Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

Ok, so I've been running a lot and I've come to the point where my endurance is far beyond my leg strength... i.e. my muscles get tired before I get winded. The biggest weakness seems to be my calves. Are there any exercises besides calf raises that hit the calves hard?

Also, aside from pushups, what type of exercises are good to increase my # of pushups in 1 min?

If you could find a nice tall building with lots of stairs you could try running up those. That would build up your legs a bit.

For pushups if I'm trying to hit a high number of them I'll do them on an incline. Such as using stairs. Put you feet at the bottom of the stairs and take a pushup position with your body facing up the stairs. That way the pushups are easier to do.

Then you can crank out sets of 50 or so just to get yourself used to moving in that position that many times. The easier it gets you can go down to a lower step until you're finally flat on the ground again.

Like Masterfulks said try running up stairs or just find a big old mountain and run up it.

As far as pushups you can always go to the bench and find a weight that is a little more than your push up weight and keep adding weight.

What's wrong with your calves? Do they tighten up on you after running? Any shin splints? You don't need larger calf muscles to increase running endurance, just look at most world class runners bodies and you can see they are lean.

Try more water and potassium before a workout and immediately following. For your push ups , remember to keep your core section (your abs and glutes) held tightly together as much as possible. Allowing yourself to flex or loosen up while performing a push up doesn't allow you to maximize the bodies muscles in a group effort to accomplish work.

Don't flare your arms out like you see people do. Keep them tucked in like chicken wings, and you can engage your triceps, lats, and upper delts. If your arms get out from you, it becomes a solo show for your pecs and small part of your biceps.
On your descent, pull your shoulder blades back as far as you can, this will push your chest down to its maxium range, thus giving you the shortest distance to travel to complete more in a set time period.

Other bad things people to hinder thier push ups are leaning to far forward when pushing or descending. Or placing the hands too far out or inversely too close under themselves.

K-9Maly, its not that the muscles tighten up after running... they simply fatigue while running before my other leg muscles do, which hinders my ability to improve my cardio/endurance.

I can't run because my calves tighten to the point where I honestly feel they are about to pop open and the shin splints are just horrendous. I wish I could run, I could really use the exercise. I am doomed to the elliptical for my cardio.