Training for Push Ups
How to Set up for a Proper Push Up
When it comes to push ups, your form is crucial. Each push up needs to be done perfectly so that your total reps measured from workout to workout are on equal footing. If you did thirty perfect push ups two days ago, and then today you did sixty push ups by only going down halfway, sticking your ass up in the air, etc., it’s absolutely impossible to tell if you got any stronger.
Here’s how to get set up to do a push up:
•When down on the ground, set your hands at a distance that is slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Depending on your strength and experience, your hands should be angled in a way that feels comfortable to you. For me, my hands are set up so that my middle finger points straight up and away from me. You can also turn your hands inwards slightly if it’s less stressful on your wrists, or you can do your push ups on your knuckles (as long as you’re on a semi-soft surface like grass or carpet.
•Your feet should be set up in a way that feels right and comfortable to you. For some, that might be shoulder width apart. For others, it might be that the feet are touching. Generally speaking, the wider apart your feet, the more stable you’ll be for your push ups.
•Think of your body as one giant straight line – from the top of your head down through your heels. Your butt shouldn’t be sticking way up in the air or sagging.
•If you have a problem getting the proper form with your body, try this (yes I’m serious): clench your butt, and then tighten your abs. Your core will be engaged, and your body should be in that straight line. If you’ve been doing push ups incorrectly, this might be a big change for you.
•Your head should be looking slightly ahead of you, not straight down (yeah I know I’m looking straight down in my top picture, I hadn’t started yet!). I read somewhere that said “if you’re doing them right, your chin should be the first part of your head to touch the floor, not your nose.” Looking up helps you keep your body in line, but feel free to look down if that helps you concentrate more.
•At the top of your push up, your arms should be straight and supporting your weight. You’re now ready to do a push up.
How to Complete a Push Up
Here’s how to complete one repetition of a push up:
•With your arms straight, butt clenched, and abs braced, steadily lower yourself until your elbows are at a 90 degree angle or smaller. Depending on your level of experience, age, and flexibility, 90 degrees might be the lowest you’re able to go. Personally, I like to go down until my chest (not my face), hits the floor. That way, I know I’m going the same distance each and every time.
•Try not to let your elbows go flying way out with each repetition. Keep them relatively close to your body, and keep note of when they start to fly out when you get tired.
•Once your chest touches the floor (or your arms go down to a 90 degree angle), pause slightly and then explode back up until you’re back in the same position.
•Congratulations, you just did a proper push up. Do as many as you can until you start to feel your form slip (even slightly); you are done for that set. Ten good push ups and 5 crappy ones are tough to quantify against eleven good push ups. If you can only do ten of something, write down your results and aim for 11 next time. Perfect form allows you to keep track of your improvements week over week.
“But I Can’t Do a Push Up!”
That’s okay, here’s a plan that will help you get there. You need to start with an easier push movement, and work up to progressively more difficult types of moves that will eventually result in you doing true push ups.
Start with Wall Push Ups:
Just like with a regular push up, clench your butt, brace your abs, and set your hands on a wall at a width that’s wider than shoulder-width apart. Walk backwards with your feet until your arms are fully extended and supporting your weight (generally one decent sized step back with both feet will suffice). Keeping the rest of your body in a straight line, steadily lower yourself towards the wall until your nose almost touches the wall, and then explode back up to the starting position.
Do 4 sets of wall push ups with a 2-minute rest between sets, every other day. Keep track of how many repetitions you can do WITH PROPER FORM for each set in a notebook for easy comparison to previous workouts. Once you can do 4 sets of 20 repetitions of wall push ups, you can progress to elevated (or incline) push ups.
Elevated Push Ups are just what they sound like – your hands are on an elevated surface, whether it’s something as tall as a kitchen table or as low as a few blocks that are inches off the ground. This will depend on your level of strength and experience.
If you’ve just progressed from wall push ups, pick something that is at a level that’s right for you – I generally find the back of a park bench or the side of a picnic table to be a perfect height for doing incline push ups.
Do 4 sets of elevated push ups with a 2-minute rest between sets, every other day. Again, keep track of all of your stats for how many proper form repetitions you can do in each set. Once you can do 4 sets of 20 repetitions, it’s time to either move to regular push ups, knee push ups, or a lower height for your hands to be supported.
