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Hello all, i am 16 years old i am looking forward on joining the army foundation college at harrogate, but i have a several questions...

How can i improve on ...

Pressups

At the moment my maximum is 22, i have been doing it every morning for the last 2 months, each morning 20 pressups everyday, but whenever i try to do maximum (once a week) only 22

Sittups

76 is maximum, i do 40 everyday

Pullups,

I recently started doing pullups, ive been doing in 2nd week now, my maximum is 5, but i started with only 2

Do you think i should do it everyday? or does my body need time to rest? and what is the best way to improve the number of each exericise?

hi hoax
Good stuff mate, for the pressups, if you do 2 days pressups and one day rest, that should give your body a rest and time to build the muscle back up, that's when you start to see improvement, at the moment, you're getting use to the motion and pain, but not getting any stronger as everytime it tries to repair, you throw another set in. So try pressups in the morning 2 days in a row, then one day rest, then another 2 days etc.
Another thing to consider with the press-ups is, I do half my max press ups every hour for 2 days then rest one day, this might suit you?

Sound Great! its a good idea, thank you!

But does anyone know about improving on pull-ups? everyday or..?

The same applies to whatever type of strength exercise you're doing. If you don't have rest days, your muscles fibres will not grow.

Vary the way you exercise as well. Try doing pyramids as a lot of people reckon they are very good.

A typical pyramid might look like this:

10 press ups
short rest (10-15seconds)
9press ups
rest
8 press ups
rest
...and so on...
all the way down to 1 (you'll have done 55 press ups by this point)

You can do the same with pull ups or sit ups (although your sit ups seem fine).

Remember. If you start finding it easy/less difficult than last time, you need to keep going until you are completely knackered. Always aim to beat what you did last time, even if it's only by 1 or 2 reps.

Thank You!

Now i am really really happy! This sounds absolutely great, well today i wil give my muscles 1 day rest, because i have been pressups 2 days in a row now, but i cant wait to start exercising!

OK, your 22 press ups is pretty poor.What I recommend you to do is to halve that and do 10 push ups and then 10 sit ups in 5-10 repietions.In the end of it you would have done 50-100 push ups and 50-100 sit ups.Make sure you do your press ups properly.A press up is when your face is nearly hitting the floor.To know if you're doing a proper push up is do go down and see if your hands are even with your face.If it is you are doing it wrong.Your hands must be in line with your shoulders.Please make sure you are doing it right(look at yourself in front of the mirrior in a gym or at home) because it's better to do 10 proper than 20 piss poor uncorrect ones.Your face should be 3cm off the ground when you go down and your arms straight when you go up and that's one push up.Make sure you breathe because that helps alot.Breathe in when you are about to go down then exhale when you go up.Try doing elevated push ups with your feet on some stairs to give more resistance on your shoulders and improve your push ups.Stop when your arms go down automatically when you are about to go for another one as that means you are about to pull a muscle.ush yourself but not too hard and be patient.


With your pull ups just keep practising but don't train to failure.That is a big no no.Do 10 push ups then 3 pull ups and after that rest for 2 minutes then do them again and again till you are really knackered but don't push yyourself too hard again.Good luck.


DivineIntervention

DivineIntervention wrote:With your pull ups just keep practising but don't train to failure.That is a big no no.

Says who? Most of my pull up training has infact been to failure and I'm making improvements. Granted I can only do 11 but it's better than the 6 I could do a couple of months ago!

The winning combo for me has been:

Weighted chin-ups (palms facing) - 3 sets to failure
Unweighted pull-ups - 3 or 5 sets to failure
Unweighted chin-ups - 3 sets to failure

Of course there's the other method of doing several sub-maximal sets throughout the day. Here's a good thread on the subject: http://selfprotection.lightbb.com/ftopi ... in-ups.htm

You could tear a muscle when you train to failure.It's better to do half of what you till your knackered then rest for a minute then do it again.That's how you improve.

DivineIntervention

I'll second that.By doing half of your max reps pull-ups in more sets, you will see improvements alot quicker. If you want add a weighted set of pull-ups at the end if you can handle it.

Hope that helps..

DivineIntervention wrote:You could tear a muscle when you train to failure.It's better to do half of what you till your knackered then rest for a minute then do it again.That's how you improve.

DivineIntervention

That's funny, I thought I had...

That's funny, I thought I had...

Yeah sorry about that, just trying to make my point.

Cheers,

DivineIntervention

i hav just atended army selection

i did 16 pullups on the test
make shure when you train you are locking your arms straight before you go back up as i got a few pull ups deducted as i had my arms a little bent i would have done about 18 otherwise lol

but i trained alot because im ino climbing

my advice would be to practice evry other day and do a confortable amount of pullups but over and over till you cant do any at all

e.g
5 pullups x 20 sets

for pressups practice these on the days your not doing pullups with your legs eleveted say on the sofa or something about nee level

e.g
10 eleveted pressups x 10 sets

also dont neglect your cardio fitness i.e running try to get out running 3-4 times a week from 3-6 miles

p.s if your injurd stop training till its better and dont over train

hope that is of some help

Alright thank you, i improved right now..

1.5m-> 9:36

Pressups-40

Situps, every morning 3 sets of 40

Pull ups->11

Thank you for all your tips

Random question, but I'm always getting slack off my CWO for being a girl - how different are the expections/standards for girls? Cause I think I'm quite fit, the SNCOs were impressed last week in the stretcher run but they still give me stick for not being as good as them, grrrr how I hate sexism

BlondeLaraCroft wrote:they still give me stick for not being as good as them, grrrr how I hate sexism

That's not sexism it's equality, if there were guy's who weren't as good as them you'd expect them to get stick wouldn't you?

I hate it when women complain about how they're treated differently from men but as soon as they are treated in the same way they want exceptions to be made for them. You can't have it both ways.