Who doesn’t want to bang out a ton of quality push ups? Along with being a total upper body toner, the push up is down right impressive when you do multiple clean reps.
I wanted to give you a few sneaky push ups secrets to help you to that end.
Now I like to train with strict form as much as possible. Not only does it ensure that I’ll be working the intended muscles, but it helps avoid injury. I’ve been plagued with nagging injuries of late and I could do without them.
The beauty of having a ton of workout experience, is that I’ve learned to work around injury, I never actually take a full break from training (possibly a red flag!).
In any case, I want to share with you the ‘The Push Up Three Point Power Position’. (That’s alotta ‘P’s’!)
This is your ticket to more quality and quantity push ups.
First off, examine the hand position. Many peeps use a narrow hand position, just outside the ribs. While this is an excellent position for working the triceps, it seriously reduces strength when you’re going for an all out push up max (like in this video HERE). By using a shoulder width hand position in line with the shoulders, you’ll be able to engage the strong muscles of the chest and shoulders as well as the triceps to triple your push up power.
Secondly, the muscles of the core are essential to max out the push up challenge. Think about tucking the tummy in and keeping the abs tight while doing the push up. Adding planks to your workouts will help you totally rock the push up challenge.
The third tip for ‘The Push Up Three Point Power Position’ is to widen the base of support, or the legs once you’ve maxed out with a narrow stance. Most people will just drop to their knees to modify the push up exercise. Before modifying it this way, widen the feet and it takes some of the load off the upper body. While this isn’t ‘perfect form’, you can use it when training so that once you get to your push up challenge, you’ll add more reps to your set. This is sort of like ‘spotting’ yourself, or a ‘forced rep’ or like what the kip is to the pull up. You can read about that tip here.
For more tips and tricks and a kick a$$ done for you push up program, check out my Challenge Workouts program and see if it’s right for you.