How to Do More Pushups – Best Practices

How many push-ups you can do in one go is a good indicator of your upper body strength. If you’re out of shape, you may only be able to do a couple, if that.

If you stay fairly active, you may be able to pull off 10 or even 20. Going higher than that is a good indicator of excellent physical fitness.

How to do more pushups in a row without stopping or having to rest?  If you’re looking to build up the upper body strength, there are tons of great ways to do that.

I’ll focus on those that can help you to do more push-ups at once without the need to stop and take a break.

How to Do More Pushups Instantly

Let’s start with the nearly impossible task of getting yourself to do more pushups right away. Maybe you’re doing a pushup contest and you want to look good, but you know your pushup limits. Are you ready to push past those limits without doing a bunch of training?

Here’s how to do more push-ups in a row in short order. First of all, you want to temporarily increase your lung capacity.

So, you’re going to do what swimmers do before they go into the water so they can hold their breath for longer. That’s causing yourself to hyperventilate by taking quick breaths in rapid succession.

Breathe in and out with medium breaths (rather than long or short ones) about 10 to 20 times. This will boost your lung capacity and oxygenate your blood.

The next thing is to loosen up your arms. You can do a few quick stretches, such as toe touches, arm circles, or a few seconds of shadowboxing. This will help your muscles joints loosen up so that the pushups don’t put much strain on you.

toe touch

Also be sure to flex your feet, toes, and fingers. These aren’t used too much in push-ups, but you’re trying to get every advantage you can.

One last thing to know about how to instantly do more pushups is that you should run in place for just a few seconds. This will increase your heart rate and your circulation, preparing your body for the workout ahead.

Don’t do so much of this that you wear yourself out, and a good 10 to 20 seconds of running in place should be long enough.

If you do all that, you’re now prepared for how to do more pushups fast.

If you’re overexerting yourself, and you are trying to do more push-ups than you used to, you may end up with muscle soreness later on.

How to Increase Push Up Capacity Over Time

The key to getting good at anything is to do it many, many times. As you do more push-ups, you will strengthen the parts of your body that are used in performing a pushup. That makes sense, right?

The simplest and most straightforward way to increase your pushup capacity is to do a lot of pushups. Listen to your body and don’t push yourself too hard. Just do as many as you can without completely exhausting yourself or injuring your muscles.

The next day, you can try to increase your push-ups by just a few. I wouldn’t go too fast in increasing the number of push-ups you do, though. It takes time to build muscles and train your body to do extra pushups.

A safe pace I would recommend is to increase the number of push-ups you do by 10 every week.

You may be able to go faster than that, but this is a general guideline that’s applicable to most people. You’ll probably find a point where you can’t do an extra 10 after a while, and that’s fine. By that point, though, you should have increased your pushup capacity over a series of weeks.

Exercises to Help Increase Push Up Capacity

Weightlifting

Resistance training that focuses on the upper body will definitely help you do more pushups.

How do you train to do more push-ups? I suggest doing pull-ups, lifting weights, and doing anything that works your biceps, triceps, chest, and shoulders. There are tons of exercises that fit into those categories.

The important thing with how to be able to do more push-ups through weightlifting is that you constantly challenge yourself.

You need to push yourself past your plateaus, building muscle, reducing fat, and improving overall strength. In order to do more push-ups, you’ll have to get stronger. You’re not going to do that by lifting the same amount of weights all the time.

weight lifting

If you want to constantly increase the number of pushups you’re capable of, then you have to increase the weight that you’re using for weight lifting.

Or, you can increase the number of reps you do or the number of sets you do. All of these options help to challenge you and push you further than where you are at currently.

Planking

If you search Reddit- how to do more than 5 pushups, you’ll likely come up with advice about working your shoulders. If your shoulders are the weak link in your push up reps, then you can build them up through planking. This is one of the most suggested methods for boosting push up reps on Reddit.

Planking requires you to hold a position for a while, with conventional plank exercises lasting 20 to 30 seconds. If you can hold the position in a plank for that long, your shoulders should be strong enough to be able to do more than 5 pushups.

Initially, doing a plank can be a test of your shoulder strength. As you keep working out, planking can help you to increase your push up reps.

Working on holding the plank for longer to build up your shoulder strength, your endurance, and your stamina. If you’re doing that on a regular basis, you should have less trouble doing a higher number of pushups for each step.

plank

How to Do More Pushups in a Row – Army Tactics

I want to throw in here what bootcamp experts would suggest for increasing your pushups. If you’re in the army, going through boot camp, you’ll likely have to do a lot of push-ups in a row.

If you want to impress your drill sergeant, you may need to boost the number of pushups you can do in one go.

Here’s what some experienced army personnel recommend as a training session to build up your push up numbers.

  1. Start with jumping jacks (10-20)
  2. Do diamond pushups until you can’t do anymore (diamond pushups require you to place your two palms side by side on the ground)
  3. Take a 30-second break
  4. Follow that up with wide grip pushups to exhaustion
  5. Take another 30-secnd break
  6. Do normal pushups to exhaustion
  7. Take another break before going back and doing as many sets of these pushups as possible

If you can get through this routine, you’re definitely going to increase the number of push-ups you can do in a single session.

Keep working this routine, increasing the number of sets you do each time. You’ll see great gains in a short amount of time, which is perfect for boot camp.

If you feel like you’re not ready to go through army boot camp training, then put your body through the paces with this push up training program. In no time at all, you’ll be doing more pushups.