Not making progress, any advice?

There are a couple of exercises where I’m feeling that I’m not making much progress. Pushups is one of them, I have been “stuck” on 4x9 reps for a couple of months, I guess its’ the upper body as I’m not progressing on the 4x9 rows either. After seeing the other thread ‘Shaking’ and Coach Sommers response that we shouldn’t be shaking when looking at mastery, I’m worried that I’ll be hear for the next few months with no progress. Anything else I can try to help build more strength to make better progress?

Is the progression standard also the same amount of rest that is shown in the follow along? Or is that up to us to determine that, may be resting longer might help?

Thanks! Matt

On 11/27/2021 at 11:52 PM, Matt Bjornson said:

There are a couple of exercises where I’m feeling that I’m not making much progress. Pushups is one of them, I have been “stuck” on 4x9 reps for a couple of months, I guess its’ the upper body as I’m not progressing on the 4x9 rows either. After seeing the other thread ‘Shaking’ and Coach Sommers response that we shouldn’t be shaking when looking at mastery, I’m worried that I’ll be hear for the next few months with no progress. Anything else I can try to help build more strength to make better progress?

Is the progression standard also the same amount of rest that is shown in the follow along? Or is that up to us to determine that, may be resting longer might help?

Thanks! Matt

 

Hey Matt, have you ever posted a form check? the technique is important because if you lack involving the proper muscles you can express less strength.

On 11/30/2021 at 2:35 AM, Alessandro Mainente said:

Hey Matt, have you ever posted a form check? the technique is important because if you lack involving the proper muscles you can express less strength.

Hi @Alessandro Mainente

Thanks for your response! No, I haven’t, I’ll work on getting some video of those and post them in the form check forum. Since my original post, I’ve taken some major steps ( literally) backwards to try to focus more on perfect form and while I’m not necessarily making progress I am focusing on form versus getting to the next step in the progression. Will share more soon….

Hi Matt, I've been working on Foundation 1 for a number of years now, have had some issues with consistency, sleep and diet which definitely haven't helped.

The thing that's helped me with push ups, is to regress to PE1, so 5x15 Incline Push ups, and then instead of starting over from week 1 3x3 PE2, switch to the mobility for PE2, and change the first round of incline push-ups to floor push-ups but keep doing 5x15.  I've found that this helped me break through my plateau, and I'm currently up to doing floor push ups for all 5 rounds, with my cardiovascular fitness being the biggest limiting factor starting at round 3.

In rounds 4 and 5 of my most recent work out I need to do the last 5-6 reps as incline pushups, but overall it's improved quite a lot.

I've followed the same strategy with Front Lever PE1 - and it definitely helped to kick start PE2.

I've also found that for me anyway, less is definitely more, and I listen a lot more carefully to my body when it comes to fatigue.  I actually function best on an 8-day cycle, although I'm working on a weekly cycle again for now.