Pushups are one of the most effective exercises to increase your strength and build up your upper body muscles like the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Some people take this exercise to the extreme and commit to doing 100 pushups a day, and seem to get impressive results. But what really happens if you do 100 pushups a day for 30 days? What muscles will grow and by how much by the end of this push up challenge? Are there any side effects related to this 30 day pushup challenge you should know about? Is it even worth your time and effort? Find out here.
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To maximize your gains and minimize injury from doing 100 pushups a day, make sure you do them with proper form. But what kind of growth can you expect from doing 100 push-ups a day? The highest activated muscles were the chest, triceps, front of the shoulders, core, and another muscle called the serratus anterior. These are likely where you’ll experience most of the improvements. As for how much of an improvement to expect in these muscles, we’ll dive into specifics later.
But first, note that there are various side effects to doing 100 pushups a day for 30 days you’ll want to be aware of, starting with week 1. Men who rank “fair” in terms of their fitness on average can do about 15-20 push-ups in a row. This means you’ll likely need to do several sets of push-ups to get to a total of 100. In addition to this, the most noticeable effect you’ll experience in week 1 is what’s called DOMS, which stands for delayed onset muscle soreness. Since in this case your body isn’t used to doing 100 push-ups a day, week 1 is when you’ll experience the highest amount of soreness in your chest, shoulders, and arms.
As for side effects you’d experience in weeks 2 to 3 of your 30 day pushup challenge? Since it takes roughly 48 hours for a muscle to fully recover, in the case of doing 100 push-ups a day, since you’re training the same muscles every single workout, they aren’t getting a long enough break to fully recover. Because of this, you’ll likely start to experience quite a bit of fatigue in weeks 2 and 3. Your body and muscles may start to feel more exhausted than normal and as a result your push-up performance may even start to decrease.
So by the time week 4 rolls around, your body will have taken a beating from the high frequency and high volume pushups. You may also start to notice two things. First, if you regularly train your front muscles without training your back muscles, then the stronger front muscles will overtime start to pull your body forward into a hunched over position with your shoulders rounded forward. Now the other thing you’ll notice has to do with your joints. Even with proper form, the repetitive motion of push-ups can create a lot of strain especially on your wrists and elbows.
What kind of growth can you expect to see at the end of the pushup challenge, though? In the push-up study I mentioned in the beginning of this video, the subjects weren’t doing anywhere near 100 push-ups a day. Instead, they were assigned to 3 sets of push-ups to failure twice a week. Given that the max number of push-ups they could do in a row was around 30 reps, this would equate to about 90 push-ups being done each session. A total of roughly 180 push-ups per week. Although this sounds like nothing compared to 100 push-ups a day, they still experienced significant growth. Over the course of 8 weeks, they experienced an 18.3% increase in the muscle thickness of their chest which equated to about a 3mm increase in thickness. Their triceps also experienced a 9.5% increase in growth, which also equated to about a 3 mm increase.
If you halve these numbers, you can get a rough sense of the kind of growth you can experience after a month of doing push-ups just twice a week. If you were to do 100 push-ups a day would you experience more growth? I’d expect it to be similar or even less because you’re not giving your body adequate time to recover. Also, keep in mind that after these 30 days, if your body gets stronger then it’s going to need more of a challenge to continue growing.
As for whether this is all worth it or not? Honestly, I would not recommend the standard approach of 100 push-ups every day without rest. It causes too many recovery issues and lacks the progression you need to keep seeing results past 30 days. That said, I will be working on a video that shows you a “better” way to execute the 100 push-ups a day challenge, and I’ll link that when it’s done. Look out for it!
This video idea is what many people have been searching for. Thanks for this!
Have you tried the 100 push ups a day challenge? Comment below! As mentioned in the video, I’ll follow this up with a video explaining how to better execute the “100 push ups a day” challenge to get better gains with less aches/pains and recovery issues. Stay tuned! Also, see below for the links to the studies used in the video. Cheers!
