For many people, including me, WorkOut began after watching unusual push-ups, demonstrated by Bartendaz team:
To be honest, I was also very impressed by them, but to be able to do those tricky things, you have to learn the basic push-ups before. And that is what today’s info-post is all about!
Push-ups
Push-ups is a basic compound exercise, done on the floor (or any other surface, not necessarily hard one). The main muscles involved are pectoral and triceps. Indirectly loaded muscles are anterior part of deltoid, forearms, small hands muscles, lower back muscles, abs and quadriceps.
Key Moments
- The bigger the range of motion of a movement, the more muscles are involved during it, therefore try to push-up till you touch the floor with your nose or chest
- When you do a push-up, keep your arms, back, stomach and legs muscles strained, your body should form a straight line and keep it during the entire movement
- To get maximum results you should lower slowly and lift fast
- You should do the push-ups using the strength of your pectoral and arms muscles, no other way
- Breathe in while moving downwards, breathe out while moving upwards
Exercise Overview
In spite oftheir efficiency, push-ups are one of the safest exercises in workout! Nevertheless you should implement the following rules of a proper technique:
- A movement should be carried out using the natural trajectory
- Do not bend backwards or arch your back, do not bend at your waist, imagine the straight line going through the back of your head, between the shoulder-blades till your buttocks, this straight line should be kept all the time
- Do no jerks, no sharp movements or waves
- Do not crane your neck or squeeze your chin down, you should look straight ahead
- In case of any unpleasant feelings stop doing an exercise and try another variant
The exercise itself could be divided into 4 parts:
1. Get in the starting position with your hands apart slightly wider than shoulder width
2. Tense the whole body, try to form a straight line from the back of your heat till your heels
3. Bend your elbows, lower down your body till you touch the floor with your nose or chest
4. Unbend your elbows using only arms and chest muscles (no swings!) and get back to the start position.
Alternations (easier variants)
If you’re not strong enough yet to do standard floor push-ups, you may use the following variants as the precursor exercises:
When your own strength is not enough to do the standard push-ups, then knee push-ups is your new best friend! They let you feel your chest muscles working and let you learn how to bend your elbows right way, .
Tips
Hands position. If you’re a beginner, I would recommend you to choose a comfortable position for your hands at the distance of your shoulder width (+/-) and to drill just those kinds of push-ups during the BASIC block. ADVANCED block will give you an information on how to involve different muscles and their bundles by using the various hands positions (narrower/wider), but at the current stage the most important thing for you is to learn a proper technique!
Feet position. The wider the distance between your feet, the easier you can do the push-ups and vice-versa. You may also try to put one foot on another
Depth. Although, as it was said above, the most effective push-ups are the deep ones, somebody may feel a discomfort when the elbow angle is sharper than 90 degrees. But that is all right, you may continue to do the exercise the way you find comfortable and gradually increase an amplitude of movement, thus preparing your elbow and shoulder joints.
Wrists. Some people may experience pain, when they start doing push-ups. It’s all right, it's natural and it is caused by wrist stiffness, especially if you don’t have experience in floor push-ups. I would recommend to choose a maximum comfortable palms position, strengthen your wrists gradually and try to get accustomed to it. There is also an option to substitute floor push-ups with knuckle push-ups (or to use push-up bars) and simultaneously develop the wrist flexibility with the proper stretching exercises.
