These days most girls want to swing kettlebells, flip tyres, press kegs filled with water and drag sleds, yet cannot perform 10 decent push ups or 1 single pull up.
Society is always looking for the ‘next best thing’ in the fitness industry and this leads to inconsistent, wishy-washy results.
Today, I want take you back a few decades to a movement that was considered the ultimate upper body exercise.
An exercise that guaranteed to build raw strength and muscle and keep you injury free.
Unfortunately, these days the bench press is considered the premium upper body exercise…
However, if you want to keep your shoulders, elbows and wrists pain free, then you might want to consider this long lost forgotten exercise – the push up.
Finding an exercise that not only strengthens your shoulders and arms, but also coordinates the midsection and lower body, is difficult.
The push up does it all.
Push ups specifically target your pec major and minor, anterior deltoid and triceps.
You also get some ‘incidental training’ of the core (lats, abdominals, glutes and quadriceps) due to the isometric hold that takes place during the push up and your rotator cuff goes into overdrive as it works to stabilize the joint.
It’s literally a full body exercise.
Top 2 Biggest Push Up Mistakes
For girls that can only pump out a handful of push ups, the first mistake is training to failure every single set.
You don’t need to make every set a competition to test how many you can do.
Those slow, grinding reps usually do more damage than good.
So, how many should you do?
I like to use this simple rule…
Your last rep should look like the first.
So, if you’re starting to drop in speed or your technique changes, then you know it’s time to terminate the set.
You’re done!
Have a rest and have another crack in a couple minutes or so.
The second biggest push up mistake, or any body weight exercise for that matter, is doing nothing but high reps.
For some reason, whenever we think of body weight exercises, we think of high reps.
For most, I’ve found the best rep range to be somewhere between 5-8 push ups per set.
However, if you can bang out 10+ push ups with no sweat, then you need to find a harder variation.
Here are a few you can try…
– Hindu Push Up
– Dive-bomb Push Up
– Spiderman Push Up
– Scorpion Push Up
– One Arm Elevated Push Up
– Ring Push Up
– Add external resistance
To add extra resistance when performing any push up variation, you can use bands and add chains or plates to your back.
To stay healthy, bullet proof and display strength that turns heads get push ups back into your workout program.
Oh and speaking of workout programs – I’ve got a new one for you that you might like.
It’s called Strong Curves…
It’s a simple 6 week minimalist workout that builds a strong, fit and athletic hourglass figure.
I’m still putting the finishing touches on it but if you’d like to receive early bird access you can jump on the list here:
http://grantlofthouse.com/strong-curves/
It’s 100% free and I think you’ll really love it.
Take care, comb your hair – talk soon,
Grant
