help!! i cant do situps or pressups!!

Morpheus

Ok,

i play soccer, im out for about 6 mths of the last year injuring first one ankle then more recently the other, my predicament is that i cant run until after Xmas at least because of the ligament and some cartillage damage. im working on the lack of cardio training tho, im fixing up my bike

Heres the biggie....
After reminiscing about days of yore when i did Kempo (i was 17 im 27 now) and managed 2 - 3 minutes of pressups and situps while an instructor jumped on your back and stomach, I decided enoughs enough...

Im quite skinny in the arms, and sick of it at this stage, most of my muscle is lower body, ie legs... ive put on weight in spare tyre fashion (8 weeks of not running, or training, and eating and cinema food will do that to you) i want to firm my stomach muscles (havent seen my 6 pack in quite some time) and i know that requires good diet and cardio as well as situps etc and I would like to define my upper body AND bloody well do more than 20 pressups and situps without feeling like ive run a marathon...


Ive decided that i wont go to the gym until i can get back running in jan, il start cycling soon, and do some stuff at home most evenings, im swimming 3 times a week starting from today, ive got small weights somewhere, and a pull up bar i built this weekend (yes built!!) its in the shed I embarrassingly managed 5 before my shoulders decided they would probably dislocate themselves if i pushed it anymore...

About 5 minutes ago I tried (for the first time in ages) to do some pressups, and situps and like you see above, i managed 20 pressups and 20 situps, (20 was my target and i struggled...)

the pressups were really tough, and i know you have to build them up... but is it really this tough? i mean im not fat, im 5'10 and weigh close to 12 stone, ive never really managed to ever get more than 40 about 3 years ago when i tried to do them every day.

How long would it take to get up to a decent number like say 60 in 2 minutes, should i just do one rep of 20, or break it up or what??? basically until i can go to the gym, i need a basic home program that along with cardio on my bike and good diet, will work.....

I beseech you all, with your great tomes of fitness knowledge, to help me regain what was once rightfully mine....

thankyou in advance....

:rolleyes:

xern

I feel your pain! I am in the same sort of state! I'm just doing 20 to 25 for the first week or so and then try to go up to 30 to 35 and so on! I'm struggling with it as well, but you just have to go through the pain barrier and get it done.

thats my two cent anyway.

Tazzle

I'm not sure if my advice will be great of anything, but here it goes.

It takes time and patience to build them up. The way I got into doing press ups and sit ups was starting small, I'd do about 20 straight out, wait about a minute and do another 20. And I'd repeat that about 5/6 times a day. Eventually when I felt like I was making progress I pushed it to 30, then 40, then 50, I'm up to 60 right now. I'd randomly shoot a few pull ups too, but I never really paid attention to how many reps I did, just did it until I couldn't do anymore. My body weight is only 10 stone so that's probably helping my case. Either way, it took me about a month to go from 20 to 60, afaik it'll only build muscle to a point and from then on it's just stamina you're gaining. Anyway, that's just how I did it.

BrianD3

Not an expert but here's my experience of press-ups etc.

I can't do that many press-ups either. But it doesn't bother me at all because I don't believe that doing a large number of reps of this exercise would do me any good. My aim is to build muscle. As long as I do this, I don't give a sh1t about the number of pressups I'm able to do - 5 or 500 - doesn't matter to me. Just to give you an idea, when I was a teenager I was very skinny and light with an almost non-existent chest. Yet I could do 150-200 press-ups non stop without killing myself.

Nowadays I'm older andheavier If I do fast press-ups, I can do maybe 50. But if I do them very slowly and smoothly with a large range of motion I can only do ~20 reps. I have been doing the latter type for a few months and have noticed an improvement in my chest from them. I think they're far more beneficial than doing loads of fast press-ups.

And just recently I've moved on to weighted press-ups. I strap some weights to my back - enough weight so that I can do around 8 reps before having to stop. Already I definitely notice a further increase in muscle mass on my chest. Not sure about these though, could be hard on the wrists. Also, it's impractical and dangerous to start strapping huge amounts of weight to yourself for pressups. If you're really serious about building a big chest you'll have to consider doing some sort of bench press.

As for pullups, it's a similar story. Slow = good. Slow + weights = better.

And the same for crunches too! Stick a heavy dumbbell on the top of your chest and crunch and feel the burn after 20 reps rather than wasting time doing hundreds of reps with no weight.

If I've given out any wrong or misleading info here I'm sure JAK or logic1 will correct me

BrianD3

DMT

One small point: no amount of sit-ups will make your six-pack show - for that you'll have to lose the fat covering them, which means loosing overall body fat.

