The perfect pushup

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This article was published 21/04/2015 (3905 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The pushup is a great exercise that you can do anytime, anywhere.

They help to strengthen the upper body, particularly the pectoral muscles of the chest, and tricep muscles at the back of the upper arm, as well as the shoulders and the abdominal muscles. Here’s a primer on pushups, including technique basics, common mistakes and how to include them in workouts.

First, the technical basics. To begin the pushup, start in a high plank position, with arms straight and body straight. Make sure that you are engaging your abdominals, especially lower abdominals as well as your gluteal muscles to ensure that your back does not sag at any point during the pushup. From here, check that your fingers are pointing directly in front of you and that your shoulder blades are flattened down on your back and away from your ears, so that you create tension in the upper back and the area at the back of the armpit. As you lower into the bottom position, ensure that the elbows don’t flare out and that you go down as low as you can, ideally so that your chest touches the floor. In the bottom position, your elbows should be directly over your wrists such that your shoulders may come forward as you lower. Keep your core engaged and elbows in as you push back up into your starting position, without letting your spine sag.

The most common mistakes on the pushup are not going down low enough to engage all the muscles, coming up in a snaking motion rather than in one solid piece and excess winging out of the elbows. Any of these technical flaws will make the pushup much less effective and can even result in injury, so if you notice your technique breaking down, simply scale back to an easier variation of the movement as described below.

If you need to scale back the pushup, consider elevating your hands to a countertop or a bench rather than doing the pushup on your knees. This allows you to retain the full range of motion and core engagement while making the movement somewhat easier. As you get stronger, simply lower your hands until you are going down to the floor.

To continue to improve on the pushup, you will need to practise regularly; three times a week is a great schedule to start. First test out how many pushups you can do with the full range of motion. Do six to eight sets of half the number of pushups you were able to do when you were fresh, and rest as much as you need to get all your repetitions done correctly. Once this feels easy, reduce the rest or increase the number of reps and sets. Before you know it, you will have accumulated a lot of volume and you’ll be able to move to a more difficult variation of pushup.

Tania Tetrault Vrga is owner and head trainer at CrossFit Winnipeg. Send questions to her at www.crossfitwinnipeg.com.