Increase Your Push-ups and Sit-ups

     Got any ideas on how to increase the number of push-ups and sit-ups you can do?  I have a few.  One that I recently started doing really works.  I have three children.  My youngest is a 9 year old son.  He is really good most of the time, but as you can imagine anytime I ask him to do his chores he is prone to complain.  My solution?  He does push-ups every time he complains.  The catch -- I have to do them with him.  In other words, I won’t make him do anything I myself am not willing to do.  He knows now that anytime he even has a negative look on his face -- we will both be doing push-ups.
     The other day I was a little upset about something and he caught me complaining.  With the wisdom of a 9-year-old, he said, “Dad -- time to do push-ups!”  Before I could even muster a defense, he was already on the floor doing his set.  I have to admit I’m doing a ton more push-ups now than I ever did.  The last time I worked out with my unit, I was able to do about 10 more total than I usually do --- so I know this system is working.
     To improve my sit-ups, we now alternate between push-ups and sit-ups every time either of us complain.  If you are serious about trying this out -- it will not only improve your attitude and that of your children, it will also improve your PT score.  We do the push-ups or sit-ups anywhere we happen to be.  So even if we are in the mall and one of us complains, we will drop immediately and start doing push-ups.  If you do this, like we do...be sure to have some hand sanitizer on you.  There are some pretty nasty floors out there!

    The key to improving your sit-ups and push-ups is repetition.  You have to do them!  So if you don’t have kids, or you don’t want to discipline them in the manner I do, try something that works for you.  I used to work in an office that had automatic lights that would go on when they sensed movement and off when a certain period of time passed without movement.  If you were at your desk working, they wouldn’t sense your movement and the lights would go out.  This was a big pain for my paralegal and I as we might be in the middle of typing out a document when the lights would go out.  The only way to turn the lights back on was to move to the middle of the room.

     We turned this movement into a game and decided that every time the lights went out -- it was time to do either push-ups or sit-ups.  This worked, but I lost my motivation when I moved offices.  If you have a similar regular event -- this might be your key.  As said before, if you just practice you will get better.  I’d be curious to hear from you -- what have you done to increase the number of push-ups on your PT test?