To work on progression, try to doing your elevated push ups on the stairs in your house. As you get stronger, you can move your hands to lower and lower steps until your hands are on the ground. Then try lower incline push up, or push ups with your knees on the ground. In my opinion, if you can do 4 sets of 20 repetitions of incline push ups, it might be time to switch to regular push ups.
Push Up Variations
Basic push ups can get boring – fortunately there are dozens upon dozens of variations to make things more difficult for you. Although I think the Hundred Push Ups program is a solid program for folks to follow, I’m a bigger fan of making the push ups tougher once you’re able to do more than four sets of 20+ push ups.
Why? Because muscle and strength get built when you’re lifting a heavy enough weight that somewhere between 6-12 repetitions per set is a challenge (and even up to 15-20 reps to an extent…but beyond that it becomes less about strength and muscle building and more about muscular endurance).
Once you’re cranking out perfect form push ups like it’s your job, try some of these variations on for size. Click on each for a video demonstration (done by yours truly):
•One foot push ups – the easiest variation, your body needs to stay in balance throughout the whole movement.
•Walking push ups – adds a degree of difficulty by forcing you to move your arms around in between reps
•Decline push ups – these work your shoulders and triceps more so than normal push ups.
•Tricep push ups – keep your arms tight at your side, rotate your hands outward, and keep your elbows tight as you lower your body. Works your triceps like crazy.
•Dive-bomber push ups – funky, difficult, but oh so fun. I’d explain it, but just watch the video
•Plyometric Push ups – these are brutal and will wear you out just after a few repetitions. Just don’t hurt yourself!
Therapeutic Taping, Kinesio Tape, KT Tape…What is it you ask and is it for me?
Therapeutic Tape and Kinesio Tape is an elastic sports and fitness tape designed for muscle, ligament, and tendon pain relief and support. No matter what your training for, you’ve probably come into contact with some type of injury during your fitness journey and lets be honest nothing slows us down faster than pain and injury. So along with other rehabilitative methods this taping technique could be helpful for you.
Kinesio Taping is a rehabilitative taping technique that is designed to facilitate the body’s natural healing process while providing support and stability to muscles and joints without restricting the body’s range of motion. It also provides extended soft tissue manipulation to prolong the benefits of manual therapy.
It has the ability to re-educate performance, prevent injury and promote good circulation (lymphatic drainage) and healing by microscopically lifting the skin.
This tape is lightweight, comfortable to wear, and can be used for hundreds of common injuries such as lower back pain, knee pain, shin splints, carpal tunnel syndrome, and tennis elbow, just to name a few. It can be worn for days at a time, through sweaty workouts, work, and showers. It is made with 100% medical grade, acrylic heat activated adhesive, no medical properties in tape, and Latex Free.
Kinesio Taping has also been shown to affect scars. Reductions of adhesions and pitting, softening, flattening, improved pliability, and reduction of contractures have been seen in some patients.
*Definition Fitness is now providing this service to our clients. If you are interested or would like to find out more information on it please feel free to ask.
We will be charging $10.00-$15.00 for this service (dependant on size of area). If you provide your own tape we can discount service.
So there are only 3 more challenges before the end f the year and we tally the results to see who will win a free workout and free massage!
-Your physical challenge for the week is to do your age in pushups every day for 5 days in a row= 5 points
-Your nutrition challenge is to try 2 new vegetable recipes this week= 6 points (3 per dish)
Happy December Definition Clients…this weeks challenge will be a physical one. We will be holding a plank for 1 minute, then everyday you will add 15 seconds to that ending the week with 2 minutes total by Friday. Happy Planking and keep up the awesome work!
• Reduce your sugar intake to:
-Women- 20 grams or less a day
-Men- 36 grams or less a day
• Record your intake and report to your trainer
• Must have 5 days recorded and turn in by next Monday
• Fruit does not count towards your total
• Worth 5 points!
Do 100 squats everyday, even on training session days. Take a picture or video of you doing your squats to show your trainer. Post to Facebook or twitter for extra points. Worth 10 points total. 1 extra point for every post.
