Customer Reviews

Death, Taxes & Push-ups

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an extremely unbalanced and ineffective 'exercise plan'.

I am a big proponent of bodyweight exercise so I thought that this might be good. I could not have been more wrong.

I was a hardcore weight training guy for 20 years or so. The results that I got were very good in most ways. I developed great strength and muscularity. Unfortunately, my flexibility suffered. It also started adversely affecting my joints.

The thing that really got me to look into doing something else was martial arts. It was great to have lots of strength, but my decreasing flexibility (from weights) became a problem. For that reason, I started looking into an alternative several years ago.

At that time, I became familiar with Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning. That allowed me to maintain good strength while improving my flexibility. That program is also good for cardiovascular fitness. Doing extremely high repetitions will definitely work on the heart and lungs. I also started reading other material on bodyweight training and decided that it was a great method.

There are two main problems with 'Death, Taxes & Push-Ups'. The first one is that it is totally unbalanced. The author only does push ups. There is no leg work at all. Although pushups affect a lot of the body, they do virtually nothing for the legs when one is just doing standard pushups as the author advocates. It reminds me of some 'lifters' that I have known over the years who only do upper body work. Although they might develop a lot in that area, it was quite humorous if one ever sees them wearing shorts as they really just have 'chicken legs' that look ridiculous under a well developed upper torso. Not only does that look silly, it is dysfunctional. The legs are the foundation of one's whole body. It is laughable to think that one can be considered fit without strong legs. It may be quite telling that the only picture of the author shown in this book shows him head on in pushup position. His legs are not showing at all.

The other huge problem with this approach is that it is really obsessive. The author claims to have done 10,000,000 pushups in 25 years. He says that he does a minimum of 1000 per day. No days off. No rest days. No time off if he is sick. Not only that, but he 'banks' any pushups he does over 1000 per day in case he ever must have a day off. He says that he has 90,000 pushups in his bank.

The human body needs rest. That is one of the most important components of building strength. A person also needs to have downtime whe he/she is ill. The body needs that to recuperate. Although Skup sort of acknowledges that by having a 'bank', it sounds like he never uses it.

I fully recommend bodyweight training for a variety of reasons. It is good for strength, endurance, and flexibility. It also has very little injury potential. It is important to train one's legs as well as upper body. It is also important to rest and focus on other things in life besides pushups.

For anyone interested in bodyweight training, I would recommend the previously mentioned Combat Conditioning by Matt Furey. One might also want to check out training materials by Jack LaLanne or Charles Atlas. In addition to those, I would highly recommend Pushing Yourself to Power: The Ultimate Guide to Total Body Transformation and The Miracle Seven: 7 Amazing Exercises That Slim, Sculpt, and Build the Body in 20 Minutes a Day. These have all of the positives of Skup's book without any of the bad parts.

Looking for an alternative to waiting in line for every machine at the gym. This book has a keep it simple message that anyone can do. It is an easy read with a lot of information. I recommend the book to anyone that wants to get in shape and not spend a ton of money and time!

This just might be the coolest book on any one exercise I've ever read. Ted Skup's formulas for increasing Push-up repetitions are so simple that my daughter and I are doing them exclusively. Anyone who has done 10 million Push-ups has to know what they are talking about.

If I could pick only one exercise, it would be the pushup. However, since neither me nor anyone else is limited to one choice, there's no reason other than you want to to stick to only the pushup. Pushups are my mainstay but other exercises are helpful also. The book is a good read and I found the author's background to be interesting. His writing style is a little too "cutsie" in parts but it's bearable. He recommends the FDA and other government websites for his nutrition info and while the government is a good place to go for statistics, it's not the best place for good up to date nutritional information. For instance he propagates the fallacy the coconut oil is bad because it's a saturated fat. The studies done on that back in the 40's and 50's were done with hydrogenated coconut oil and were sponsored by the domestic vegetable oil industry. Anything hydrogenated is bad and coconut oil has been proven to be extremely good for you and cultures that consume large quantities of it have some of the lowest rates of heart disease around. So take his nutrition info with a grain of salt as it's not all that good but I would recommend this book to be in the library of anyone who exercises primarily with body weight exercises. Get down and start pushing. You will not regret it.

