Pushups and situps

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If I do push-ups and sit-ups every morning for a period of months or years, what will I look like?

I have really poor balance, so I always found that I would never be able to do calisthenics that involve one hand, being upside-down etc.

If I do push-ups and sit-ups every morning for a period of months or years, what will I look like?

I have really poor balance, so I always found that I would never be able to do calisthenics that involve one hand, being upside-down etc.


Depends on a number of factors:
how many push ups and sit ups
how many years
your current appearance
your current exercise regimen
your age, sex, height, weight, diet, race

You do not specify how many push ups, sit ups, or months. If it's 2 push ups and 2 sit ups daily, for 2 months, then, all things being equal, you look the same as you do right now.

Usually, the more push ups and sit ups, the longer, the better you look.

However, rhabdo.

Likewise, push ups (military style: toes and palms), allegedly are the equivalent of bench pressing about 3/4 your weight. To measure that, I did a push up, with hands on a scale.

Thus, push ups are not much resistance, and, no matter how many you do, you can only get so far.

In high school and college, I could do about 25 push ups. When I was about 29, I worked up to 125 consecutive push ups. (palms and feet, lower head until head touches reclining water bottle). At that time, I look about the same as I do now. And that is nothing impressive. At that time, I was about 117#.

Right now, I am 34 years old, 108#, 5'3", and 0 push ups. Maybe 30 consecutive sit ups. But sit ups are a stretch.

In high school, at the most, I could do about 5 pull ups. Of course, pull ups are permanently out of question now. Standard aging process.

But whatever. What is so great about push ups anyways?

I would not recommend just doing pushups and situps without training your back as well.
Building only the front side of your upper body, will give you a hunched posture.

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yes, but what kind of exercises work your back, that do not require a gym?

back arches?

pull ups?

push ups and sit ups require no equipment whatsoever.

gym membership costs money.

and gyms are so socially awkward.

so full of impatient, self important precious lil "people" with large muscles.

used to really like going to the gym. around age 15-24. and then after that it just felt like

claustrophobia or something.

going through the same motions over and over

like a playground

although seriously

now i can't do a single pushup

physically weak

not just arms, legs

but pelvic floor too

and fatigued/tired/anemic/exhausted all the time

feel like moving through molasses

everything being equal, doing pushups is better than not doing pushups

but how much better

and is it worth the energy

besides not everything is equal

Depends what else you do alongside them and what you eat and drink etc, if it is ten minutes of push ups and nothing else, it's better than nothing but it'd be like someone who has a bowl of salad a day but eats a load of trash otherwise, kind of like a light in the dark shining weakly. If you build a routine and expand around it, you begin a useful arc.

Doing both of these exercises correctly for a time will certainly strengthen your abdominal muscles, chest, shoulders and arms - they're good toning warm-ups but I feel compelled to warn against sit-ups as it's easy to do one's back in accidentally. Crunches and other positions can have as good as or better an effect on the same muscle group.

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but it's so easy to do pushups wrong too.

a long time ago, when i took taekwondo at community college, the black belts had big egos. they gave out 50 pushups when anyone did the slightest thing they did not like. and of course not everyone can do 50 pushups correctly. not everyone can even do 50 wrongful pushups.

with the exception of the rodents that looked like gym rats . muscle bound.

almost everyone else either did "pushups" where they lowered their head a couple inches. like they were nodding. or they lowered their hips a couple inches. pelvic thrusts.

and right now for over a year now i have been able to do zero pushups.

and quite frankly i do not get the point anymore.

used to really enjoy weight training. lifting. that was in undergrad. college gym. shared a gym that was often empty or nearly empty. and other gym visitors were nice usually more or less.

then after graduation went to 24 hour fitness. not so nice gym goers. more crowded.

and got to the point where i was not getting stronger. just gradually getting weaker

but hey whatever who cares

I got up quite a number with the pushups/crunches thing when I was actually fit, but it did basically nothing. It may have worked the core muscles a bit (though something like plank probably would have done better) but it certainly didn't add visible muscle mass. I just found both exercises tiring and pointless.

