grind. Your workout routine is only efficient as how often you challenge yourself to find your limits. 

It’s not always easy to find the sweet spot of workout intensity, so we suggest putting your routine on hold and focusing on one efficient exercise for a short period of time for maximum progress.

Start this challenge to see if you can master the push up exercise in just 10 days. If done right, this can help you build muscle and increase upper body strength.

Push up challenge benefits

The push up is the perfect example of a simple yet highly effective bodyweight exercise. Taking the time to perfect this exercise has many benefits:

• Building upper body strength and muscle. By using your body weight as resistance, you are activating chest, shoulders, and arm muscles, which are the main push ups muscles.

• Burning a lot of calories. A push up is a functional compound exercise (multijoint);  this means you are using your whole body to do the movement.

• Improving core stability and strength. The push up position is basically a plank position; this means without even doing the full movement, you are already challenging your core muscles.

• Stabilizing the shoulder joint. Keeping the muscles around the shoulder joint strong can prevent injury and shoulder related pain.

How to do the challenge

There are a few simple steps to follow to make it work and to get the best possible results:

• Do a push up test before starting this challenge. Just assume the push up position and do a single set of push ups to failure (maximum number of reps). This way, you are determining the intensity level of the challenge and goal repetitions. The number of push ups will put you in either a beginner, intermediate, or advanced group. Scroll down to see how to sync your results with your challenge and goal repetitions.

• Choose your push up. To make sure that the challenge is finely tuned to your fitness level, be sure to do the challenge using either incline, regular, or wide push ups. For example, if you start the challenge and find that the regular version is too demanding, switch to incline.

• Start the challenge and continue doing the routine for 10 days according to the schedule given below. We suggest using the Madbarz workout creator to make the process simple and fun.

• Be sure to use proper technique with a full range of motion and slow controlled movement.

Test results:

• Beginner:<20 repetitions,

• Intermediate: 20-40 repetitions,

• Advanced: 45+ repetitions

Goal repetitions:

• Beginner:50 push ups, 

• Intermediate: 100 push ups, 

• Advanced: 200 push ups

Rest: 30-45sec (Days 1-5), 45-60 sec (Days 6-10)

Rest: 30-60sec (Days 1-5), 45-90 sec (Days 6-10)

Rest: 30-60sec (Days 1-5), 60-90 sec (Days 6-10)

Takeaway

Once you’ve finished the challenge, be sure to retest your push up to see if you get a better result, or even better try out our pump and rage challenge. Challenging yourself once in a while can do wonders for your progress. However, try to keep everything in moderation. Alternate between higher and lower intensity workout periods and just stay persistent. The results will be there if you persist.