How To Master The Push-Up
By: Anthony Moulesong
Tags: Exercise, Fitness, Health, Push Ups, Workout

Let’s start at the beginning. If you’re new to the movement, the first thing to do is to establish a starting point. Knee push-ups are something most people can do. It’s just a regular push-up, but instead of putting your weight on your toes, you’ll use your knees instead. So, here’s what you do. Get down on the floor, place your hands just wider than your chest and in line with your pectoral (chest) muscles. Get all the way down on the floor, with your chest resting on it. Push yourself up on your knees until your arms are locked out. Keep your elbows in! You don’t want your arms at greater than a 45-degree angle from your torso as you perform the exercise, or you’ll be putting too much strain on your shoulders and limiting the recruitment of your pecs. That was the hardest part for me when I started doing push-ups. Also, keep your back flat. Don’t stick your rump up in the air! This is easier to control when doing knee push-ups. Keep your core (stomach) nice and tight. Now that you’re all the way up with your arms locked out, lower yourself all the way to the floor again. It’s important that you make sure that you go through the complete motion in order to maximize the recruitment of the pecs. It doesn’t matter how many you can do if you’re not using proper form. Anybody can do more if they cheat!

Now that you know how to do them properly, see how many you can do before your form starts to crumble. As soon as you get to one where your elbows wing out past 45 degrees or your butt starts to rise (or you fall face-first to the floor), you’ve reached your starting number of reps. Don’t worry about how many that is (or isn’t). You’ve got to start somewhere! You’ll discover that if you work at it, that number will increase rapidly over the weeks and months.

Okay, so you have a baseline to work from now. You can do x number of knee push-ups. The goal now is to increase that number to twenty. The way to do that is by using progressive overload. Every time you do your push-ups, strive to do at least one more than the previous workout. Now, you might not be able to do that extra one every time, but it’s important that you try. You have to push for improvement. By pushing your body harder than you did the time before, you’re sending a signal to your muscles that they need to adapt. Remember, stop after your form begins to suffer. Live to push-up another day!

Now, it might take a while to get to twenty, so one way to increase your volume (the number of push-ups you do in an exercise session) is to do multiple sets. Just do one set that first day if you’re not used to the movement. Muscles get sore! Don’t try to do five sets and wake up the next morning feeling it every time you pick up your coffee mug. Have patience. During that second or third workout, add another set. After resting for two or three minutes, try to do the same number of push-ups as you did in the first set, but don’t be surprised or disappointed if you can’t do as many. All you want to do is go to failure (when your form falls apart). And after a few more workouts, add a third set. More volume means more muscle stimulation, which means more muscle adaptation during your rest days. Don’t do push-ups every day. Your muscles need to rest in order to adapt and grow. More isn’t necessarily better! If you’re working out hard but not making progress, or, even worse, regressing, you’re not getting enough rest between workouts. Every three days is a good starting point, and you’ll need even more rest the bigger and stronger you get.

After you get to where you can do twenty knee push-ups with excellent form (elbows in, back flat, tight core, lowering all the way to the floor), you’re ready to graduate to regular push-ups. You’ll repeat the whole process again. Do as many as you can to establish a starting point, try to add one every workout, and maintain good form. It will be more difficult! You’ll have to work harder to keep your back flat and core tight now that you're on your toes. Keeping your core tight will prevent rump-rising as well as give your abs some work. Push-ups are an excellent exercise for your core muscles as well as your pecs, shoulders, and triceps. You can go ahead and stick with multiple sets now that your chest is built up a bit and accustomed to the exercise. Get to where you can do multiple sets of twenty and you’re golden!

I’ll share a tip with you that helped me keep good form during push-ups, especially when it comes to your elbows winging out: get a pair of push-up bars. They’re just handles that you put on the ground and grip while performing the movement. You can orient them so that your fists are vertical (thumbs pointing ‘up’ toward your head) rather than horizontal (thumbs pointing ‘in’ toward your chest). By turning your hands this way, it becomes much easier to keep your elbows in. This was my biggest difficulty doing push-ups, and using bars really helped me increase my rate of progress. They also raise you a couple of inches higher off the floor, so you can go down another inch or so and really push your pecs hard. If you’re using bars, you don’t want to go all the way to the floor, but you do have to go all the way down until your chest is even with your fists (at least). I can’t stress enough how important it is that you go through the entire motion. Okay, maybe I can, and you’re tired of hearing about it by now, but it’s important!