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same here. when i could do 125 pushups consecutively. hands and feet. lower head, until head touched reclining half liter water bottle. could only do one pullup.

and everything else, including appeareance was the same as it is now.

and doubt i was much stronger either.

after all, it is just like bench pressing half your weight over and over. and over

how pointless

meaningless

^ Pullups are great I can do a few in what I like to call "the dead cockroach." Which is what I look like doing pullups. Everything just crunches into the middle. They're great for overall strength, and do enough of those and it will add mass. Probably because it's a compound exercise.
But if you're looking for quick, easy muscle mass the one surprising thing I found was speed ball. I went to a boxing gym for a while years ago and this was one of their drill circuit exercises. I found it quite fun, in a narrow-beam-attention sort of way, and didn't even realize it was strenuous enough to be putting muscle on me until my arms suddenly looked tonnes better.
Mmm, speed ball. Shame I can't find a way to do this outside the obvious self-consciousness of a boxing gym, or I'd do it all the time.

[quote="C2V"]^ Pullups are great I can do a few in what I like to call "the dead cockroach." Which is what I look like doing pullups. Everything just crunches into the middle. They're great for overall strength, and do enough of those and it will add mass. Probably because it's a compound exercise.
But if you're looking for quick, easy muscle mass the one surprising thing I found was speed ball. I went to a boxing gym for a while years ago and this was one of their drill circuit exercises. I found it quite fun, in a narrow-beam-attention sort of way, and didn't even realize it was strenuous enough to be putting muscle on me until my arms suddenly looked tonnes better.
Mmm, speed ball. Shame I can't find a way to do this outside the obvious self-consciousness of a boxing gym, or I'd do it all the time.[/quote

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But I can't do a single push-up

How am I supposed to do pull ups?

But whatever

In high school I could do one to five pull ups

Oddly enough though I weighed about 120 pounds while now more like 108

And as a Chinese female (trans) it could not have been much muscle mass

Seriously I am pathetic

Academically stupid

Vocationally incompetent

Mentally slow

Physically weak

Visually ugly

Socially awkward

Emotionally fragile

^ Not to mention disproportionately self-critical.
If you want to learn to do pullups but you can't yet that's fine - again with drill circuits, I once did physical training that built you up to that by doing semi-pullups. They positioned a bar about three feet off the ground (held by two other trainees in a squat position in my experience) and you lay on your back on the ground, body rigid, grasped the bar and pulled yourself up to it. Once you got a bit better at that, you could raise the bar until you could do it vertically.
Once you can do them vertically ok, you can either switch from underhand to overhand, or if you're really keen, add weights to your ankles so you're lifting more.
Damn I need to get back into shape.

Sit ups are bad for the back. Plank and side plank are safer alternatives. Balance can be improved with practice. You might enlist the help of a physical therapist.

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When I was 15 to 24 obsessed with lifting weights

At UCSD , age 19 and 20. Twice each. Set school side record for women's 123 pounds weight class. Bench press and deadlift

Right now I don't have gym membership

No cash to waste for it

Could go to playground and do monkey bar pull ups

But can't do pull ups

When I was 20 got so clinically depressed that I gorged so much that I went from 120 to 135 pound in one quarter. Pants stopped fitting

It was a nightmare

^ I hear that. I used to be pretty fit when I was in PT training in my twenties, but then I got sick and it all went down the toilet. Was bedbound for a few months, multiple medications packing fat on in weird places, then there was the alcoholism and just to top it off, a really rough gender transition with crazy rare complications.
I'm over all that shite now, but it was pretty much goodbye physique. I'm not overweight, just ... somehow scrawny and flabby at the same time. No mass or muscle, just bone and fat.
But I'm working on it ! !! This topic will help motivate ! I plan to start gently - walking, not jogging, and weightlift with freeweights in private so I don't have to freak out about being embarrassed at the gym for being pathetic, or waste money on memberships I too won't use due aforementioned freakout. I'm also being extensively tattooed, but that's another story.
Start small we'll get there. Shall be greek god / esses in no time.

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"PT training"? what branch were you in? what rank? what was your MOS? what kind of discharge did you get? how long did you serve?

what kind of hazing was there?

what kind of drama did the drill instructors and your platoon come up with?

what kind of problems did you have?

how was the military, for an Aspie?