A Guide to Push Ups

Pushups. They look incredibly easy, uncomplicated and almost childish when compared to arsenal of fitness machines and free weights at the gym.

Before the Push Up

Warm up with a bit of cardio; options include skipping rope, jumping jacks, jogging. The physically active can even combine a bit of the three. However, don’t wear yourself out in the warm up process in the zealous enthusiasm of fitness; the purpose here is to get blood pumping through your arms, chest and back, optimizing your ability to support your frame when you get down to it.

What is a push up?

Remember to exhale while raising your body, and pause a moment, and hold the push up pose before raising your body back to prone position. Keeping this rhythm of breathing enables optimum oxygen levels. And more oxygen means better workouts.

A Contingency Plan

Factoring in people who don’t have the shoulder/chest strength yet to perform a ‘proper’, sustained pushup, it is advisable to bend the knees so that they touch the floor during the push-up. This will create more surface area for the body to bear the weight.

Alternatively, beginners can also perform inclined pushups. This is an inclined push-up.

Alternatively, you can lean on a vertical surface (like a wall)

Why do pushups?

With regular push-ups over a long period of time, you can create massive changes in how your abs, triceps, shoulder and torso look. If the monotony of the basic pushup might get you thinking of it as just another exercise, try this. To work specifically on your chest, widen the position of your hands a bit further. For triceps, bring ‘em closer. See, with just two tiny changes in your stance, you emphasize two different muscle groups!

What to NOT do

With what seems a simple goal of ten pushups, you may have started optimistically. However, sometime near the seventh push up, when fatigue sets in, you might literally ‘compromise your stance’; by letting your elbow joints take the weight of your body when you rise up. Pushups are meant to exercise abs, triceps, shoulders and chest. Not elbow joints. It may seem ridiculous to even point it out, but a little detail like, if not rectified can cause seriously elbow damage. Another very popular mistake is to let the chest touch the ground when you descend. It may look cool, but it just takes away the weight from your arms.

Ditto for a desperate streak of making up for lost workout time. If, a 10 pushups a day guy misses 3 days of workout, and then decides to make up for it with 40 pushups when he gets the chance. Your body doesn’t work like that.
The holiday season seems a good excuse to chuck your fitness regime. But you can manage two minutes, cant you? Just two minutes of push-ups may seem tiny, but sometimes when we get lost, a baby step keeps us on track.

Fitness Log

Maintain a simple notebook logging down your warm-up exercise(s) & time, the number of pushups you did. Also, if you count calories, then remember that a push-up can burn up to one calorie. (mention how if you get dedicated, you can burn away your pint of beer, so stay tuned when we get advanced). And you can always use your jotted fitness stats with people who’ve been working at fitness for a while longer than you.

Stretch

Stretch your chest muscles by holding onto a wall, and then stretching away from it. Any other method by which you can feel a gentle stretch on the concerned muscles is appropriate. Just don’t overdo it - hold the stretch for a moment before coming back to original position.