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I am doing the 100 push up and 200 sit up programs but they are only 6 weeks long.

I worry that in ten weeks I will back how I am now as I am a bit of a lazy person.

I'm only interested in general fitness and gaining a bit of strength.

I thought I could just repeat the last week of the plan over and over but I feel the motivation will disappear as the reps get quite high.

how can I maintain the gains I make without having to train intensively?

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2 Answers

The short answer? Keep doing it! The idea of these programs are to get you to a point where you can do all these push ups and sit ups. Same with the Couch-to-5k/10k programs. Building up your stamina and your strength sensibly is only part of the battle. The remainder is to keep it up.

Now, I don't know about you, but the idea of doing a bunch of push ups and sit ups doesn't sound like it will keep my interest for very long. So an alternative to keeping up with the existing program is to transition to another type of program that will challenge you further. If your goal is strength, you can only get so far with just your body weight. You might consider transitioning to weight training, or progressively adding weight to your body (such as the barbell plates on your back).

Alternatively, you can also pursue another area of fitness. If you ever fancied running, martial arts, biking, or swimming, those are all different challenges to keep you going.

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right now I have little interest in continued development, maybe that will change after 6 weeks but I would be quite happy to gain the level of fitness offered by these programs and stay there, I thought I might go till I plateau and stop there. I was looking for something simple that would not impact my lifestyle, mostly time wise to maintain the strength I gained –  Skeith May 24 '11 at 12:36
I don't know how much time you are wanting to invest, but you could switch to a proper strength training program. The Strong Lifts 5x5 (stronglifts.com) is pretty good, and it only requires about an hour 3x/week. It takes about 4 weeks to get to some sizable weight, but that time is spent making sure you have proper technique. However, you will quickly surpass the level of strength you have now on a program like that. –  Berin Loritsch May 24 '11 at 12:51
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Short term programs and diets often lead you back to where you were - or worse. I would recommend finding a sport/activity that you would be interested in long term and setting your goals to be good at that (golf, volleyball, swimming, hiking, etc.). You can alternatively focus on the results you're seeing/feeling now and imagine what it would be to keep/improve on those - I don't know if that would be enough to keep you going long term...but every person has different motivating points. I think the key to any successful, positive change is realizing that there will be a life style change (diet, time for exercising, etc.) - but it's a positive change.

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