This seems like a bad idea. Building muscles using one exercise like that without developing the opposite muscle groups will lead to imbalance that could cause pain or bad posture. Also I expect doing as many pushups as possible every day could cause wrist or shoulder problems. You are likely to cause tendon injuries if you start trying to reach your max reps every day without building up much more gradually.

> will lead to imbalance that could cause pain or bad posture

Citation needed.

It is a controversial suggestion that doing only one exercise as much as possible is not a good idea? Maybe these are relevant:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/muscle-imb...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_imbalance

Regular pushups cease being a strength-training exercise pretty quickly. You're being ridiculous. Once you're doing 40 in a set it's well into endurance territory, and you're not making muscles any bigger. It's like going for a run every morning, and slowly increasing distance as you progress, but for your upper body and in a lot less time commitment. We're not increasing the weight, probably decreasing it actually.

It's just at the start you're doing strength-training if you've never done upper body exercises, because your upper body is atrophied.

Also note I said ~maxreps, the tilde was intentional, it was meant to communicate "around your maximum" to express the importance of increasing it as your endurance improves.

But your muscles don't have to become very strong to get imbalances. You can get rounded shoulders just from sitting with a hunch at a desk all day. Imbalances in your pecs and back can cause shoulder impingement which is a common injury. Tendonitis is also easy to get when starting running, especially if you go for your 'max distance' based only on what you feel you can do.

Strength training is often advised to prevent running injuries, eg. https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a20788889/fix-m... which is particularly related

So, what's a quick way to develop the opposite muscle group from push-ups?

You'd want to do a rowing movement, which is maybe a bit harder to do without equipment but you could do it with a rubber resistance band.

If you have a sturdy table or similar you can do inverted pull ups from underneath the table

This is really poor advice that will lead to all kinds of imbalances and issues.

Bodyweight training on the other hand, is a great option for people who want to train at home with little-to-no equipment. Bodyweight training includes but is not limited to push-ups, pull-ups, and other similar movements that rely mostly on your own bodyweight (as the name implies).

Doing only pushups is a pretty bad idea if you care about your overall fitness.

>one ~maxreps set of pushups every day before showering will have you looking like a soldier...

This statement definitely needs to be qualified with "depends on genetics".

I'd argue depends on diet is more applicable.

Possibly. But, I was replying to the OP's comment which held that constant.

Obviously though, the body's response to diet is in no small measure a function of genetic factors as well.

>the body's response to diet is in no small measure a function of genetic factors as well.

Honestly I think this is way over stated in relation to weight loss. It applies more accurately to what variation of macro and micro nutrients constitute a healthy diet for a given individual.

Only insofar as some actual soldiers never attain some kind of soldier-like physique.

Generally speaking, a consistent daily, and increasing pushup regime gets you most of the way towards the most visible differentiating feature of a soldier vs. random person.

There are exceptions, it's not really worth fixating on. You, the reader, are by definition probably not an exception.

Keep in mind that only doing pushing exercises can lead to muscular imbalances.

You can create a more balanced body by doing pulling exercises like pullups or body rows in the same quantity as your pushups.

Too many people overlook this! I suggest alternating between push and pull days.

And don’t forget the cardio.

After a couple years of daily pushups, the maxreps should be over 100 and it much more closely resembles a quick cardio burst than anything resembling strength-training.

I do > 160 in a regular set after over a decade of daily pushups, it's not really an issue.

Eventually I ended up adding handstand pushups to my daily routine to bring back something strenuous.

Edit:

Both of my wrists have been broken in the past. When I started this regimen it wasn't even possible to do 20 pushups without agonizing wrist pain. Those pains are a distant memory, they vanished completely around the one year mark. Thank you daily pushups.

When you say "soldier-like physique" it evokes a level of fitness that is a good bit more than "above-average"; converging on elite.

And, a single exercise is not likely to produce that outcome in the average person. Genetic factors greatly influence specifics like fat-distribution and leg musculature (or lack thereof), hormone levels, etc.

So, the effects of one-set-to-failure will vary wildly among people, even when considering solely the targeted muscles. But, if you're lucky enough to benefit from it, it's still reasonably likely that you'll wind up looking decidedly unsoldier-like from the nipples down.

I didn't say Rambo.

All soldiers go through basic training. Basic training achieves pretty much just "above-average" fitness.

Sure, the military has PT studs, but so does your local gym. Those aren't really representative of the average soldier.

The point is you can make your general appearance comparable to the average soldier's with a very minimal investment of time and effort, and zero additional equipment. A developed upper body and solid core does wonders for a man's posture and overall appearance.

I'm confident that prospect appeals to a significant portion of the male keyboard jockey population.

I live in a military town, most soldiers just look like guys forced to do pushups every day wearing well-fitting clothes. And I'm regularly mistaken for one, even though I spend all my time at a computer.

>most soldiers just look like guys forced to do pushups every day wearing well-fitting clothes.

So, your statement was actually "most soldiers look like guys who do a bunch of push-ups, so do a bunch of push-ups and you'll look like a soldier"? Hmm.

Sure, I get that most soldiers don't technically look like Rambo, but if you weren't using that phrase as a figure of speech to convey "extremely fit", then it's kind of meaningless right? Like saying a "professional boxer's physique", then saying you were thinking of Butterbean.

So, yes, if we lower the bar to say "slightly above average", then your point is "more valid" though a good bit less revelatory. You're essentially saying "exercise will help you", which I think we can all agree on.

But, the broader point you're now making that doing anything is much better than doing nothing is certainly valid and worth emphasizing--especially for us in the HN crowd.

The point was to suggest that everyone has time to do pushups every day before hitting the shower, to substantial effect. That you don't need to join the military to access the core of what makes them more fit than the average person: a disciplined daily physical activity, regardless of its brevity.

I'm operating under the assumption that this is of value to the average young sedentary male computer geek I presume the HN crowd is largely composed of. Most people seem to be under the impression it requires hours of workouts and access to special equipment to see any results. The law of diminishing returns applies very strongly here, meaning you can see a significant portion of what's on the table with very little investment.

Using a soldier as reference was more intended to illustrate that doing the thing consistently every day is the important part, and is a major component of what the military forces onto its soldiers. You don't need a gym membership, you need a barrier to getting on with your day that shouts in your face "get down and give me $number", every, single, day, indefinitely.

> Only insofar as some actual soldiers never attain some kind of soldier-like physique.

Doesn’t this qualification end up nullifying your original comment?

He means that there are exceptions but that that comment is true in general.

Which specific genotype is a factor?

The reality for most people is that genetics have only a tiny impact on fitness and body composition. Unless you're trying to compete at an elite level it just doesn't matter.

If you have very narrow shoulders you're probably not going to look like action man any time soon.

What does "one ~maxreps" mean?

One means one set of pushups, no rests.

Maxreps means do pushups until you can't do another, despite digging really deep.

It was just shorthand to say "in the ballpark of what the maximum you can do in one set is" (note the tilde).

I'm not suggesting you destroy yourself every day. Just that you continuously increase the number as your endurance improves over time. It levels off at some point, in my experience this never becomes a session taking more than three minutes. You can add more sets if you feel like it, or you can add other exercises, this doesn't exclude any other activities you wish to add.

It's just an excellent minimum hygiene-level of physical activity to maintain every day. The more burdensome you make your routine, the more likely you are to say fuck it.

In this context, maxreps means to do as many push-ups as you can in a single set (until your arms give out).

The other commenters haven't said this yet: it's short for "maximum repetitions".