Military Workout of the Week: Chest and Push Day

When doing split routines, it's common to divide working the body into different days. You also can do a workout that engages the entire body and split it with a cardio event day during the week. Most split routines are seen in hypertrophy or bodybuilding programs, but it is wise at least to split your days into upper body one day and lower body the next, especially if you like going to the gym every day. The real reason for splitting the body into multiple days is so you work on the movement or muscle specifically, then allow your body to recover for a few days before activating again.

This favorite workout of the week is a split routine day where you do all the upper-body push exercises. Some split routines will focus on just chest or shoulders or arms, but this is a combination of all the ways to push your body or an object away from your body.

Start off with a warmup that turns into a quick early challenge about halfway into it. The push-up pyramid with 100-meter runs between sets is a way to build up to over a mile of jogging (or faster) and over 200 push-ups in a relatively short time. We do this on a local football field and push through this "warmup" pretty quickly.

Push-up pyramid warmup

Push-up pyramid 1-20: warm up with 100-meter runs in between (stop at 20) = 210 push-ups and 2,000 yards running.

In other words, do:

1 push-up, run 100 meters

2 push-ups, run 100 meters

3 push-ups, run 100 meters ... and so on

Keep moving until you reach 20. If you cannot do 210 push-ups in a short period of time, instead continue up to 10, then repeat in reverse order from nine down to one. This will drop the total number of push-ups to 100, but keep the run at 1,900 yards.

Then stretch as needed.

Next, hit the weight room.

The weight room section is a mix of barbells or dumbbells or cable machines. This is a no-rest circuit that will push you to keep up with the repetitions. You may need to lighten the load or take a short water break about halfway through.

Repeat 4 times:

Bench press 10 (no rest)

Push-ups 10 (no rest)

(After doing a bench press, push-ups will be tough.)

Military press 10

Triceps pushdowns or triceps extension 10-15

Lightweight shoulders workout -- 5-pound dumbbells. This is a challenging six-exercise shoulder workout done with light weight.

Run and calisthenics section

These runs are shorter but faster. You either can  try to run these as fast as you can or shoot for your goal mile pace on timed runs.

Repeat 4 times:

Run 800 meters

Dips, max reps

Hanging knee-up 10 -- hang from a pull-up bar and lift your knees to your chest.

Push press 10-15 -- with a moderately heavy weight, use your legs to push the weight over your head.

Optional cooldown cardio:

Swim 500-meter warmup or 10-minute tread. It is up to you to practice treading without hands, but after the above chest, shoulders and arm workout, you may find that treading water using your hands only is quite refreshing, especially before swimming the sets below.

Repeat 10 times:

Swim 50 meters free fast

Swim 50 meters at goal pace CSS (or any other rest or testing stroke)

If you want to push it, try to crab-walk the length of the pool at sets 1, 5 and 10.

If you have not had enough pushing yet, you can add some push-ups between sets of the above swim workout and make this a swim PT. Usually, by this point in the workout (90 minutes), the arms are pretty dead and just swimming freestyle is challenging enough.

Stew Smith is a former Navy SEAL and fitness author certified as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Visit his Fitness eBook store if you’re looking to start a workout program to create a healthy lifestyle. Send your fitness questions to stew@stewsmith.com.

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