Pushups is one of the most popular upper body exercises. It does not require any equipment, which means you can do wherever you want. When done right you can build upper body strength and muscles. However, it can be challenging and can cause unnecessary injury when the body is not ready.
What is Pushups
Before moving on, let me share how pushups should look like.
Place the hands under the shoulder with hand width slightly outside of shoulder width. Hand position can be adjusted based on your wrist mobility.
Keep your legs straight and make sure your hip does not drop throughout the exercise.
As you descend start squeezing your shoulder blades and flex your elbows to lower the chest down. For standard pushups the elbow position should be 45 degrees away from your body rather than 90 degrees. During this process, head or hip should not drop lower.
Once the chest slightly touch the floor, start extending your arms and finish by fully extending your elbows.
Reason Why Push Up Can Be Challenging
Pushups is an exercise that pushes the body away from the floor. Depending on what sources you look at but amount of weight you will be lifting during push up is about 65-70% of your body weight. If you weigh 150lb, you will be lifting 97-105lb. If you weigh 200lb, you will be lifting 130-140lb. This is the primary reason why some people struggle with pushups because they are not strong enough.
Another issue most people have, and probably this is a bigger issue, are the joint problems. Whether is wrist, elbow, shoulder, scapula, or lower back, due to lack of exercise and physical activity, most people don’t have joint mobility that allow them to do pushups.
Prepare The Joints
Pushups seems to be a simple exercise; however, it involves so many body parts. Main joints that are involved in pushups are wrist, elbow, shoulder, and shoulder blades. If you use computer a lot at work or drive long distance, you will need to mobilize and prepare these joints to do a pushup. Other area that will be involved is lower back and feet. Tight hip flexors and weak core may force the hip to drop while doing the pushups and will make the exercise less effective. Ankle strength and mobility, although may not mentioned often, is important to support the pushups movements. When you go through repetitions with pushups, your feet must support your weight.
For pushups preparation work here are some routines to follow.
If you are already mobile and strong, and you can comfortably perform pushups, this portion can be bypassed. However, if you are new to the exercise or have not been doing the exercise, you should spend time with preparation work.
If you are needing to use handle to protect your wrist, belt to support your lower back, sleeves to support your elbows, you will need to spend time on joint work before entering the actual exercise
Regress to Progress
After the preparation is done, now you can get on the floor and start doing the pushups. Not really. Remember the issues? Mobility and strength. Even when your mobility is ready, your strength may not be. It is always good to start with regressed version first and work your way up. Here are two pushups variations that can help build your pushups.
Assisted Pushups (Wall, Dining Table, Chair, Coffee Table)
Assisted pushups is probably the easiest version of pushups and you can pretty much use anything to support. First level should be the wall. Second will be dining table or table about your waist height. Then comes chair which should be about your thigh height. Lastly coffee table or below the knee height.
At each level, complete 3 sets of 15-20 repetitions before moving on to lower support.
Ring Pushups (Ring or TRX)
Ring or TRX can be used as support but it is unstable which allows to strengthen your shoulder stabilizing muscles and core along with your pushups. You can adjust according to your ability. When you can do 3 sets of 15-20 reps, you can lower the suspension for more challenge. Make sure that hands come right next to your chest so that you can work on your joint mobility.
Descending Pushup (Can be done with assisted)
While you are building pushup strength through assisted pushups and ring pushups, you also want to practice your pushups. Start off by learning how to position your hands and lower your body to the floor as slowly as possible. At the bottom position, you can rest your entire body on the floor and get yourself back up to pushup position in anyway shape of form. This exercise is called descending pushups. Work up to 10 seconds descend for a starter. May not seem a long time but you will be challenged. Once the 10 seconds gets easier, try going for 30 seconds.
If you feel like floor descending pushups is too challenging for you, you can practice this with assisted version until you feel comfortable trying this on the floor.
As you work on these pushups progression, along with prep work, you will be building not only a strength to do pushups but also joints will become stronger and stable. Too many times we all want to get stuff done fast and ignoring the minor detail and end up with injuries. Lets do it right and get your pushups skills built!
Kota Shimada
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