Amount you can bench = amount of pushups?

Im no expert, but my guess is no relation. Once you get to a point, basic pushups become more of an endurance exercise, which would not be related to your maximum bench.
 
I would bet there is a relationship between being able to do a lot of good (Full range/strict) push ups and being able to bench a lot in relation to your bodyweight, but little or no relation going the other way. In other words find a guy who can do a lot of push ups and I'll bet he can bench a lot, find a guy who focuses on bench and I'll bet he won't be able to do a lot of push ups. Gymnasts hardly ever lift weights, most of their work is done with bodyweight. However they are generally strength freaks. Not uncommon to see a gymnasts do a 2.5 -3X bodyweight deadlift the first time they try.
 
Garddawg said:
I would bet there is a relationship between being able to do a lot of good (Full range/strict) push ups and being able to bench a lot in relation to your bodyweight, but little or no relation going the other way. In other words find a guy who can do a lot of push ups and I'll bet he can bench a lot, find a guy who focuses on bench and I'll bet he won't be able to do a lot of push ups. Gymnasts hardly ever lift weights, most of their work is done with bodyweight. However they are generally strength freaks. Not uncommon to see a gymnasts do a 2.5 -3X bodyweight deadlift the first time they try.
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I'm sure gymnasts are stronger than the average person, but I'm not sure about a 2-3x dead, simply because they haven't trained the neurological aspect of the lift, like recruitment patterns and such.
 
I'm sure the relationship is there, it isn't the exact same motion, but it's fairly close. You don't have to train in high reps to do a lot of reps with a low % of your max weight, so if someone can bench a lot in relation to their weight, they can do a lot of pushups.

But doing a lot of pushups won't give you a high 1RM, so I think the relationship is the inverse that Gard mentioned.
 
Mreik and Muck. I used to believe exactly the way you do. Would have sworn by it, until I saw gymnasts exposed to weightlifting for the first time. They were doing exactly what I said. Blew my mind.
 
You know I was thinking about this on the way home. You are probably right. A lot of work on unstable apparatus. Now I wonder if you had someone do bench press on a slackline what kind of monster you could build.
 
One is a bodyweight exercise and one isn't, even if that were the only difference, that's a huge difference.
 
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