Impact of high-volume push ups on bench strength

[RapidFail]

Back in May I did a Push Up Challenge to raise money for mental health support. In total I did 3046 push ups in 21 days (actually 19 days because I took two rest days, so on the days I pushed I did an average of 160 per day).

During this time I continued my weight training (4 days per week) as per usual. I was most curious to see how the push ups would affect my bench press, as it is the compound exercise with the most on common. My program has me barbell bench pressing once per week, with the dumbbell bench on another day (which I haven't talked about here). I was bulking for all of this time and still am. Here are the results:

Week 0
This was the week prior to starting the challenge.
9 x 52.5kg (116lb)
9 x 52.5kg
9 x 52.5kg
11 x 52.5kg (AMRAP)
This bumped my training weight up to 55kg (121lb) for the next week, with the goal of doing 5 sets of 9.

Week 1
9 x 55kg
7 x 55kg
6 x 55kg
5 x 55kg
5 x 55kg
Every set was taken until the final rep was slow and grindy. It seems my strength had taken a massive hit from all the push up fatigue. Lucky the next week was a deload.

Week 2
Starting the next phase of my program, now working in sets of 7.
7 x 50kg (110lb)
16 x 50kg (AMRAP)
THE final set was a rep PR. Training weight bumped back up to 55kg.

Week 3
7 x 55kg
7 x 55kg
10 x 55kg (AMRAP)
Amazing how much lighter the weight felt than two weeks earlier. Training weight increased to 57.5kg (127lb)

Week 4
7 x 57.5kg
7 x 57.5kg
7 x 57.5kg
9 x 57.5kg (AMRAP)
Final set was a rep PR. Training weight increased to 60kg (132lb).

Week 5
I had now finished the challenge and had a couple of days without doing push ups, so with was the freshest I had felt for a while.
7 x 60kg
7 x 60kg
7 x 60kg
7 x 60kg (AMRAP)
This was a new personal best for the bench. I would have attempted 5 sets with the same weight the following week, but fell sick with a chest infection and had to take a whole week off.

Four weeks later and my strength is still shy of what it was. Today I did 4 sets of 7 with 57.5kg and it was a struggle, the second set was an RPE 9 and the final set RPE 10. My thinking is that the extra volume from the push ups spurred on a bit of chest growth which translated to a new bench PB once the fatigue was gone. It doesn't look like I've lost any chest size since, but my strength definitely took a hit from taking a week off and being sick.

[AlexSays]

Interesting, can you give an idea of how many reps/sets you incorporated your daily push-ups into and at what rate you were gaining on bench before?

I imagine that unless you were doing endurance sets of 30+ every time, the constant volume work on your chest from the pushups must have given you a boost (once the fatigue receded and you adapted to the pushups). Same way I find if i have a pullup bar in the house and just bust out sets every time I walk past it, all my other lat work goes through the roof

Being sick probably caused the drop as you say but I'm sure you'll regain soon

Nice job

[RapidFail]

Interesting, can you give an idea of how many reps/sets you incorporated your daily push-ups into and at what rate you were gaining on bench before?

I imagine that unless you were doing endurance sets of 30+ every time, the constant volume work on your chest from the pushups must have given you a boost (once the fatigue receded and you adapted to the pushups). Same way I find if i have a pullup bar in the house and just bust out sets every time I walk past it, all my other lat work goes through the roof

Being sick probably caused the drop as you say but I'm sure you'll regain soon

Nice job

Thanks, I started out doing sets of 20, but after the first week switched to more frequent sets of 15 which resulted in much less fatigue.

Edit: just noticed the other part of your question. My 5 rep bench went up from 35kg (77lb) to 55kg (121lb) during my newbie gains, then stalled hard, only going up to 57.5kg (126lb) in the next 6 months. I had a few injury setbacks and spent some time cutting, both of which slowed my progress.