It occurs to me that people have many different definitions of what a proper push up is. And with the most recent survey on the site suggests that people actually care about proper push up form.
When I started doing push ups, I was doing them according to what I was taught in junior high school. Now I don't know about you, but I'm not sure that my junior high school gym teacher took the time and effort necessary to educate us on proper push up technique.
Browsing through the internet, I've come across many sites that tell you how to do a proper push up. I've even come across the push up rules for the Guinness Book of World Records.
Armed with all this information, I have come up with what I feel is a unifying definition of proper "regular" push up form. Here goes.
1. Hand placement: hands are to be placed just outside the shoulders. If you were to draw a rectangle that encompassed your body with the sides of the rectangle being the edge of your shoulders, then your hands should be just outside that. Here is a pictorial:
2. Foot placement: it says everywhere that feet are supposed to be at midline. I feel that you can have equally good form if you place your feet at shoulder width apart, i.e. within that rectangle described and drawn above. I say that because pushing your feet out actually helps you from arching your back by forcing the abs to tighten.
3. Body position: your body should be perfectly inline, from the neck to the heels, throughout the push up.
4. Head position: you have a couple of choices here. Many people suggest looking straight down. When I do that however, I end up moving my head up and down with the push up (which is incorrect - the head should be perfectly still). Another option, which is one I prefer, is to look "up" slightly. That helps focus on one point, and it also helps keepng the head from bobbing around and avoiding neck strain.
5. Top position: while in the top part of the push up, the arms should be straight, but should not be locked at the elbows. If you don't allow the elbows to lock, the muscles will be conracting the entire time.
6. Bottom position: at minimum, you must go down until the inside portion of your elbows are 90 degrees. You may however choose to go all the way down to the floor if you would like to increase your range of motion and srength.
7. Timing: experimenting with timing, I have found that doing 40 push ups a minute is a good compromise. Ideally, you would do each push up in 4 seconds. However, when going for maximum reps, it's not really ideal to do slow push ups. Doing very fast push ups though won't give quite as good a pump.
After practicing the perfect push up technique, I started using rotating handles to get maximum muscle stamina from my push ups. They're not necessary, but they sure help a great deal.
Enjoy!
9/27/2007
Proper Push Up Technique
9/20/2007
Push Up Training: The Secret Set
What does a secret set have to do with doing push ups?
If you're like me, you have a hard time mustering motivation to go the extra mile doing push ups (though you may have had a great idea to start a club)! If you are like me, then this tip might help you. Adding on an extra "secret" set of push ups, meaning a set that you don't count as part of your normal push up schedule, can really boost your productivity. Specifically, if this set is diamond push ups, then it will help tremendously.
Diamond push ups really focus on the triceps muscle, and a little bit on the inner chest. Building strong triceps will in turn help increase the maximum number of daily push ups you can do. I've started doing this "secret" set every morning before work for the past three days, and I've already increased my total number of push ups by 3 (which you know if you've been doing push ups for a while that it's tough to increase very much in a short period of time).
Lastly, while doing the set, pause halfway down, then again halfway up. The pauses really add to the burn without adding much to the time spent.
If you have any comments about how this works for you, feel free to leave them below!
If you like this post, give me ten cents....and I'll give YOU ten push ups."
9/14/2007
Maximum Benefit From One Set of Push Ups
Doing daily push ups at work, that's right...I said AT WORK, with my coworkers got me thinking about how to get the most benefit from doing just one set of push ups.
I thought about weight lifting. When doing bench press for example, you would ideally have someone spot you so you can do a couple of extra reps to burn out your muscles. If it works with weight lifting, why not with push ups?
Cue idea: so 2 minutes of push ups, instead of just one set! For the past week, we've been doing 2 minutes of push ups, taking breaks when necessary, but trying to get the most push ups in during that time. And I've gotta say that it works fantastically! Those extra 10-15 push ups really do their job of burning out the muscles.
Doing one set is like doing 90% of the work. Doing an extra 10-15 push ups shortly afterwards is doing 10% more work to get you 50% more benefit.
To step it up to expert, you would do the same 2 minute set on handles. Now you're feeling the burn!
Try it out next time you only have time for one set. Do 2 minutes instead!
9/03/2007
Increase Your Maximum Push Ups
I don't know about the rest of the world, but for me, motivation comes in spurts. Sometimes the spurts are long enough to get me into a habit, and sometimes that habit I worked so hard to form breaks from life intrusions.
Well today I found another little spurt of motivation to help me continue pushing up towards the 1000 push-ups goal. It's a routine developed by a former navy seal, Stew Smith, to increase the maximum number of push ups you can do - JUST what I've been looking for!
The schedule is 10 days long, and looks like this:
Days 1, 3, 5, 7, 9: 200 push-ups each day in as few sets as possible, resting 2 minutes between each set.
Days 2, 4, 6, 8, 10: 200 push-ups each day however you'd like to do them; the number of sets and rest time doesn't matter.
Sounds simple enough that I'm once again motivated. I'm starting today, day 1/10 - and I can currently do 41 continuous push-ups.
Here's to 1000!
If you like this post, give me 10 cents....and I'll give you 10 push ups."