How do the results differ between a workout of 100 pushups straight vs. 100 pushups throughout the day?

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How do the results differ between a workout of 100 pushups straight vs. 100 pushups throughout the day?

In: Biology

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Pavel Tsatouine would disagree, would recommend you listen to Tim Farris’s podcast with him and Pavel.

The idea is, if you did it all at once in that manner, you’d be depleted later in the week effectively limiting your overall output.

Distributing the workload is better throughout the day, similar to ‘Farmer Strength’ where they’re freakishly strong and always lifting and doing things every day. They’re performing heavy or epic lifts, but only doing 1-5 reps then actively resting by doing other activities that are less taxing. By doing this, you give adequate time for your body to replenish energy stores, relieve fatigue in the involved musculature (peripheral nervous system fatigue) and also the mental fatigue and stress (central nervous system fatigue) from performing that bout of activity.

Think quality over quantity, with more practice time over the long term versus the swole feeling you get from doing large amounts of activity in the short term, but being effectively incapacitated for part of the day, or the better part of the week. Effectively, too much too soon – this can lead to injuries as well

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are a lot of people on here guessing and citing old research, and I’m afraid I don’t have a definitive answer for you, but I have some places to start looking:

1) “Greasing The Groove:” Pavel Tsatsouline coached the Russian Olympic powerlifting team in the 80’s and is a well-renowned and respected strength coach today. He invented this method (AFAIK), which involves doing a few reps – not to failure – spread out over time all day long. Exactly what you’re talking about with pushups. His powerlifters showed serious results on alt his program and he continues to implement it today. Anecdotally, and similar to another poster here, I was at my strongest for chin-ups when I installed a chin-up bar in my doorway and did a bunch every time I walked through the door. My forearms exploded from that, too. Keep in mind, Pavel is a strength guy rather than a size/mass guy, and this technique is geared as such. To promote strength but not necessarily hypertrophy (muscle size and mass).

2) The old “broscience” method of lifting for bodybuilding was to focus on each muscle group once per week, and beat the ever living tar out of that muscle. Work it to exhaustion, then do some drop sets and work it a little more. Newer research is starting to show that for natural lifters (ie no steroids), frequency and less intensity is more effective. So, lifting each muscle group 2-3 times a week, never to failure. I also recall reading a study (I’m sorry I can’t find it again, I’ll try to look tomorrow when I’m not on mobile) that suggested that experienced powerlifters who did less volume but trained everything each day ended up doing more volume total over a week, and saw better results than the athletes who used a more traditional training program.

Edit: was typing too long and forgot the original question, removed answer #3 because it was irrelevant.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One of them you could actually do, the other you probably can’t. Do the one you can do every other day until you can eventually do the other.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Try doing 100 pushups Monday (all at once or throughout the day). Tuesday do two hundred. Wednesday do three hundred. Thursday do four hundred and Friday do five hundred for a weeklong total of 1500 pushups. I’ve done this before and it’s pretty tough. During the times I’ve done this I did the same numbers of squats. I’m in my early sixties.

Anonymous 0 Comments

100 pushups straight through build fast twitch muscle fiber. 100 pushups done over the course of the day will build slow twitch muscle fiber. One is explosive strength the other is endurance. How ever both will build muscle but not in equal amounts.

Anonymous 0 Comments

PT here

More repetitions of a movement that exerts your muscles in a shorter span increases size.
Repetition throughout the day will increase the amount of times you can do a specific movement with weight working against it.

100 pushups in a 5 minute span is like a 2-lane highway opening into a 4-lane highway. Might not be as busy but can handle more stress

100 pushups over the course of 24 hours is like putting strategic traffic lights to increase throughput, while traffic congestion happens you will see a dip in performance (i.e heavy weights you cant lift)

Obviously you have a definite weight limit being your body so limits can be reached with strength.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Like everyone else in here I’m going to speculate but it would seem to me that throughout the day would be better, as long as each time you are going until muscle failure.

Due to the fact that no matter how good of shape you are in, your form will suffer the more fatigued your muscles are. So if you hit muscle failure after 30 or 40 you should take a break because it doesn’t do you any good to crank out 100 pushups if 60 are in poor form.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Are there any systematic studies on this? So far ITT I’m only seeing speculation.

Anonymous 0 Comments

100 push ups straight are about endurance and strength

Sets that eventually equal 100 would be for strength alone.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Muscles need energy to work and they get this energy through chemical reactions (metabolism). The thing is that when your body metabolizes to obtain energy for the contraction of your muscles fibers you get some byproducts that complicate new contractions. Therefore, it is usually much harder to do 100 straight repetitions.