still feeling 100 pushups on the pushup bars - two days later!

 

 

 I only got to the concept of having the bars wider and having the bars further down my body and then moving the bars closer to my body, etc. Not "angling" the bars as above.

There's a yt vid saying you want your arms at a 45 degree to your body for a perfect pushup. I didn't know that either - also you want your shoulders down.

Another thing about pushups is they mainly work your front muscles - so they end up pulling your shoulders forward - like a slouched posture. So that's why the Total Gym is better since you get a full body work out.

I didn't know about the "brachialis" muscle - I thought it was the triceps. I'm definitely feeling that muscle.

So I also saw a YT vid where it was said the ideal rep range for women is 3 reps. So I started out doing a set of 9 reps and resting maybe a minute. Then repeating. I did 7 sets like that. So 63 pushups but with the pushup bars you get a wider range of motion so you really work the muscles.

Then I maxed out at 6 reps for my 8th set. After that I switched to sets of 3. So 71, 74, 77, 80,  83, 86, 89, 92, 95, 98, 101... Something like that. 

I was waiting for Window 11 to install... 

 The design allows for a deeper range of motion, which really helps target more muscles.

yeah the main thing is to make pushups easier on the wrists. I still felt it on my wrists but there was no way I could do 100 pushups without these pushup bars.

There's a ton of vids on YT about how 100 pushups a day transforms the body but one person insists that after about 2 weeks you are not going to keep building muscle from 100 pushups a day. So then you need to change your intensity somehow.

Again the Total Gym enables me to change my intensity by doing the "chest press" exercise. I use the resistance band. Since I had not done any pushups in maybe a year - this proved to me that the Total Gym kept me in shape at least.

Normally I would try to max out a set - like go for 50 pushups. I always kept the standard that I should be able to do 50 pushups in one set. But since then I've gained a lot of weight (some of it muscle) - and 50 pushups is a big deal at my weight. Still doing multiple sets over an hour for 100 pushups is an awesome workout. 

Next time I try it I'll make sure to change out the pushup bars position like the image above. I will say that the pushup bars really do target the pecs better than doing just "chest presses" on the Total Gym - since the cables activate the shoulders more. 

But the other option is to do a chest press against the large squat board and that targets the pecs better also. Of course when I weighed 65 pounds less then I could crank out 50 pushups as one set.