Push-ups For Strength

Push-ups are all too often regarded as a weak alternative to the mighty bench press. Yet, not only can push-ups improve your bench press; not only do you have no business even doing bench presses unless you can knock out a couple of dozen push-ups without undue effort; push-ups can be a respectable strength exercise in themselves, offering significant benefits over the bench press in several important areas.  

One is simple vanity: men in particular like to bench to see their arm and chest muscles grow, and the bench press has been fetishized among some ill-advised lifters to the point that they hardly ever do anything else. It’s easy to spot these people – they’re the ones with their shoulders pulled halfway down their chests by over-tight pectoral muscles unresistant by a weak upper back.

The other reason is that most people are far and away stronger pressing and pulling laterally than vertically, so that most of us will have a far higher row than pull-up and a far higher bench than overhead press even if we train both lifts.

The King of Upper Body Exercises

So the bench press is the king of upper body exercises? Not exactly.

For some, the push-up can be a better strength exercise. A simple test is this: if you can’t do 20 neat correct push-ups without undue difficulty, stay away from barbells and dumbbells. Even for many who can meet that standard, the push-up can remain a superior strength training tool to the standard array of presses.

Why? Because push-ups are a nearly full body movement, requiring input from the legs and back, core and shoulders as well as the abs and chest and arms. While it’s much more difficult to progressively overload the push-up than the bench press, the push-up is therefore a better movement for beginner and even intermediate athletes – and requiring very strict form and making tempo adjustments can keep the push-up challenging.  

Additionally, many stronger athletes are also bigger athletes and consequently bodyweight exercises can be much more challenging to these individuals than they might expect.

Types of Push-up

While there are many push-up variations, none of which is actually ‘wrong,’ this article will focus on what I regard as the basic push-up. That means a straight body without piked or sagging hips and hands directly under the shoulders. Ideally, the fingers should point forward. A repetition starts with straight arms and the halfway point is when the chest touches the floor, and the rep is finished when you return to the straight arm position. Elbows should brush the sides of the chest on the way through the exercise, and should definitely never get more than 45° away from the body.

Common Errors

False reps occur when you do partials without meaning to. I’ve seen these done two ways. One is to blast through reps ‘without touching the sides’ – you’re never at the top or the bottom, and typically people who do this stay out of the difficult bottom third of the movement altogether. Doing them fast and sloppy makes you feel like you’re cranking out reps, but really you’re just making a mess. Work on form instead.

Worming, caterpillaring or whatever you want to refer to it as, occurs when you peel yourself off the floor one segment at a time. Unlike false reps, which are a result of general weakness and egoism combined, worming is a result of a weak core, or a core that’s incorrectly positioned. Think of yourself standing and imagine that your pelvis is a bowl of water, full to the brim.

If your pelvis is neutral, the water will stay in he bowl. If the water would spill out the front of the bowl, onto your feet, you have ‘anterior pelvic tilt’ – the back of your pelvis is raised and the front lowered. The opposite position is posterior pelvic tilt, in which the water would pour out backwards.

Anterior pelvic tilt is associated with tight spinal erectors and glutes and lordosis, but it’s also the correct form for some exercises. In push-ups it creates a weak point in the lower back and that’s where you’ll sag if you have this problem.

The solution? Actively tense your glutes and imagine you’re about to receive a blow to your lower abdomen. That should result in increased posterior pelvic tilt, protecting your lower back and preventing sagging and ‘worming.’

Finally, incorrect arm positioning refers to allowing your elbows to flare or using a wide-elbowed posture with your hands and elbows high. While this is a way of doing push-ups, it’s something you should progress to after you can do a basic push-up, not a substitute for a basic push-up. Allowing your elbows to flare out puts your shoulder health at risk and throws the weight of your body in the bottom third of the exercise on passive structures in the shoulders that don’t really like this range of motion.

Progressions for a Perfect Push-up

All three common mistakes are essentially a way to avoid doing a push-up by doing something else instead. It’s a better idea to simply learn to do push-ups, and here’s a progression of simple bodyweight exercises that end in a set of picture-perfect pushups.

1: The Plank

Planks are a go-to abs exercise – in fact, though, many people go to them far too much. After about 1 minute, is a prolonged static hold really doing you any good? After all, the job of the core is to stabilize dynamically - against constantly changing forces.

If you can’t hold a plank, then your push-up form will suffer, though, so start with the simpler exercise. To perform a basic plank, start with your elbows under your shoulders and your hands together, your forearms forming an inverted V shape. Your feet can be shoulder-width apart – put them together to make the exercise harder. Keep your body in a straight line from the heels of your feet to the crown of your head. That’s it – except it’s not…

2: The Advanced Plank

The advanced plank is performed by simply doing a normal plank extremely well. It’s a general rule of bodyweight training that minor progressions in form make massive changes to the difficulty of an exercise and this is no exception.

Begin by getting into your standard plank position. Now, walk your elbows forward and narrow them as much as you can. Tense your quads (the muscles in your thighs) to lock your legs out and tense your glutes as hard as you can, which will throw more stress onto your abdominal muscles and protect your lower back more too. Keep your neck in a neutral position.

Essentially you’re increasing the ‘calliper-like’ forces on the body, and at the same time making the body less of a calliper shape and more like a plank. That means more force and less leverage, making the exercise that much harder.

3: Static Holds

What it says on the tin. This is a push-up where you start in the top position and stay there. Concentrate on your core alignment and hold for a maximum of a minute before moving on to another progression.

4: Half-Hindu Push-ups

These don’t require you to make a half-hearted religious commitment. Rather, they are an adapted Hindu push-up – a great exercise in its own right – altered to make it more effective at improving your push-up.

Begin in the standard push-up position, and lower yourself to the bottom position. Then pull your butt back and up without bending your knees – it’s OK to bend them slightly but your legs should stay more or less straight. You should finish in the yoga position called ‘downward dog’ – an inverted V shape with your hips high and your arms and legs straight. Lower yourself to the top of the push-up position and repeat. While standard Hindu push-ups are a good push-up progression in themselves, these can be better for learning push-ups, since the downward movement is a negative push-up.

5: Push-ups

Set up with your neck in neutral, your glutes and abs fired up and your chest large, looking at a spot on the floor a few feet in front of you.  Making sure the heads of your shoulders stay in place and your arms don't 'screw' or twist, lower yourself until your chest, hips and chin just kiss the ground together.  For individuals with larger chests, the chest should be the guide, and there shouldn't be any weight on the chest.  Drive back up.  Don't allow your shoulders to creep forward - your scapulae will move naturally but don't use the upper deltoids too much.  This should be an upper back as much as a chest exercise.

Pointers for the way forward

A couple of sets of good push-ups are beyond most people who consider themselves fit. If you found 2X20 a doddle or you’re looking for the next step, try these tweaks.

Monkey with the tempo. When you alter the rate at which you do an exercise you alter the exercise. Deadlift fast enough and it runs the risk of becoming a clean pull. Front squat too fast and you might squat press by accident! Push-ups can be made more of an effective strength exercise by doing the negative – the lowering part – very slow. Try counting five on the way back down, holding the bottom position for a second and coming back up as fast as you can. If five’s easy, try ten.

Alter the range of motion. Try elevating your hands, so that you can lower your body through your hands and get a ‘deeper’ push-up. Even an extra inch of travel can make a huge difference to your push-up’s effectiveness.

Take something off the floor. Taking a foot off the floor makes the stabilization demands on the core much harder, which in turn challenges your chest and shoulders that much more. If you feel like a real challenge try taking one hand off the floor…