What is the first and most important condition, for an exercise to have an effect on your body?
In case, that you can’t remember, I will remind you that in order for an exercise to have the desired effect on your body you should perform it with PROPER TECHNIQUE!
As a whole, even the best training program, could seem ineffective, if you are not performing the exercises with proper technique!
As you know, squats are one of my favorite movements and my heart is tearing apart when I notice somebody performing them wrong! In case that you haven’t mastered the squats yet, check out this article( SQUATS: Why It Is a Must to Do Them and How to Perform Them Properly) and get busy practicing them!
Today, I want to raise the topic about another exercise, that in first sight is really simple, and everybody from the 4 year old boy, to the 80 year old grandpa is trying to perform, yet most people perform it wrong! And the exercise is the push-up!
Before I started educating myself about training and nutrition, I was also one of people who thought that the more T-shape your body looks like, when you perform the push- up, the better it is! Yes, but in reality this is far from the truth!
How to perform it properly?
First, I will explain how you are supposed to do a push-up correctly and then I will list some of the most common mistakes.
1.Get in a plank postion, with your arms fully extended. Your body should be straight and tight- head, shoulders, torso and legs should be in line. Imagine your body, as a piece of board!
2.Your fingers should be spread and you should be trying to “grab” the ground.
3.Imagine that you should keep a piece of paper or a pencil under your armpits. Then squeeze your armpits, so you can activate your lats! Did you imagine that?
4.Make sure that your abs and your glutes are tight. Your torso shouldn’t be dropping down!
5.Push your toes into the ground, so you can make sure that your whole body is tight
6.Then row yourself down, until your chest touches the ground. Be careful for your torso. Don’t let it drop down. Stay tight and straight. Your body should be in perfect alignment the whole time! Don’t forget that you are a board. 😉
7. Your body shouldn’t look like the letter T. You should be more like an arrow. So try to keep your elbows closer to your body and not to the side!
8.Then push yourself up, until you reach a full lock out. As if you are trying to push yourself away from the ground.
Common mistakes:
1.As I already mentioned, one of the most common mistakes is to let your elbows go to the side, and look like the letter T.
Truth is that this is the easier way to perform a push-up, because you activate less muscles. The tension on the triceps is a lot more, when your elbows are closer to your body!
Besides that, push- ups, when performed as if you are the letter T, could lead to shoulder pain and shoulder injuries! As a person who has a lot of shoulder injuries, I will tell you from my own experience that T-letter push-ups aren’t good!
2.Your torso drops down
At times you could see people performing push- ups in a really comical way. They are mostly dropping and lifting their torso, than actually rowing their body down.
As I told you, the torso should be tight. To achieve it, make sure that your abs and glutes are kept tight!
If your torso, reaches the ground before your chest, this means that you are not performing the push-up correctly!
And besides that, this puts a lot of stress on your lower back, because you are not activating the proper muscles!
3.You don’t do the push-up with a full ROM
As I said, a push-up is considered for a rep, when your chest, reaches the ground. More often than not, people fool themselves, that they are in good shape and that they can do more reps, when in reality this is far from the truth. Often times, if you ask somebody, who is showing off, how he can do 20-30 push- ups in a row, to perform them all the way down, he will probably hardly get 10 straight reps!
I’ve said it before and I will repeat it! Leave your ego at the door! Perform the exercises correctly! It is far better to do 10 good push-ups, than 30 crappy reps!
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And here are 32 push-up variations! :))
