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DataPacRat comments on How to become a PC? - Less Wrong
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If it hurts consider that you might be doing something wrong. If it's just the burning sensation, although this sensation is usually followed by a rewarding endorphin rush, consider that you might not have to strain yourself that much to get the most important benefits from the exercise. I exercise regularly, make progress, and it almost never hurts. If you do bodyweight exercises for example, you don't have to exercise to the point of failure to make progress, in fact that might even slow your recovery.
I'm not having any problems with jumping jacks, toe-touches, squats, or sit-ups, and if that sort of thing was all I was doing, I think I'd have few-to-no problems with keeping myself on the routine of doing them.
The first day I started this 'get up and go' thing, I did one push-up; the next day, two; the next day, three; and so on. I'm currently in the twenties. I'm reasonably sure that what I'm experiencing is the 'burning sensation' you mention, though I'm not getting any sort of endorphin rush from it. And on the plus side, I actually /can/ do twenty-odd push-ups now, which I wouldn't have been able to when I started. (I know what that says about my physical state when I started.)
I've skimmed what free manuals and guides I can find, watched a few Youtube videos, and so on; short of buying a gym membership for professional advice, I think I'm doing things as closely to 'right' as I can manage. It just hurts, each day that I do n+1 push-ups compared to the previous day's n. (And, similarly, for holding the plank position for a couple seconds longer.)
Have you you tried doing shorter sets like 5x10 push ups with a minute of rest in between for example? You'll get much more push ups done this way, will progress faster and experience less burn. Try adding 1-2 push ups to those five sets every time you do push ups. If you reach failure point at any time, you're doing too many of them. Doing them every day might get counterproductive at some point, your muscles need rest to grow stronger. If you're already in pain when you're starting, you haven't recovered from the previous exercise.
Today's magic number was 25. (I started a few days after New Year's.) 5x10 push ups seems rather out of my range just yet - but 5x5 was a massive improvement, pain-wise, over 1x25. My main thought at the end of those: "Oh, if /that's/ all it's going to hurt from now on, this is going to be /easy/..."
So even if no other suggestion helps much - this one particular comment could make the difference. I'd up-vote it more than once, if I could. :)
Glad to hear I could be of help.
There's no reason why you shouldn't apply this to your other exercises too if you want to progress faster and less painfully. You might want to experiment with the number of sets to see what works best for you or vary the figure simply to make things a bit less monotonic. It's still nice to have "challenge days" every once in a while to see how awesomely many repetitions you can do at once.
I'm going from many years of no physically-demanding exercise at all to getting close to 30 of many of the basic exercises - so far, /every/ day is a 'challenge' day for me. But I'm getting better. :)
I'm feeling quite cheery today - today's routine was as non-excruciating as yesterday's, so it seems the modification's a definite success. Which means the choice between 'avoid eventual decrepitude' and 'avoid immediate pain' has tilted decisively in favor of the former. ;)
I'm just about to crash for the night; but I can answer that no, I've simply been increasing the number of push-ups, with at most a few seconds break between some of them so that I can keep going. I'm not in any pain when I start each day. (And any further replies will have to wait for the morn.)