How many press ups to do before it becomes cardio?

I am trying to maintain muscle or if poss to build whilst I try to lose weight around my belly so I am doing press ups around the cardio. But I have read that after doing a certain amount it becomes cardio and not about building muscle.
I have been doing 17x3 incline with my feet on the sofa and the same flat press ups. As this got easier I increased reps to 20 x 3 so 120 in total. Should I keep increasing the reps range or maybe just do them slower to build muscle. I am not only concerned about whats the best now but also when I go on a bulk.
 
thanks

You can build muscle for a while with bodyweight exercises as a beginner to exercise. But after that its not going to help you.
 
Press ups are good for conditioning, they are also anerobic but not so much that your gonna pack muscle on with it.

Do the eccentric movement slow and controlled and the concentric movement a bit faster than regular. Change it up abit, pause at different stages and do static holds for a few seconds. Vary the hand position and your feet position.
 
Hope this helps.
 

I would say you're very unlikely ever to be able to do press ups as a cardio exercise unless you can keep them going for more than ten minutes.
To keep muscle mass whilst losing fat make sure you are still doing the mass building exercises that built that muscle in the first place, whilst creating around a 500kcal a day deficit in your calories.

Ok thanks but how many press ups should I be doing?

Take a look at this guy,from a thread started in the over 40 section.
http://www.youtube.com/wa...LY&feature=related
700 a week and his chest is very well developed,all the more impressive is his age,so i would say do as many as you wish.
I recon,high rep stuff is underated at building muscle.a good mix of light/moderate/and heavy can only be good.
just my 2p.

So when it comes to bodyweight exercises press ups will build chest muscle and not just tone it?  Squats will be good on the leg muscles? How about the back, and shoulder what will be good there?

Depends on how strong you are, different % of effort while doing different exercises typically give different results. i.e rep ranges which you cant control with body weight, but all weight training and body weight exercises is cardio as well, as you are exercising the cardiovascular system while doing the resistance training