Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Pushups to Benches
I'm considering using pushups in place of bench presses to build bench GPP and strength, starting from 9 sets of 3 and adding a set per week until I hit 20 sets of 3. As I could never find a definitive answer to percentage of bodyweight atually lifted, I went to the gym, weighed myself on an electronic scale with clothes on, then got into two pushup positions with my hands on the scale and had someone take a reading. Not easy: move or twitch too much and it won't take a reading. At a weight of 241.4 lbs, my pushup with feet on the floor was 166.4 lbs (68.9% of BW) and with my feet elevated 18 inches high, it was 176.8 lbs (73.2% BW). Of course, this will vary per person, depending on leg length (lever) and how their weight is distributed. So for the 2 cycles where I'm trying to build up strength and GPP, this works out great.
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This will work great if you keep the rest period really short, say 30-45 seconds... concentrate on speed and keeping tight. You have to stay much tighter during a pushup rep than a bench rep so I think there is good carry-over as far as maintaining tension during the bench. Hurry up with another post already! LOL
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