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Pushups is a terrible exercise, for sure, since it doesn't build muscle and is prone to injury. The only reason it doesn't screw up your rotator cuff very quick
by tjogin 15y ago
Pushups is a terrible exercise, for sure, since it doesn't build muscle and is prone to injury. The only reason it doesn't screw up your rotator cuff very quickly is because the resistance is so low; had it been better at building muscle (i.e. more resistance, on level with bench presses) your rotator cuff would tear much sooner. Injury wise, pushups' saving grace is that it is such a bad exercise.
Doing 30 repetitions in a set is a surefire way to stagnate in your muscular development. This has been proven time and time again in scientific studies.
But whatever, let's just agree to disagree here. I'll continue to side with the scientific studies done in hypertrophy, and you continue believing in pushups.
- dredmorbius 15y agoThe key question wasn't whether or not push-ups will develop significant muscle mass. It's whether or not they're going to compound a very likely existing syndrome (upper cross syndrome / kyphosis) in a team of programmers / tech geeks. Push-ups are sufficiently effective that they'll at best make the problem worse. Any untrained individual doing any resistance movement consistently will make gains in strength and muscle size (Google Mark Rippetoe's "The Novice Effect" or discussions of training complexity vs. training age). Sure, you'll plateau after a few months, but you're still going to be ahead of a very large share of the sedentary population. And you're doing nothing to address the intrinsic imbalance between anterior and dorsal and muscular development and overall tension.