OK I have kind of a situation. My wife is in the police academy and she has a PT test in about 3 weeks. She has to be able to do 2 sets of 20 pushups with each set taking no more than 30 senconds each. Right now she can do about 25 in a minute. Is there anything she can do for this or should she have started practicing pushups a few months ago? Any help will be appricated. Thanks

Hi, CC.

I am really just bumping this thread since no one answered yet. Things get buried in here with all the volume of posts.

I personally can’t do two sets of 20 pushups in a row and if I happened to do it, it wouldn’t be without a LOT of rest in between. Like 3 minutes. I am lucky to string together more than four sets of 10. Does she have to do 20 with no break in 2 minutes? Or just as many as 20 in two minutes?

My pushups are incredibly slow. Advice I have received is to try grease the groove… Take your max set of pushups and do sets of half that through out the day. Gradually, increase the reps in your sets in the day and test your max again periodically. I am not sure how fast this works but it did increase my capacity to complete bigger sets with less rest in between. I’m still not the push up queen, though.

There are push up programs out there.  Increasing them substantially in someone that isn’t already strong will take more than 3 weeks.  I would look up Grease the Groove method and work that as Laura suggested.  Also I would check out what the standard for a push up is a the academy.  Most of the push ups we see wouldn’t count in CrossFit, but they do in the military PFT’s and such.  Find the standard and make sure you are working right at the edge of that rather than doing more ROM than required.

Disregard this if GD or any of the other trainers contradict me, but don’t forget about flexibility in all of this.  She’ll need it anyway, and a rapid increase in the number of pushup attempts is going to tighten things up in a hurry.  Dislocates are key.  Take a PVC or broomstick, hold it overhead and then with very active shoulders and a straight back pass the bar from tailbone to stomach.  Repeatedly.  With as narrow a grip as she can maintain while keeping the arms straight.

Thanks everyone   Yea I just got out of the military and the police acadamey’s pushups arent like the military’s. They actually have and instrustor make a fist and put it on the ground under your face and your chin has to touch the top of their fist. So, pretty much all the way down to the ground. Thanks for the “grease the grove” site I looked it up and got some good ideas to help my wife with. Thanks Again!!
Levi

my brother in law is staying with us and is interested in starting CF.  he was medically discharged from the USMC for his hand.  basically he has a plate keeping his third metatarsal together.  anyone have suggestions for substitutions for pushups?  we tried wall pushups and maybe doing them on his knuckles?  i’m going to have him ask his doc but was wondering if anyone had any ideas.  thanks.