Morpheus

i know about the fat thing, i cant run at the minute, im recovering from an ankle ligament injury which messed up my soccer training, so im trying to get my old bicycle resurected.

I'll hopefully start cycling before Xmas, its a mountain bike, but im fitting slick tyres so i can do proper cycling, if physio is going good i may be back running just after Xmas, im not worried bout losing the fat, i dont have too much, but i need to develop my overall core strength, i can do about 15 good slow pushups now but its very painful across my shoulders, they most definitely are NOT used to being used like that.

It feels more like muscle tiredness than a problem, The pain is concentrated just behind each armpit at the base of my shoulderblades and almost exactly the same place in the front each side of my chest, where the muscles run from each side of your chest at the top, into your arms.

Is this normal? i mean im not a weedy skinny bloke, but i havent done pressups properly in a long time. I broke my collar bone in 95 and after that it was impossible because of the pain, Now theres some residual pain in that area in the muscles around the collar bone (left clavicle), but nothing unbearable, ,more of a mental reminder )

RicardoSmith

You might find using one of those frames (personal gyms) for doing situps helps give you support and lets you do them. I have a few old injuries and struggle with back pain if I do situps without one of those frames. Our gym has a bunch of the those frames and the instructors will show you how to use them.

Having done my ligaments aswell as other injuries, theres two things that will help. Swimming (do it till you sweat) and walking. With a ligament injury you need to exercise the injury or scar tissue will build up and its very hard to get rid of it. You should get physio on the ankle and walk, walk walk walk as much as you can. It will help the injury and walking is great way to keep the weight down. Also using stairs as much as possible will also help the ligament injury (I'm assuming its your ankle) .

Morpheus

Well the situps are ok, i probably need to keep at them and build them up
slowly.

At the minute my plan is this....
i do ten situp reps, take a breather then repeat. ive started ten tricep dips too last night, and a break and another ten
Im doing the same with pressups and work at them every night, i have a frame for situps and il dig it out.

im aiming to add 5 more reps to each exercise each week for the next 6 weeks.

Is this enough reps to start or should i be pushing myself harder????

the ankle injury's are pretty severe, ligaments in both ankles at different times, im undergoing treatment at the mo, im on my 16th physio visit this weekend!! I can only swim twice a week for 45 minutes unfortunately, but hopefully its enough to help treat my ankles and increase my fitness.


so any criticisms or support for my "homemade" program of swimming twice, the reps above and cycling hopefully in the next two weeks??

RicardoSmith

I did mine badly too. Ligaments both sides of the same ankle. Was in a cast for a month. I had to train my ankle to balance, walk, run again. I found lots, and lots of walking was the best thing. I'd say you'd need to increase the situp reps 10 per week, and probably more if you could. I reckon until you can do 50+ in a sitting it doesn't make much of a difference.

Stormfox1020

Lucky for me i have a flexible back so my doctors have been telling me, so i can breeze through around 100 sit ups easy without stopping for a rest, then after 100 i will probably do another 100 or 200. My problem is i seem to struggle on the Press-ups i dont know if its anything related to my back or not but i just have a real hard time doing them. If im lucky i can get around 50 in with a break in between but im 16 so i should be able to do more. I play rugby and do weights occasionally, anybody know what my problem could be?

uberwolf

prob just a case of building it up, as per sit ups, patience is key

Morpheus

unbelieveable, im off my routine already, im such a waster, i went swimming the last 2 nights and had plans to go home and do a few reps of situps, pressups and tricep dips as well as a few pullups and more ankle rehab exercises, but guess what?

I ended up stuck in the girlfriends house and it was too late when i got home, i mean surely i can handle a half hour out of my evening every night. i feel so bad, like such a loser that i cant stick to a simple plan.... At this rate il never recover enough fitness or ankle stability to return to soccer.

has anyone else ever had this problem when they finally started to decide improving their core strength and general fitness???

I probably should go home every evening and do my half hour then, BEFORE i eat dinner, or go to herselfs house. instead i go home, eat, go to her house, arrive back at 11pm and then wearing jeans and a tshirt i start half heartedly attempting these exercises, then feel bad that i can only manage a few and give up. I meanr the year before last (before i injured my ankle for the first time) the lads on the soccer team called me Moses (Reme Moses the runner guy) or Forest Gump because i was such a strong and fit runner and player, but the long term injury lay-offs have depressed me and left little interest in getting fit ever again.