Attention Clients: We are setting up a challenge series to help keep you focused, fit, and healthy during the next 2 months. We know the holidays can get hard to stay on track but lets stay strong and work hard through this time together as a team backing each other up! If that’s not enough we will be keeping a running point system just to make it interesting and at the end of these 2 months we will have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winner with some amazing prizes including free training session, free massage, or Definition merchandise. Don’t miss out on your chance to stay on track of your fitness and enjoy some amazing prizes!!
With that said our first challenge:
CHALLENGE #1
Nutrition: Food Journal
•Keep a food journal for 5 consecutive days.
•List all food(s) and drink(s) consumed from morning to bedtime.
•Include meals AND snacks, and date/time of day for each entry.
•Portion size or calorie count not required*
*Include calorie count for each entry and gain an additional point!!
Completion value = 1 Definition point
TRANSFORM YOURSELF!
If your training hard…like I know most of you are, you need to take some rest days. Usually about 1 to 3 days, this can usually help prevent repetitive stress injuries and give your muscles the time they need for repair. But that doesn’t mean you need to a couch potato and veg-out all day on the couch! Being moderately active can actually help your body with recovery. Getting your heart rate up helps to get your blood flowing, bringing oxygen and nutrients to muscles damaged by working out. Getting your blood pumping will also help flush away waste products like lactic acid that can build up in muscles post exercise. Try doing some activity that you enjoy for about 20-30 minutes. Some ideas for active rest exercise: a power walk, a bike ride about town (avoiding serious climbs, of course), or a leisurely paced swim, gardening, or just playing with the kiddos! So be sure to get out there and enjoy those rest day.
Here is a quick and easy recipe for chicken stir-fry peanut sauce that I found and its so good, if you can have peanuts and you like your veggies! You can put this over a little rice pasta, spaghetti squash, brown rice, or with veggies by themselves. Try it out and let us know what you think or share some of your favorite recipes with us!
First make peanut sauce set aside.
Peanut Sauce
6 TBS Soy Sauce (low sodium *I like Braggs Liquid Amino Acids)
6 TBS Almond Butter
3 TBS Honey
3 Cloves of Garlic
Pinch of Ginger
Cut chicken up in chunks and stir fry in olive oil or coconut oil until no longer pink. Set aside.
Cut up your favorite veggies…squash, zucchini, broccoli, mushrooms etc. and stir fry in remaining oil if you have any. Once veggies are cooked to a crispy liking add in Chicken and Peanut Sauce. And for extra crunch throw in a pinch of sunflower seeds!
And Enjoy!!
My name is Scott Winters and I’m the new kid on the block at Definition Fitness. I am a certified Personal Trainer through the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and also a certified Spinning Instructor (Mad Dog Athletics). I happy to report that I most recently received my Sports Nutrition Specialist accreditation through the ISSN. There are three important components to essential and balanced fitness: 1) strength training, 2) cardio training, and 3) nutrition. I consider my fitness credentials to encompass these three vital components and have worked with determination to reach this fitness “trifecta”.
A little about me: I was raised in the Midwest, but since 2000 I am definitely a transplanted Floridian. All of my immediate family resides in Florida also. Mostly recently, I was a Personal Trainer and Group Fitness Instructor at The Fitness Center at Florida Hospital in Orlando, FL. There I worked with a wide array of clients age-wise, fitness abilities, special conditions, whom collectively provided me invaluable knowledge and experience. I also led 5 group fitness classes a week, bootcamps and leg sculpting classes, and I loved everyone minute of it. Prior to that I owned my own successful personal training studio just east of downtown Orlando, and conducted Spinning classes there also.
I am lucky to come from an athletic-minded family where tennis, baseball, cycling, track and field, were a big part of my upbringing. Ever since high school (quite a long time ago), I have been involved in some type of sport or athletic activity whether that be my daily workouts or Spinning sessions, participating in an occasional 5K or 10K run, cycling an organized 28 or 42 mile ride, a couple rounds of tennis, my annual ski trips, or just rollerblading along a rails-to-trails. This all has followed me through my lifetime; fitness, health, and nutrition have been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I am grateful I am doing something I love as a profession, and I thankful that I am able to help my clients push their limits and reach their goals for a fitter life both mind and body. It’s SO much more than just lifting weights and running the treadmill, and I look forward to continuing to lead and inspire my clients here at Definition Fitness.
