Jeff Cavaliere is a seasoned fitness coach with decades of experience helping individuals maximize their health. On April 14, 2025, he broke down his science-backed approach to push-ups, sharing a plan that is more conducive to gains rather than performing 100 reps daily.
As an original fitness educator in the YouTube space, Cavaliere brings unique insights to help others build better and stronger bodies. His channel is home to over 14 million subscribers and uses evidence-derived principles to relay exercise advice.
While 100 push-ups a day can steer you in the right direction as a beginner, Cavaliere believes this approach could lead to fewer gains over time.
“As a strength builder, this approach is not a good approach. For most people who are intrigued by this, even if you’re a very ranked beginner, the strength benefits are going to be very short coming.”
“You can still build muscle without necessarily getting strong, if you have the right level of stimulus,” shared Cavaliere. “We’re not doing 100 repetitions straight out, we’re doing them in sets [if you’re a beginner].”
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Jeff Cavaliere Says Slowing Down & Not Counting Push-Ups Is Superior vs Performing 100 Reps Each Day
In a recent YouTube video, Cavaliere underlined that if you’re achieving failure with push-ups, hitting 100 reps per day won’t work in the long run.
“You have two options anytime you do a set of anything: Are you taking that set to failure? Or are you stopping short? Are you going to stop a few reps short, or maybe many reps short? Here’s where an interesting part of this comes in, why the 100 push-ups a day starts to become a problem. If you’re going to take your sets to failure, this whole thing falls apart [100 push-ups a day].”
“There’s no world where the natural lifter who is trying to build muscle should subject a muscle to multiple bouts of failure every single day consecutively without rest,” he adds.
He doesn’t believe 100 push-ups per day is a valid plan, pointing out that you won’t be able to return to a workout bigger or stronger if the body doesn’t adequately recover.
“That approach doesn’t work. So if you’re sitting there right now and you’re doing your 100 push-ups day and you keep taking each one of your sets to failure and stringing them day after day after day, at some point you’re going to start to dip down into your body’s recovery capabilities and make it impossible to actually come back bigger and stronger from the last session.”
His solution to add strength and muscle with push-ups is to make them more intense by slowing down repetitions.
“Stop counting the reps you’re doing and make those reps count. That’s the only thing you have to remember. And the best way to do it is to slow down your reps.”
“They are more effective and are giving you the stimulus that you’re after. That alone will take a 40 push-up person and cut them right in half, probably down to 20.”
He advocates for quality over quantity and believes this approach to be more effective than firing off 100 reps of push-ups daily.
“I don’t care about the number, so my problem is the 100 part of 100 push-ups a day, that’s the counting part and my other part is the a day portion of the 100 push-ups a day.
When you look at everything I just told you, for all those reasons, scientifically, this falls apart. I’m not trying to shit on the idea or piss in your Cheerios, I’m just trying to give you reasoning why it’s not going to work and give you an alternative path that ultimately will work.”
This wasn’t Cavaliere’s first science-based workout demonstration. He recently walked through the best and worst gym exercises for each body part, highlighting what movements had the most biomechanical safety and effectiveness for building strength and muscle.
Daily push-ups have their place in workout routines. Though Cavaliere doesn’t believe 100 reps a day is the key to accelerating gains, he notes that slowing down repetitions and maximizing time under tension could lead to even better results.
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