Today’s magic number was 25. (I started a few days after New Year’s.) 5x10 push ups seems rather out of my range just yet—but 5x5 was a massive improvement, pain-wise, over 1x25. My main thought at the end of those: “Oh, if /that’s/ all it’s going to hurt from now on, this is going to be /easy/...”
So even if no other suggestion helps much—this one particular comment could make the difference. I’d up-vote it more than once, if I could. :)
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t apply this to your other exercises too if you want to progress faster and less painfully. You might want to experiment with the number of sets to see what works best for you or vary the figure simply to make things a bit less monotonic. It’s still nice to have “challenge days” every once in a while to see how awesomely many repetitions you can do at once.
I’m going from many years of no physically-demanding exercise at all to getting close to 30 of many of the basic exercises—so far, /every/ day is a ‘challenge’ day for me. But I’m getting better. :)
I’m feeling quite cheery today—today’s routine was as non-excruciating as yesterday’s, so it seems the modification’s a definite success. Which means the choice between ‘avoid eventual decrepitude’ and ‘avoid immediate pain’ has tilted decisively in favor of the former. ;)
Today’s magic number was 25. (I started a few days after New Year’s.) 5x10 push ups seems rather out of my range just yet—but 5x5 was a massive improvement, pain-wise, over 1x25. My main thought at the end of those: “Oh, if /that’s/ all it’s going to hurt from now on, this is going to be /easy/...”
So even if no other suggestion helps much—this one particular comment could make the difference. I’d up-vote it more than once, if I could. :)
Glad to hear I could be of help.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t apply this to your other exercises too if you want to progress faster and less painfully. You might want to experiment with the number of sets to see what works best for you or vary the figure simply to make things a bit less monotonic. It’s still nice to have “challenge days” every once in a while to see how awesomely many repetitions you can do at once.
I’m going from many years of no physically-demanding exercise at all to getting close to 30 of many of the basic exercises—so far, /every/ day is a ‘challenge’ day for me. But I’m getting better. :)
I’m feeling quite cheery today—today’s routine was as non-excruciating as yesterday’s, so it seems the modification’s a definite success. Which means the choice between ‘avoid eventual decrepitude’ and ‘avoid immediate pain’ has tilted decisively in favor of the former. ;)