I had a woman come in about a year ago who had her goals set – lose some weight, get stronger, and feel like she did 10 years ago. After talking for a while she lit up and said, “I REALLY want to be able to do a push-up”.
You could sense the excitement when she said It so I wrote a note and put a star next to It.
Now, we work on push-ups for just about everyone anyway, but for her, and how happy she would be to get this goal, we made It a point to emphasize her push-up training from day 1.
After a few months she was making some amazing progress. Her weight was down, she was less stiff, more mobile, much stronger, and in a great rhythm of consistency. She had done push-up variations often in her training programs but never mentioned her goal to be able to do a full one after our first conversation.
But there came a day where her workout for that day just read “push-up” and she looked at me confused. No variation, no help, just a regular old push-up and you could sense her skepticism. She got set up slowly, lowered her chest to the floor, pushed as hard as she possibly could, and popped right back up to the top!
Her eyes lit up like nothing we’ve ever seen before!
It wasn’t easy but she got It. It took time, a lot of consistency, and effort to get to that point but she was so proud of herself for getting one. From there we have been able to add in other types of push-up progressions and keep finding new ways to challenge her in that exercise.
Her scenario is awesome and I know she isn’t the only one looking to get they first push-up.
Today I want to run through some push-up variations we use to help work up to a true unassisted push-up and also some variations to try if you need to challenge yourself a bit.
Elevate a barbell on a rack. The lower the bar goes the harder things will become.
Start off easy, and work on moving with control. Once your movement is near perfect, lower the bar. With most things on this list, form is king. If we sacrifice form on the beginning movements, the real thing will become just that much harder.
Once you can get 10-12 perfect reps at a certain height, try lowering the bar and keep progressing this way.
This will begin to train us for push-ups to the floor. Same ideas apply as above, work on the movement, try to get as low as you can and perfect that motion.
Once you can get 10-12 perfect kneeling push-ups you can progress this movement by elevating your knees on a small box (4-6″ or start doing a slight pause at the bottom of each rep.
#3: Slow Eccentric to kneeling push-ups
Now this is where we start working into (almost) true push-up form.
For these, the goal is to lower yourself all the way to the floor with near perfect form, once you get there, drop the knees and push back up. Take the knees off the floor and go again.
Don’t forget to go SLOW.
The lowering can be one of the harder portions of the push-ups. So focus on that part of the exercise A LOT. Slow is key.
To level up this movement you can elevated your hands on weight plates to add some more range of motion to the lowering portion of the rep.
For this, the heavier the band and the higher up the rack It is set up, the easier this will become. In many cases, we can make this variation feel easier than a lot of the others if we lean into those two things!
But because we are deeper into the progressions here, we want to find a band resistance and a height that really pushes us.
As you lower your body, the band tension builds around your chest to help you push from the bottom.
I love these because It really does help us learn how a full push-up should feel.
Once you can get 10-12 reps with a certain band and height, either lower the band a bit or grab a lighter tension band.
Once you feel confident in your push-up strength you can handle some real push-ups without the assistance.
I like to start with a yoga block or plate under my chest to aim to. Start a little higher up and slowly reduce the elevation as you get stronger.
Start up much higher than you think, maybe even a half rep to start is good. Now all you do is lower the height very conservatively as you get better and better.
#6: Here are a few progressions for your push-ups
Now that you can do a push-up, It doesn’t just end there! We have so many variations to keep elevating your push-up strength over time!
-Tempo push-ups
-Weighted push-ups
-Barbell balance push-ups
-Added range of motion
-Ladder sets
-Uneven push-ups
-Feet elevated push-ups
-Banded push-ups
-Plyo push-ups
-Single arm supported push-up
-Diamond push-ups
-Tricep push-ups
-Ring push-ups
I love this exercise and I love seeing people work their way up to their first full push-up. It’s a milestone for a lot of people and something most of us can work for!
In good health,
Jeff
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