During basic military training, doing push ups the instructors would yell out “ONE” and we all would answer “AAAND”-“TWO” and so on, and I swear it helped getting through them. Generally doing sport in a group helped me push further.
I find the militaries obsession with push ups kind of baffling. It’s a fine exercise, but you quickly run into diminishing returns just doing loads of push ups. There’s no progressive overload, so eventually doing more just becomes fatiguing rather than productive for muscle growth or strength gain. They must know that at this point, so why would they still make people do so many push ups?
Also super easy to do anywhere, any time, while still being at least somewhat of a challenge. You can’t say “stop what you’re doing and squat 20 reps @135lbs” or something, but you can say “drop and give me 20”
During basic military training, doing push ups the instructors would yell out “ONE” and we all would answer “AAAND”-“TWO” and so on, and I swear it helped getting through them. Generally doing sport in a group helped me push further.
I find the militaries obsession with push ups kind of baffling. It’s a fine exercise, but you quickly run into diminishing returns just doing loads of push ups. There’s no progressive overload, so eventually doing more just becomes fatiguing rather than productive for muscle growth or strength gain. They must know that at this point, so why would they still make people do so many push ups?
It continues to build endurance and mental fortitude, which I think would be pretty important in the military.
Also super easy to do anywhere, any time, while still being at least somewhat of a challenge. You can’t say “stop what you’re doing and squat 20 reps @135lbs” or something, but you can say “drop and give me 20”