This Soviet training method helped millions of soldiers complete 100 push-ups per set. Not per day, per set. I know this sounds impossible if you're stuck at 20 right now, but don't worry.
The Soviets figured out a system that works even if you've never done a single push-up in your life. In this video, I'm going to show you the exact Soviet method that takes you from wherever you are now to 100 reps per set in less than 10 weeks. Plus, I'm going to give you an extra trick that was surprising to me that no one knows about.
Before we start, I want you to test your max push-ups and then write that number down. This is how many you can do in one set to failure. We'll need that number for an exercise at the end of the video.
So, if you want to do a lot of push-ups, it's very important to know there's a downside to doing them that almost everyone overlooks. Remember that number you wrote down? Well, in 10 weeks, you'll be doing guaranteed 100% reps per set, but your shoulders will hurt and your lower back will break when you don't listen carefully now.
Okay? So, the Soviet method uses a technique called grease the groove. It makes your nervous system incredibly good at any movement you practice repeatedly.
Think about your handwriting. If you learn to write a letter the wrong way as a kid and nobody corrected it, you'd still write it wrong today. Your brain made that pattern permanent through repetition.
And the problem is, your brain doesn't care if you're practicing good form or terrible form with your push-ups. It just gets better at whatever pattern you keep feeding it. If you do 100 push-ups every day, but your lower back sags towards the floor, you're not building strength, you're building back pain.
After 3 months of practicing bad form, especially at high volume, you'll be amazing at hurting yourself. This is why the Soviet coaches had one rule. Don't stop your set when your muscles start burning.
Stop your set the exact moment your form gets even a little worse. If your hip drops slightly, that set is over. Quality matters more than quantity when you're programming your nervous system.
You can do this quick test to find out if you're doing the perfect push-up. Imagine someone laid a broomstick along your spine. It should touch your head, your upper back, and your butt at all times.
If any of those three points lose contact, your form is not perfect yet. Now that you understand what not to do, let's talk about what the Soviets actually did to hit 100 push-ups per set. The Soviet approach sounds almost too simple to work.
They spread their training across the entire day. Instead of one brutal workout, they did 10 short sets from morning to night. One set after waking up, one midm morning, one before lunch, and so on.
Each set was only 10 reps. Never hard, never tiring, just consistent, perfect movement. I know what you're thinking now.
I don't want to do 10 sets with 10 reps each. I want 100 reps in one set. That's you.
That's what you sound like. Relax for a minute and keep watching. I'll explain it in a second.
Then you'll understand why I mentioned this. By the end of the day, they hit 100 total reps without ever feeling destroyed. Their bodies didn't register it as hard training.
It became normal movement like walking or breathing. And that's one key point. When something becomes normal to your nervous system, you get incredibly good at it.
There's a famous principle in neuroscience called Herb's law. Neurons that fire together wire together. Every time you do a push-up without fatigue, those nerve pathways get stronger and faster.
Your brain builds highways for that exact movement pattern. [snorts] But this only works when you stay fresh. Tired practice creates messy signals.
Perfect practice creates clean patterns. After 3 months of this, your nervous system knows how to do push-ups so well that 100 push-ups in a row will feel like nothing. Now comes the most interesting part.
How do we apply this correctly for your daily life? So, you can reach 100 reps a set as fast as possible. Well, remember that number you wrote down at the beginning, your maximum push-ups.
Let's say it's 20. Whatever it is, here's what you're going to do. Take 50% of that number.
If your max is 20, 50% is 10. Keep this new number in your mind or write it down. For the next 6 days, you're going to do 10 sets of 10 push-ups throughout your day, not all at once.
I would suggest using that schedule we talked about earlier. 10 sets of 10 is 100 total reps. That's four times more than your current max.
Now, here's the most important part. You should never, under any circumstances, feel tired. You should never feel a burn in your muscles.
You should never feel pumped or out of breath. When you finish each set, you should feel like you could immediately do the same number again if you wanted to. That's the signal you're in the right zone.
And you have to do this six days per week. On the seventh day, take a complete rest so on the eighth day, you can rise like Jesus. Your body needs that recovery day to solidify all the neural patterns you built during the week.
And after 2 weeks, you need to test your max again. Do as many perfect push-ups as you can in one set, and I guarantee your number will be higher. Let's say it jumps from 20 to 40.
Now, recalculate that 50%. And for the next two weeks, you do that new number 10 times per day. It's the same rules.
And you keep repeating this cycle every two weeks to test your new max. Your working sets will gradually increase, but they always feel easy because they're always half of what you can actually do. After 3 months of this, your nervous system will have practiced over 5,000 perfect push-ups.
Your body will stop seeing the push-up as hard. They'll become something you can just do. And when that happens, hitting 100 in one set won't even be a challenge.
It will be your new normal. The protocol gives you a road map. But now there's a simple physical technique that I mentioned in the beginning that the Soviets use which makes each rep stronger.
Let me quickly show you what they did. It's called full body tension. When you do a push-up, you're probably thinking only about your chest, shoulders, and arms, right?
Well, the Soviets saw your body as one connected system, not separate parts. The interesting part is when you squeeze one muscle hard, the electrical signal doesn't stay in that muscle. It spreads to the neighboring muscles and makes them fire harder as well.
So before you even start the push-up, you set up three tension points. First, your hands. Press them into the floor hard as if you want to rip it apart.
Imagine you are opening two big jars, one with each hand. Gently twist your palms outward without letting them slide. This creates tension in your forearms up to your shoulders and across your upper back.
Your shoulder blades become tight and stable. Second is your core. You take a breath and you brace your stomach like someone's about to punch you.
Not sucking in, not pushing out, just creating a solid wall. You keep your ribs pulled down, not flared up towards the ceiling. And this connects your upper body to your lower body.
Without this, your two separate pieces. And with this, you're one solid structure. Arguably most important is your glutes.
I want you to squeeze them as hard as you can. Clench them together like you're trying to crack the subscribe button between them. By the way, tell me in the comments if you've ever done that before.
Now, here's the key. You don't do these three things one at a time. You activate all three at once before you even move.
Grip, brace, squeeze, all at the same time. Then you do the push-up while maintaining all three tensions throughout the entire set. Your hands stay active.
Your core stays braced. Your glutes stay squeezed beginning to end. The first time you try this, it's going to feel hard.
You're going to use way more muscle than you're used to, which basically also means you're building more muscle in your entire body. Your whole body will feel tight and engaged. And after three or four reps, it will shift.
You'll notice that your form stays cleaner, your reps feel more controlled, and because your form isn't breaking down, you can keep going longer as usual. This is what the Soviets meant by turning the body into a machine. Every part is working together.
A very important thing to understand is this technique gives you an instant boost in performance. You can try it on your very next set and will feel the difference immediately, but it's not a replacement for the training protocol we covered earlier. You'll still need the 6-day cycle.
This is the amplifier, not the source. Try it right now if you want, and let me know your push-up max in the comment section down below. The Soviets also had massive shoulders, which is basically a must for a lean physique.
To find out how they did it, click the video on the screen. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