The author is not only a push-up expert, he also knows his target audience. This book is perfect for the average person looking to get in shape without having to set aside time to get to the gym, buy expensive "home gyms," or get burned buying the latest fitness machine you really don't need. The author reminds us we are born with all we need to get in shape naturally. You can do push-ups anywhere! The author also explains how fun, simple and portable getting in shape can be. Stop wasting your time and money buying trendy junk and starting using the common sense approach to getting fit outlined in this book. It's not just a book about push-ups, it's an interesting personal story too. Don't miss out!

This book has inspired and motivated me to become a pusher and get in shape. This author has a great plan which saves me time and money. Im done spending so much money for a gym membership every year. I would suggest this book to anyone who is looking for something new and effective!!

Count me in! I've joined the Push-up Revolution. This author has proven to me that doing push-ups is just as effective as using 10 different health club machines. The only thing I can say about Ted Skup is he is not your ordinary Jack of all Trades, but a Master of One, The Push-up. I'm telling all my friends to stop spending there money on useless exercise equipment and just use the formulas in this book to increase muscle size and strength. Saving time and money is good as long as it works. This works. I recommend this book to everyone!

This book could have and probably should have been a magazine article instead of a book. But what fitness magazine would want to run an article about exercise and health plan that is absolutely free? Would their advertisers appreciate that? So here it is in a book. I bought a concept. It is fun and light reading. Sure most of it could be found on the internet, but I know I would not have thought of treating push-ups like jogging, and doing high reps and many sets so that it actually becomes aerobic. If this information is on the internet, I would not have thought to search for it. Prior to this book being published, most people would not have found the main concept on the internet.

I was looking for a way to get my upper body into shape because I get bored lifting weights. I thought about learning to walk around on my hands, but I am 46 and some things are not healthy to do to aging joints. I really like Ted Skup's original and time-tested portable workout. I have heard that push-ups, squats, crunches, and curls/pull-ups are all we need for toning. I use BodyFlex which requires no equipment and is a wonderfully simple (not easy) aerobic and toning program. I like to jog/walk occasionally to get outside and work my calves, so I wanted something to concentrate on my upper body, and I wanted something fluid like jogging.

Ted seems like a nice, regular, hard-working guy. He tells some really funny stories. And he has a good, life-changing message. His push-up program will work for a lot of people. His advice on nutrition is sound too. Although I follow The Schwarzbein Principle, I think getting nutrition info for free from our government is a good way to go. Unfortunately, I found a lot of typos and grammatical errors. I don't know if I would recommend the book, but I would recommend the idea. And this may have been the best way for Ted to get his idea out there.

I currently own both stationery and rotating push-up bars, but the problem is my palms and rotator cuffs are taking a beating. Both these types of bars are good for low repetitions anyway, and can't be used for anyone who really wants to build muscle definition. Death,Taxes & Push-ups is the answer to understanding how to get to a 1000 push-ups a day or higher. The author is a real motivator due to his own personal stories. When it comes down to "Man vs. Machine" man wins everytime! The traditional push-up is superior to anything else not to mention it's portability. I totally recommend this book to all serious "PUSHERS".

Say this about Ted...he's single-minded. Anyone who can gladly receive Grape Nuts cereal as a Christmas present is a unique individual. And it's that mindset that allows him to focus his resources on a book about the simplest of exercises.

Having known Ted for about two years now and having shared long and elaborate tales with him (mostly fictional), I did not expect that he would ever be an author. And if he were, his writings would be on the kind of cheap paper that back in the 1940's and 1950's could be found in drugstores as pulp novels with lurid titles. Imagine my surprise to find him in Amazon, with a quasi-bestseller and doing the book-signing thing like a real writer would do.

Nonetheless, this is a fascinating look at what a man can do when he sets goals for himself. I've personally never seen Ted do even one pushup and up until now had never heard him refer to himself as "The Pusher". And having read the book, I don't feel compelled to do any myself. But I can tell you that he must be doing something right to look as good as he does at his age, and if it IS doing pushups, then he may have discovered a fountain of youth.

Still waiting for the Bobolesian translation of this one, though.