A quick question on reps

[TheDevilAside]

Alright, lately I've been wondering what's more effective. Or, what does what.

 

Say, person A is doing pushups. And A does 20x2 (with no longer but a 5 min pause in between).

 

Then there's person B, which does the same exercise, except B does 30 pushups straight and then stops.

 

So, which is better to do or what's the difference? A gets more pushups in but takes a break in the middle. B has 10 less pushups but takes no breaks.

 

That was just a general question that can be related to any exercise.

[Northren Ogre]

This could be a long and complicated thread. The problem with A is that he is not taxing his muscles as hard as B. A five minute rest between 20 pushups is far too long. Athlete B has a higher intensity workout, leading to his muscles working harder and getting more bang for the buck. However if a person is only doing 30 pushups they're not really doing much anyways...he should mix athlete A's workout with Athelete B's.

[iolair]

When you ask what is "more effective", it has to depend on your objective in the exercise...

 

1) Building Strength

 

2) Building Muscle Endurance

 

3) Building Power

 

4) Building Cardiovascular Endurance

 

It's also going to make a difference how fast you do the push-ups, too.

 

Anyway, if your objective is

 

1) 6-10 repetitions is probably the best... you need to keep the difficulty of these high and not just use body weight if this number is easy to complete for you.

 

2) 12-20 repetitions

 

3) more complicated - read up on Plyometrics

 

4) 20 (or more) repetitions

 

20 reps, 5 minutes apart will be good as part of a cardio (say a circuit training) routine, provided you are doing something useful inbetween.

 

IMHO, instead of doing huge numbers (anything over 20) of push-ups in a set, it's better to raise the difficulty. You can do this by:

 

i) raising your legs higher than your hands. (this also puts a little more load on the shoulders compared to the chest)

 

ii) slowing the exercise down (an extreme might be 10 seconds for the up movement, 10 seconds for the down movement)

 

iii) adding weight to your back.

[WolverineGuy]

I would reccomend not ever resting for more than ninety seconds. You want your muscles to recover SOMEWHAT...but not entirely. You have to tear them down before you can build them back up.

[Natural]

I agree with wolverines his always right mostly, B is good to do but 30 press ups nearly my max in one goal I can only do 28-34 push ups.

[SevenStar]

I would reccomend not ever resting for more than ninety seconds. You want your muscles to recover SOMEWHAT...but not entirely. You have to tear them down before you can build them back up.

 

Unless you're trainign for strength. I bench 280. There's no way I could do another serious set after only 90 seconds of rest.

[WolverineGuy]

I would reccomend not ever resting for more than ninety seconds. You want your muscles to recover SOMEWHAT...but not entirely. You have to tear them down before you can build them back up.

 

Unless you're trainign for strength. I bench 280. There's no way I could do another serious set after only 90 seconds of rest.

 

Pansy. I was thinking in the narrow scope of his particular case. Sorry to exclude all you 1RM and power guys.

[Rich67]

There are a few schools of thought on that. Good question, BTW! In order for muscle to grow, there has to be muscular overload-stimulus ( and of course the rest, nutrition, etc.) Muscular overload can occur different ways: lift heavy weight to stress the muscle to break down cells, or lift lighter weights in a certain given time period. There is a theory of training developed by Sisco called "Power Factor Training". PF teaches that muscular growth can occur using only partial-range reps, heavy weight, and high reps. You can increase the growth by keeping the same weight, but putting more reps into the same time frame as the previous lift. Let's use the pushup theory:

 

1) You do 2 sets of pushups at 20 reps each. In between each set, you take a one minute rest. It takes you a total of 3 minutes to do the whole exercise.

 

2) The next day you do 2 sets again at 20 each, rest 30 seconds in between each set, and complete the whole thing in 2 minutes.

 

If you believe in PFT, you are actually getting stronger, and will grow muscle, since you are doing more volume in a given time period. Pretty soon, you should get to the point where you can crank out 50 reps with no rest in 2 minutes (hmmm) and the theory is you are stronger still.

 

Then you start adding weight, and the factor increases even more. It's pretty complicated. But as far as muscular strength is concerned, think in the terms of TIME. In other words, how many reps of a certain exercise can you do within a given time frame, and can you improve on that by doing them faster or with more weight at the same speed.

 

To answer your original question, Person B is getting a better workout because he is accomplishing more within a smaller time period, and is stressing the muscle more than person A.