Ashley

yay, can do 4 marine syle ones now. 1 max – 4 max in a week isn’t bad.

I haven’t been losing any wieght. I was 126 and now I’m 128.

But at the same time, I’ve been doing a lot of situps and pushups.
My stomachs a little bit flatter now, and my arms are much firmer. I’m guessing I’ve been gaining some muscle.

Hopefully it will help me in the long run and increase my metabolism.

Seems to be some discrepancies among people as to what constitutes as a proper pushup.

Most people recommend the ones where your upper arms are parallel with the ground and elbows at 90° angles with hands set wide on the ground.

But if you go to the marines webpage, they do the ones where you go almost all the way to the ground with your chest. and your arms set just a little more than shoulder width apart.

Some civilian exercise sites will discourage the “marine” style pushups saying it’s not safe to go much past 90° (of course I understand now that it might be unsafe if you haven’t worked on your shoulder stabilizers, but the sites I have seen generally don’t indicate that).

I have been doing the 90° ones. I was actually able to do my first marine style pushup today (though I can only do one).
The marine ones are a bit more difficult to do. But I also noticed in order to do it right, my arms have to be under my shoulder joints more. They feel more more powerful than the 90° ones, like I’m working more muscle groups. I think the 90° affect my deltoids more, I never really feel it in my tricepts when I do those.

I also learned about doing negatives and half motion pushups. Even if I can’t do a bunch of full marine pushups, I could do the negatives and develope some control on the way down and do half pushups to start developing my range of motion.

The more you know!