400 Pushups per day for a year.

Ok.. This isn't new idea nor probably even a good one. On the first of January 2014 I decided I would give up drinking booze and do a bucket load of pushups to see what happens when someone gives up booze and does a bucket load of push ups.
So here's what happened to me, please note that I am not championing this a great way to get fitness results and I'm sure there's an infinite amount of better ways. I looked at my life and decided that this is what I would do and see what happens.
The no booze bit was easy, you don't need to do anything at all. The pushups on the other hand were a challenge at times. I chose to do just pushups for no particular reason (it just popped into my head). They seemed convenient because I could do them
in between making school lunches or first thing in the morning or late at night or in a hotel room or whatever. I thought I could average 500 per day and did for a couple of months, sometimes having to do 1000 or more in a day to catch up.. I let that goal go and just decided to do around 500-700 every time I did them and try to do them as many days as possible.
In December I added the up and I was just below 400 per day average and pushed to get to 400 by the end of the year (a bit OCD I know). anyway with a day spare I have 146010 (an extra 10 for good measure).
Tidbits. I had 46 days with zero Pushups.
The most in one day was 1500. I'd usually do 10 sets of 50 but sometimes 5 sets of 100 and the most I could do at once was 140 after resting for a day or 2. I'd occasionally wear a 15kg lead weight belt that I used to use skydiving.

How do I feel. Bloody great. My fitness was average and now I feel pretty good especially in my core. I did get some growth in my chest but the muscles in front of the shoulders (not sure what they're called) seem to have made the biggest increase.
I'm 42 years old and have broken my back twice (skydiving). I have some hardware in my back after surgery and my back feels great.

Ok...Do I recommend this... No. But it was a fun challenge. Will I do it again? No... Pullups here we come.

I will work more rest into my fitness this year because at times the numbers hanging over me were a drag...

Thanks
 
I tend to say put enjoyment first in training, you have an well done to you.
It will serve you well to input some balance into your training to avoid future issues, imbalanced training is fine short term, and it often helps people get started.
Of course the next fun part is finding your next target.
 
Well I don't know if I can do that but given that my knees are acting up at the moment, going with pushups is not a bad idea for arms and chest, The fact that it also helped your core is what intrigues me the most though.
 
I would be a little worried about the risk of repetitive stress injury. You're taxing the same muscles, joints, and ligaments every day with a pretty high-volume workload. You're also neglecting supporting muscles (namely, the "pull" group/scapula, etc). You would also probably stagnante quickly. If you start and end the program doing 400 per day, what have you really gained in terms of performance? You can probably do them "better"... you'll have burned some calories... but there isn't even an ineffective model of linear progression in play!
 
The most simple answer is yes, but his type of routine will not allow for your muscles to recover. You will do better to do this every other day. This routine will make you stronger to a certain extent, that being until your muscle is no longer effected by 400 push-ups or you have an injury due to cronic fatigue. But this isn't going to build size, building size has to do with muscle hypertrophy which can only be achieved by progressive overload. Doing sets with progressively more and more weight. By doing this you require muscles to activate more muscle fibers which break down from being used and then rebuild to become larger and thicker. This is also relying on proper nutrition. (Indian workouts)

400 push-ups is similar to a marathon runner, who runs 4 miles everyday. it's an endurance type of workout, not a muscle building exercise.
 
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