Will Doing 100 Push-Ups a Day Hurt Me?
The ability to perform 100 push-ups every day requires a high amount of strength. If you are seeking to improve your strength or maintain your current fitness level, performing 100 push-ups every day may do more harm than good to your body. Before attempting any workout routine, speak with your doctor.
The ability to perform 100 push-ups every day requires a high amount of strength. If you are seeking to improve your strength or maintain your current fitness level, performing 100 push-ups every day may do more harm than good to your body. Before attempting any workout routine, speak with your doctor.
Recovery
The American Council on Exercise recommends that you give your body 48 hours between exercise routines to allow for muscle recovery. Resistance exercises, such as push-ups, are designed to strengthen your muscle tissue. You damage your muscle tissue whenever you perform push-ups. This damage is natural and the way muscles use proteins to repair this damage is how strength gains are made. However, this repair process requires approximately 48 hours.
Injury
If you continue to repeat the same exercise in the same way in every workout session, you chance the risk of an overuse injury. Your muscles are not the only part of your body helping you during the push-up. You are also relying on your joints, tendons and ligaments to support your body's weight. When your joints repeat the same motion, you may experience pain from a strained tendon or ligament.
Variation
Push-ups are a very specific upper body strengthening exercise. Your muscles need variation in the form of a different stimulus in order to continue making gains. Over time, your muscles will stop responding to push-ups in the same way. If you enjoy the push-up and do not want to use a different exercise, change the push-up angle by elevating your feet or hands or varying your hand placement from wide to narrow.
Recommendations
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends the performance of an exercise routine on two or three alternating days a week for resistance training in untrained people. If you have previously trained your body to this level of exertion and are completing your push-ups for muscle maintenance, the ACSM suggests that you perform your push-up routine one to two days each week.