Push ups are a great all round exercise for beginners. Later on you can progress to handstand push ups and one arm push ups. Right now I’m doing some push ups for surfing fitness.

In the long term though not even one arm or handstand push ups are optimal for developing fast twitch muscles because there is not enough weight involved.

At the moment I’m training to get back into surfing. Surfing requires a variety of fitness modalities.

The problem with surfing is the inconsistency of swells (which could be seen as a benefit due the randomness of workouts.)

But if you have a couple of weeks lull in swell and be a real mission getting out the back if you’re a bit underdone.

Surfing requires a strong power to weight ratio and also use of both the anaerobic and aerobic pathways. It also requires a lot of fast snappy moves involving the torso.

Unless you’re surfing killer waves generally the toughest aspect of surfing is getting out the back of the surf so you can catch the waves.

It usually involves an intense all out paddle with duck diving, and waves pounding on your head, until you’re in position to catch waves.

So right now I’m building up to being able to 500 push ups in 30 minutes once per week.

Currently I’m at 20 push ups every 2 minutes for 15 rounds or 300 push ups. I’m building myself up to 500 by adding a push up per round.

Today I’ll do 21 push ups every 2 minutes for 15 rounds.

I do 2 days on 1 day off, so in another 20 days I should be at 500 push ups in 30 minutes or…

34 push ups every 2 minutes for 15 rounds.

I do my push ups as fast as I can go while maintaining form. So they’re like sprint push ups in away. Thats because surfing often requires lots of short sprinting bursts.

Once I reach 500 push ups I’ll just do it once a week to maintain that level. Then I’ll start doing more full body exercises like deadlifts, cleans, and lunges.

At the moment I still have plenty in reserve after each session meaning I could do a lot more but the intensity is slowly increasing every session.

Every couple of days I go and do a 10 minute random sprint work out.