I'm horrified. This has very high potential to be harmful.
The defacto nerd position is seated and hunched. Developing the pectorals will only exacerbate this. If you want to engage in group exercise, find a routine which is more balanced, or at least balanced against what you do the rest of the day. Just do some calisthenics and stretch out those tight chests.
Any time you're doing strength training, you want to balance your movements. If you're doing push (presses, push-ups), do pulls (rows, pull-ups, inverted pull-ups). Work your legs and your upper body. Do bilateral and unilateral movements (single arm or leg). Do strength and cardio. Mind your exercise and your diet. Oh: and rest and recovery are also key.
For many people in tech, sitting at desks, hunched in front of a screen, you're chronically tight on the anterior (front) of your body, and loose on the posterior (backside). If you look up exercise/fitness literature, you'll find a lot of reference to "posterior chain activation" or related terms, and exercises like deadlifts, power cleans, pull-ups, rows variations, kettlebell swings, etc. All work part or all of your backside, and can really help balance our your body (it's done amazing things for me, reducing back pain and other issues).
I don't know that doing 10 push-ups every day or two is going to cripple anyone, but if that's the only resistance work that's being done, it's certainly not going to help. Which is where a not of strength-training / fitness newbies get things horribly, horribly wrong: they come up with some half-assed, imbalanced, inappropriate training program / routine without understanding what they're doing or why.
Fitness activities, like technical problems, should be goal oriented. Identify your objectives, determine your resources, construct a program, execute on it, assess, modify, and iterate. It's really not all that difficult, but it does require a modicum of thought.
Pushups most certainly will build significant muscle.
The point, however, isn't the muscle size. It's the imbalance in muscular strength and tightness. Yes, stretching will help, but given that the majority of people do nothing to strengthen their upper back, they will develop a significant muscular imbalance from doing mere pushups.
To facilitate continuous muscle growth you need to continuously increase the resistance over time, and you need to do so within about 8-12 repetitions per set to stimulate hypertrophy. In simple terms, you need to push your max all the time; as you get stronger and develop more muscle, you need to keep increasing the resistance to reach the next level. This is very well established in scientific studies.
Simple logic dictates that this is is impossible with pushups. You cannot change the resistance without changing what muscles you activate, and an averagely built male can do more than 8-12 pushups per set from the very get go. The only way forward is to increase the amount of pushups you do in one go, and that throws hypertrophy out the window.
This is why pushups is a rather useless exercise, beside the fact that it's difficult to do correctly and causes injuries (doing them on your palms can fuck up your rotator cuff, and doing them on your knuckles can fuck up your hands and wrists).
But even without scientific proof, I think most people have this experience with pushups (whether they've thought about it consciously or not): the people who do them are rarely very big, they're the thin traditional martial-arts type, at best.
Training modalities differ from just the 8-12 reps range. Check out the Wikipedia Strength Training article for a good overview. You can get varying responses with reps ranging from 1 to 30 or more (with appropriate scaling of resistance).
The disadvantage of push-ups from a training perspective is that it's hard to progress with them (increase resistance), though this can be done by changing body angle, changing hand position, adding weight, or changing to a more challenging variant (say planche push-ups).
The point that I and others have been making is that a naive and uninformed approach toward exercise and fitness may provide few if any benefits, could exacerbate an existing imbalance, and really shouldn't be touted as a genius inspiration. Much as, say, a naive and uninformed approach toward technology often has corresponding / similar / analogous negative outcomes.
Push-ups are fine, in the right balance with other movements. They're not a complete exercise routine of themselves.
As for getting big on push-ups, there are always exceptions. Hershel Walker comes to mind as a calisthenics devotee.
Pushups is a terrible exercise, for sure, since it doesn't build muscle and is prone to injury. The only reason it doesn't screw up your rotator cuff very quickly is because the resistance is so low; had it been better at building muscle (i.e. more resistance, on level with bench presses) your rotator cuff would tear much sooner. Injury wise, pushups' saving grace is that it is such a bad exercise.
Doing 30 repetitions in a set is a surefire way to stagnate in your muscular development. This has been proven time and time again in scientific studies.
But whatever, let's just agree to disagree here. I'll continue to side with the scientific studies done in hypertrophy, and you continue believing in pushups.
The key question wasn't whether or not push-ups will develop significant muscle mass. It's whether or not they're going to compound a very likely existing syndrome (upper cross syndrome / kyphosis) in a team of programmers / tech geeks.
Push-ups are sufficiently effective that they'll at best make the problem worse. Any untrained individual doing any resistance movement consistently will make gains in strength and muscle size (Google Mark Rippetoe's "The Novice Effect" or discussions of training complexity vs. training age). Sure, you'll plateau after a few months, but you're still going to be ahead of a very large share of the sedentary population. And you're doing nothing to address the intrinsic imbalance between anterior and dorsal and muscular development and overall tension.
So you're saying balanced workouts are better than just pushups alone. I agree. But, in lieu of being able to do a full body workout at your desk, I think pushups are a good alternative to keep the blood flowing. Just be conscious to stretch occasionally.
I'd suggest something like burpees as a better alternative. Whole-body movement, may incorporate push-ups, but you're also getting a full triple extension (ankle, knee, hip), and at least some posterior-chain activation.
If you're doing other movements at other times (including rows), the push-ups are fine. You don't have to balance your movements at the same time -- alternating days or workouts would be sufficient.
Absolutely not. I cannot express to you how much pain can come from this. I'm talking about career-ruining, debilitating problems.
You're not in the Army. You aren't going to balance out your strength training with a long day of running, climbing, etc. You're going to get your chest good and pumped, then plop right back down and hunch.
1. 10 pushups a day will not debilitate anyone.
2. You don't have to hunch. You can practice good posture at your desk.
3. If you're really worried about this, take 5 minutes to stretch out your pectoral muscles before/after doing this.
I would love to see some medical studies of people who've been seriously debilitated by doing pushups throughout the day. There's a difference between being in pain (sore) and being hurt. If you're doing enough pushups at the office to get hurt, you might be taking the team-building exercise a little too seriously.
If you were so inclined, you could find all the information you desire about injuries caused by unbalanced musculature. But you seem like the invincible type who's going to ignore caution, so good luck to you.
Wrong about what? You don't HAVE to hunch, you can stretch, and I said I would like to see studies of people hurt from ten pushups a day. If you have them, please share. If not, I'll keep listening to my body, doing pushups, and properly stretching safely. Have a good day!
You are wrong about your ridiculous universal assertions. Ten pushups a day never hurt anybody? What basis do you have for this, other than ignorance?
Even in the case of minimal physical exertion, neglecting muscular balance will lead to injury. Stretching, while good, will not overcome muscular imbalance. How many people do you know who do any back-specific exercise?
As for posture, look at any of the photos that make it up on HN, such as photos of new startup locations. I haven't seen a single person in any of the photos sitting with proper posture. In over a decade of professional work experience, I have only ever seen one person sitting with correct posture, and he was an ex-Olympic athlete.
Are you aware, by the way, that shirts are cut differently now than in the past? The shoulders are rotated forward, because that's how people carry themselves now. People, on average, simply do not maintain proper posture. It requires concerted effort, stretching, and, usually, focused weight training.
The defacto nerd position is seated and hunched. Developing the pectorals will only exacerbate this. If you want to engage in group exercise, find a routine which is more balanced, or at least balanced against what you do the rest of the day. Just do some calisthenics and stretch out those tight chests.