Push ups: reached a plateau. How can I progress?
Good morning, my name is Matthew, I'm a 23 years old guy from Italy ( so I'm not very fluent in English )and this is my first thread in this forum.
I introduce my problem: nearly 4 months ago, I decided to start doing Push ups on a regular basis, every 2 or 3 days.
I know that doing only this type of excersise is not so good, but it's a beginning.
By the way, even if I've been playing basketball since I was 8, I've never been in a gym and I've never really done strength exercises. So, when I started doing Push ups, I was able to do 3 regular Push ups in a row (but with very good form), and probably 2 wide Push ups and 1 diamond Push up.
In these 4 months, I had decent results in muscle growth (mostly in the triceps, but also in the pectorals and a little in the shoulders) and in the number of repetions I can do.
In fact, now I can do:
Regular Push ups: 4x12
Wide Push ups: 4x11
Diamond Push ups: 10-8-8
In the same workout, with 3 minutes of rest between every set and in that specific order.
My goal is to reach 4x12, 4x12 and 4x10 sets and then increase the difficulty by adding weight or by doing declined Push ups
The problem is that in the last 3 weeks I can't add even 1 repetion to my workout and I'm now stuck in a Plateau. So my question is: what would you recommend to do, in order to exit from this Plateau situation and start to increase the number of repetions again?
I think that a good idea could be try to vary the Push up-only workout, maybe by doing the the 3 sets in a different order, or by doing the same repetions but in a different number of sets.
Honestly, I don't know, and this is why I'm asking you.
Hope you can help me, I thank you in advance .