Why You Shouldn't Keep Doing More Push-Ups or Pull-Ups

In an earlier article, I discussed the problem with doing a lot of repetitions of low-weight exercises. As the number of repetitions increase, the gains become incrementally smaller. Instead of growing bigger and stronger, muscles improve in metabolic efficiency. While this is good if you want to be able to do that particular movement for a long time, it doesn’t necessarily carry over well to other movements or skills. Muscular endurance also doesn’t help improve the way you look.

When it comes to bodyweight exercises, the same holds true as well. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize they’re making the same mistake and end up doing increasing numbers of push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, etc. Since your bodyweight doesn’t change that much, doing more of the same kind of push-ups doesn’t increase your strength significantly. You just spend more time working out.

Unless you’re going to be in a competition based on the number of repetitions you can do, your time is better spent increasing the difficulty of your bodyweight exercises. How can you achieve this without using external weights? This is where an understanding of body mechanics and simple physics helps.

By adjusting your body position and placement of your hands and feet, you can make nearly any bodyweight exercise trivially easy or incredibly difficult. Just look at what gymnasts do, especially on the still rings. The iconic Iron Cross position is an incredible way to train your shoulders, forearms, biceps, chest, and lats at the same time. The significantly harder Maltese Cross is so difficult that it’s similar to bench pressing double your bodyweight!

If you can already do 10 to 20 push-ups, try increasing the difficulty by moving your hands apart, forward, or even backward. Play around with different hand placements and see what makes it harder for you. Work on that variation until it becomes easy. Then, increase the difficulty again. If you do sit-ups, try slowly extending your legs and arms until you can do V-ups easily. If those become too easy, then it’s time to up the difficulty even more by doing hanging abdominal exercises such as hanging leg lifts on a pull-up bar.

For those of you competing based on how fast you can complete a certain number of repetitions, such as in CrossFit, then you’ll definitely want to increase your strength and power. As you get stronger, the perceived difficulty of each repetition goes down, making it easier to do more. Plus, you’ll be able to do each repetition faster. So, instead of training more repetitions of the technique you’ll be competing with, train with harder variations. When it comes to game day, you’ll be surprised how much better you perform.

Lifting Patients Too Dangerous To Be Done Safely?

A few weeks ago, I came across an article titled “Even‘Proper’ Technique Exposes Nurse’s Spines to Dangerous Forces”. Not unexpectedly, it started with the story of a nurse that was injured on the job while trying to help move a patient in the intensive care unit despite using the “proper lifting technique” taught in nursing school. The injury was quite serious, requiring several surgeries, and jeopardized her career. The article then talked about a research study that suggested it is impossible to lift patients safely with just human body mechanics. It went on listing several reasons why and also described the compressive forces that people’s spines are subjected to when lifting patients. It even noted that lifting in teams does not reduce those forces to safe levels while increasing shear forces, a force our spines are more vulnerable to. It basically concluded with the idea that we need mechanical patient lift devices throughout the hospital to make it safer, but not necessarily 100% safe, for workers to move patients around.

As I read the article, I reflected on my experiences working in the hospital, especially the times I helped move comatose patients weighing 300, 400, or more pounds. I’ll tell you, it’s definitely not easy to do, even with 4 or more people. Most healthcare professionals know what proper lifting mechanics should look like but with the way patients are located and positioned, it is not always possible to use optimal lifting mechanics. If you’re lucky, you may have a patient hoist handy but even then it’s not necessarily trivial getting a person into it in the first place. Sometimes you are able to figure out a way to use bed sheets and have enough people around to help push and pull, slowly working the patient into the best position for the actual move. Whatever the situation may be, lifting a person is nowhere near as mechanically simple as deadlifting a barbell at the gym.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know if there is a failproof solution, at least not with our current technology. Mechanical lifts will definitely help but there are limits to those. First of all, they are quite expensive so they aren’t available everywhere in the hospital. Second, they do have weight limits which some patients exceed. Finally, there is always the issue of getting the patient loaded onto the lift. Despite these problems, hopefully they’ll become more widespread so healthcare professionals can work more safely, and for longer.

Meanwhile, I strongly urge all of you to do your best to stay in good physical condition. It is your best chance of protecting yourself from serious career-ending injury. Make sure you exercise regularly. When you work out, focus on your functional strength throughout your entire kinetic chain. Substantial core strength and a strong kinetic chain will help reduce the micro-damage on your spine when lifting patients. The less damage you take, the less likely you’ll suffer a debilitating injury. DO NOT just do cardio. Cardio is not going to help you here and it can actually make things worse if you ignore strength training.

As a healthcare professional, you’re probably very busy. But for you, exercise is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Think of it as part of your job. It’s no longer just about looking good, but keeping you, your career, and your patients safe.