Help for those who want to do push-ups

rileysowner

If you want to incorporate push-up in your workouts, you have chosen an excellent exercise not only for you chest, shoulders and triceps, but for your whole core since it is done in a plank position. Having said that, I know I have read many people here who say they cannot do them, so they do them on their knees. While that works, it removes some of the value for the core, and completely removes any to the legs. I know when you do them that way you are hoping to work your way up to doing a full push-up, but did you know there is another way to do this without doing it from your knees.

The answer is leverage. When you do a push-up on your knees you are changing the leverage to make it easier, but that is not the only way to do so. The other way to do this is to raise where you place your hands higher. Put them on the edge of a bench, or something even higher if that is still too difficult. That will allow you to do a full push-up and gain the benefits of that exercise. Since you will be able to do more repetitions you can increase your strength. It also allows you to increase and decrease the difficulty. So if you can do one of two push-ups on the floor before your muscles can't do another, you can them move up to a bench and do several more, or something even higher and do a few more. Then rest a while 60-90 seconds, and repeat. You will find your ability to do push-ups will be greatly improved.

As an aside, a good way to work on form is to do what are called ladders. Do one push-up, then rest the amount of time it took to do that one push-up. Then do two, and rest as long as it took to do two. Then do three, and rest as long as it took to do three. Repeat the pattern increasing the number you do, but don't do so many you come to failure. Instead when you have done as many in a row as you think you can without failing, work your way back down using the same pattern in reverse. When you get back to one, rest a minute or two, then repeat. Sometimes the ladder will just be doing on rep over and over again. Remember the point is not to get to the point where you cannot complete the whole move, if you add another one and do fail to repeat all of them, you have gone too far. Start going down the ladder.

I hope this helps.

I have to give credit to whom credit is due, this is a summary of one of the things Mark Lauren teaches in his book, "You Are your Own Gym" This book is well worth reading.

myboysmomx2

Thank you for sharing. This will help me a great deal...

kelseybee17

Great tip! Thanks!

grandmatbigsky

Hey! Great push-up tip! ...must be wise words on sensible excercise cuz it's coming from someone with grey hair! Slow and steady truly does win the race...

JoEllen92

Thank you for the tip, I shall try it. I can sometimes do pushups but more often than not I end up splaying on the floor or just not able to push my body up properly

WifeMomDVM

Thank you so much for this! I've been wanting to do a REAL push-up the RIGHT way for ages! This will be a good (and safe) place to start! Thanks again!

ubabe1

Thanks for the tip!! I'm going to try using a chair with my workout.

oscelyn

This is great info. I tried it on the bottom step and was actually able to get one fairly decent push up done. Thank you so much for sharing!

monylove311

Thanks. I hate push ups!

rileysowner

Bump

leithaakagrover

Thanks for the info. I also ordered the book from my library.

tabbychiro

Good info. The book looks interesting, put it on my wishlist.

rileysowner

The book by Mark Lauren is well worth getting. I do not regret purchasing it at all.

bizco

Found this on my Yahoo home page today. It's a youtube video showing how to the perfect REAL pushup. I have been doing them "wrong" my whole life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwRLWMcOdwI

katschi

I just ordered it from amazon.ca.
Thanks for the suggestion.

savannah47

Thanks for the info. I like to do wall push-ups.

rileysowner

Found this on my Yahoo home page today. It's a youtube video showing how to the perfect REAL pushup. I have been doing them "wrong" my whole life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwRLWMcOdwI

Excellent video. I have bookmarked it for when people ask about push-ups. Yes, when I read Mark Lauren's book which makes many of the same points, I realized I was doing push-ups wrong more often than right.