PUSH-UP

 

PUSH-UP



You can do the push-up as part of a bodyweight exercise session, a circuit training workout, or a strength workout. The push-up builds both upper-body and core strength. It has many modifications; beginners can start with easier versions, while more advanced exercisers can use a challenging variation.

How To Do Push-Up

The push-up builds both upper-body and core strength. It has many modifications; beginners can start with easier versions, while more advanced exercisers can use a challenging variation. You can do the push-up as part of a bodyweight exercise session, a circuit training workout, or a strength workout.

Get on the floor on all fours, positioning your hands slightly wider than your shoulders. Don't lock out the elbows; keep them slightly bent. Extend your legs back so you are balanced on your hands and toes, your feet hip-width apart.

1.    Contract your abs and tighten your core by pulling your belly button toward your spine.

2.    Inhale as you slowly bend your elbows and lower yourself to the floor, until your elbows are at a 90-degree angle.

3.    Exhale while contracting your chest muscles and pushing back up through your hands, returning to the start position.

Other Variations of a Push-Up

Whether you are a beginner and need to make this exercise easier, or you're advanced and want more of a challenge—or want to better target a specific muscle—there is a push-up variation for you.

1.    Bent-Knee Push-Up



This is a modified version of the standard push-up performed on the knees rather than on the toes. Be sure to keep the knees, hips, and shoulders all in a straight line. Do not allow yourself to bend at the hips.

2.    Incline Push-Up



You can also do incline push-ups to make this exercise a bit easier. Stand several feet away from the table or bench. Use the same push-up technique as above to lower yourself until the elbows are at 90 degrees, then raise back up. Keep your core engaged throughout the movement.

3.    Stability-Ball Push-Up




Add core stability work for increased difficulty and effectiveness. Make sure you can do about 20 basic push-ups before trying stability ball push-ups.

4.    Decline Push-Up



Decline push-ups are a more difficult push-up, performed with the feet raised up on a box or bench. You can adjust the box height to increase or decrease the resistance using just your body weight.

5.    Clapping Push-Up

This is a plyometric exercise in which you push yourself up with enough power so that your hands come off the floor and you clap in midair. This exercise is not for novice exercisers. You can get injured very easily if you haven't worked up to these.

6.    Diamond Push-Up



The diamond push-up variation targets the triceps brachii.5 It is done with your hands close together and the index fingers and thumbs of one hand touching the other hand, making a diamond shape on the floor. You then do push-ups with your hands touching the center of your chest and elbows close to your sides during each rep.

7.    Push-Up With Lat Row

This variation adds alternating dumbbell lat rows to the top of each rep. This modification increases the intensity of the exercise, activates the core stabilizers, and engages the latissimus dorsi (back) muscles.

 To do it, perform the push-up with hands holding dumbbells versus pushing against the floor. At the top of the movement, pull the weight up to the chest before lowering it back to the floor.

8.    Medicine Ball Push-Up



Perform a standard push-up with one hand on top of a medicine ball. This works the shoulder in a slightly different range of motion, which increases shoulder stability. You can also do an alternating medicine-ball push-up by rolling the medicine ball between each hand after a rep, which can help improve your balance.

 

Benefits of Push-Ups

The abdominal muscles used to hold the body rigid during the push-up are the rectus abdominis and the internal and external obliques. As the push-up involves multiple joints, it is a compound exercise.

The upper body muscles that come into play in the push-up are the deltoids of the shoulders, the pectoral muscles of the chest, the triceps and biceps of the upper arm, the gluteal or hip muscles, and the erector spinae of the back.

The functional fitness you develop with push-ups provides the strength needed to perform these movements. Working the stabilizer muscles around the shoulders can help protect you from rotator cuff injuries.

A 2019 study also found that people who can do 40 push-ups have fewer cardiovascular disease events than those who cannot complete 10 push-ups.



 

Popular posts from this blog

10 BEST HISTORICAL PLACES IN SRI LANKA

SIGIRIYA