MUSCLE ACTIVITY LEVELS IN PUSHUP
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3810/psm.2014.11.2097
EFFECTIVENESS OF PUSHUPS
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5812864/
HOW MANY PUSHUPS MEN WITH “FAIR” FITNESS LEVEL CAN DO
https://canadacollege.edu/fitnesscenter/assess-muscle-endurance.php
NEURAL ADAPTATIONS
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17241104/
DELAYED MUSCLE SORENESS
https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00007256-199520010-00003
LENGTH OF RECOVERY PROCESS
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpendo.1997.273.1.E99
MUSCLE GROWTH RATE INDUCED FROM PUSHUPS
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3831787/
I done it. And i got a major muscle imbalance which led to problems.
@Chris Dee bruh
i did 300 per day during the corona lock down for over a month… it kept me looking nice and pumped every day, but other than that – no actual gains
The first thing I thought when I saw the title was “ I actually really wanted to know that.” Well made video
Literally same, I was searching the exact title not too long ago.
This is a very excellent and brilliant bro telling about what happen when we do 100 pushups for 30 days and keep it up and keep training hard and be strong always and stay healthy and be positive and happy always but never give up on your dreams and take care of yourself
Who enjoyed the animations, the charts, the science and the whole thing! The production quality is so sweet for the eyes
I have recently started working out myself. I planned on trying this challenge and seeing for myself, what results I can achieve.
Therefore I am glad to have seen this video, and I can’t wait for the optimized version to come out. I really want to get the most out of my training, without wasting any potential muscle growth.
I very much appreciate your videos, since they are informative, as well as motivative!
i did 100 pushups everyday for 5 months its honestly the best decision I’ve committed to
Thanks Jeremy. Can you please add the stretching excersizes after the heavy push up session. That would be very helpful for beginners
As a woman I can only do 40 “girl pushups” and 8 “man pushups”. I will keep trying! I would be amazed if I could do 20 man pushups one day, let alone 100. That would be unreal!
I believe in u
What’s girl pushups? Is it like knee pushups?
@Avatar Bro Yes
@Monkehotdogs22 Thank you!
Great video. Someone should do a study on untrained subjects doing 100 push ups a day and another group doing 100 push ups every 3 days. Less reps but more recovery time.
Felt like implementing fitness into my life, searched “100 push ups everyday for 30 days” and you’re the first result.
The planets must’ve aligned, because this sure feels like a perfect sign for me to start today.
Get started my man!
Jeremy is literally talking about how doing 100 pushups a day is bad for you. You are much better off doing 3-4 sets of pushups, 3 times a week. Go each set to technical failiure, or 1-2 reps in reserve. 1-2 min breaks between sets.
@Aritase obviously I’m assuming OP has seen the full video and go off of Jeremy’s advice.
Ive done 50 pushups a day coming up to 2 years now without missing a day. There has been a massive change but i did have to continually improve my form because at first my sternum would pop from time to time and i had back pain. These issues have since gone since i perfected my form. With perfect form I would say this is a really good alternative to bench pressing.
I find your videos very educational throughout the years. I’d like to mention that i had done 200 push ups a day for around 3 weeks. I did 4×50 everyday, some days 2×100 and the results were pretty good considering I hardly ain’t no more than 1200cals. I did get a lot of sourness but it’s 100% worth doing it! The enjoyment of reaching your goal keeps you going back for more
⭐I actually started the 100 push-ups a day challenge on July 1st so it’s been one month so far and the results have been great. I started 100 sit-ups a day on January 1st of this year and same thing, great results. Consistency is the key. The most important thing that I’ve gained is discipline.
i did 100 pushups a day for 30 days. this was my first evet workout i decided to commit… this was the start of my journey. i always felt hard to stick to a plan. but the 30 days in a row made me do it. i dumped in in day 45 since i got consistent with my workout and got the ball rolling. for all those looking to get into fitness, this challenge would be a really good starting point…
Great video as always. During the pandemic, I did 300 push ups a day— 100 regular, 100 incline, and 100 decline push-ups, morning, afternoon and evening sets. Definitely helped me maintain my size when gyms were closed and strengthened my shoulders and chest. I do have to agree to not do it everyday, since it was a bit much on my wrists and I hit fatigue quite quickly doing them so constantly, so that I had to be careful with.
I always enjoy your explanation and background info on each topic, that makes your videos my favorite to watch on exercises. I plan to do 100 sit ups and squats this month (August), but now I will add in the push ups also!
Hi Jeremy, as always awesome content from you. I have a request can you please bring the 15 best excercises series back!!!
That series literally helped me so much with my training.