Hundreds of push ups in an hour

Kids today aint tough anymore, he was just trying to toughen them up and hold them accountable/s

My mistake, i thought “/s” indicated sarcasm

I completely agree it was not smart in any way. I put myself in the hospital with the same thing doing kettlebells. I only say that because people don’t realize how easy this can happen when certain things align.

I've been following this story from the beginning. Mostly because I feel like there is more to the story behind the scenes than is being reported.

I just saw last night that the kids who went to the doctor were all loading creatine which means they have to up their water intake significantly. If they didn't that would be a huge problem with strenuous workouts and out of the coaches control.

On the flipside 400 push ups in a workout is just dumb. However, my first reaction to 400 push ups in an hour is that it's tough but shouldn't lead to 10 kids being hospitalized with rhabdo unless they were severely out of shape and in which case their bodies wouldn't have allowed them to complete it anyway.

But at the end of the day several of his kids were needing medical attention and that falls on him for whatever reasons it happened.

This story also came at the perfect time as there has been a huge debate over a coaches post practically bragging about how hard they work their kids to the point of puking in trash cans.

It's turned out to be extremely polarizing in the coaches vs S&C communities

I think the lesson in all of this should be not to use physical activities as punishment.

My first teaching and coaching job almost 20 years ago now, I was lucky enough to work for an AD that was really good. One day I was running a kid after practices and he asked me why. I told him because his English teacher had called the head coach about something. He said DO NOT EVER USE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AS A PUNISHMENT. Then asked "what happens if that kid collapses while you are punishing him? Do you want to explain that in court?" It hit home pretty good.

I think there's some nuance though. We use updowns as reminders. We will make kids redo physical activity when they do it wrong. Those both could be seen as using physical activity as a punishment. I don't see it that way and I think I could justify both as a tool to improve their athletic ability. But I still wonder.

www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/01/12/dallas-high-school-football-coach-on-administrative-leave-after-forcing-players-to-do-nearly-400-push-ups/

There’s a link to the story. The creatine claim came from a Twitter reporter so who knows if it’s true or not

This is something that I still have a question about...is 400 push ups in an hour enough to cause rhabdo in and of itself? I think it is possible for a couple of reaasons:

1. There was likely a wide range of relative fitness in that room. Probably some skill guys with lean bodies that could do push ups for days. But there were probably other guys who weren't as fit but tried to guy it out
2. I believe that rhabdo becomes more probable when there is a focus put on eccentric stressing of the muscles....so when that kid can't do any more push ups, coach says do negatives...and that might accelerate the problem

I'm interested to hear more about the possible abuse of creatine, but I don't think that absolves the coach. I don't understand why more people don't just stick to the tried and true progressive periodization and avoid these kind of sessions entirely.

I’m saying it had to be something other than the push-ups. With bodyweight exercises eventually your muscles will just stop letting you do them and that should be well before rhabdo.

I am incredulous about the 300 pushups. I have high school kids in my PE classes who can't do ONE pushup, let alone 300.

Yeah...he's not in any of my classes.

Even crazier, it was FOUR HUNDRED. 

the world record is 3182