Hey John,

Thanks for reading.

First off, don’t sweat if you’re below or above average too much. The only person you’re competing with here is yourself. If you’re 65 and have lost a lot of strength over the last 15 years, 15 solid pushups is a great starting point (and you’re only going to get better).

Although we suggest this is a 4-week plan, there’s no reason you can’t extend it out. I would recommend spending a few weeks in each “week” of the training plan. So, you might do the week 1 workout for 2-3 weeks before moving on to week 2. This will give you a longer runway to build strength.

Lastly, I would take a 5-day break from pushups every 4-6 weeks. Give your body a break, and then jump back in wherever you were on the weekly progression.

Bob, the training program in this article only asks you to do two workouts per week.

However, if you’d like to do daily pushups (which can work well for many), lower the reps and only perform a couple of pushup sets each day. Think less about going to failure on each set and more about the total work adding up over the week.

Hey David, great goal! For this specific workout, you’ll perform the assigned workout (so, for week 1 you would do 10 sets of 8 repetitions of pushups) twice per week. Ideally, do these workouts 2-3 days apart.

Shay, perform the workout two times a week. I’d recommend spacing the workouts 2-3 days apart to help maximize recovery.

Hey Oscar, glad you found the article valuable. You’ll do two total pushup workouts per week. Each week repeat the workout assigned twice. Ideally, you’d space these out 2-3 days apart to help maximize recovery. My favorite way to do this is by stacking a pushup workout on my upper body training days.

There’s nothing wrong with taking breaks as you improve your push-ups. And be sure to take an actual break. Stand up, shake it out for 10-20 seconds, and then dive back in. You want to recover enough that you can maintain great form for all 8 reps. And as long as you don’t break for a couple of minutes, this will still count as a “set.” We call these cluster sets, or, sets with mini-breaks included. They’re highly effective for building strength.

Glad you enjoyed!