6 Steps to Mastering the Push-up
The push-up is one of the most common bodyweight exercises in the gym, but are you doing them properly?
How many strict gymnastics push-ups can you do?
How many should you be aiming for?
When you're ready to stop being weedy and start building strength, you can get a lot out of the perfect push-up.
In bodyweight training and gymnastics, the push-up is viewed as an entry-level upper body pushing exercise. The strict push-up is used to build strength and movement awareness for more advanced pushing movements such as dips, ring dips, handstand push-ups, planche push-ups, and more. Mastering the strict push-up with perfect technique is an essential step in the journey of bodyweight training. Although the push-up is often seen as a foundation movement, there are push-up variations that can challenge even the strongest athletes - we'll save that for another post.
The six steps to mastering a push-up are:
Learn the correct technique
If you want to master a movement, you need to understand the correct mechanics of the movement. Bad movement practices will never improve your technique. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Build midline awareness and core strength.
The worming push-up and twerking might give you respect on the dance floor, but it’s frowned upon in the gym. Moving the pelvis into a posterior pelvic tilt (PPT), contracting your glutes and correctly bracing your midline will increase your movement quality and protect your back. Core strength is not created by doing a high volume of sit-ups. Core strength comes from understanding your breath and strengthening the hamstrings, glutes, hip flexors, abdominals, obliques, quadratus lumborum, spinal erectors, etc...
Build shoulder depression, protraction, and retraction awareness and strength.
The shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body and the most susceptible to injury. Moving the shoulders correctly and understanding the correct technique (point 1) increases strength within the movement and decreases the chance of injury. Strengthening the shoulder muscles is also essential to upper body strength and resilience.
Create shoulder stability and mobility.
We often train the shoulder's primary movers, and we forget to strain the stabiliser muscle of the shoulders. Over-training certain muscles can lead to an imbalance in the joint and lead to shoulder pain or injury. A well-balanced training program aims to balance pushing and pulling movements to strengthen the joint for every angle. Tight muscles can also lead to poor movement quality and limit strength development. Moving through a full range of motion and balance strength training with flexibility training is essential.
Build upper body pushing muscle endurance.
Finding ways to perform high volumes of repetitions with good form helps increase lean muscle mass and build a solid foundation of strength. Muscle is contractible and has a metabolic cost. By building lean muscle, we increase strength potential and metabolism, which helps to lose body fat. Fat is not contractible and adds additional weight to the body, making bodyweight exercises a lot harder.
Building muscle endurance also increases the strength of connective tissues and lowers the chances of injury when we increase the movement's intensity (i.e. we add weight to the bar).
Start to challenge points 1-5 by slowly increasing the intensity.
Once we have worked on points 1-5, we are ready to challenge our technique, core strength, shoulder position, stability and mobility, muscle endurance and muscle strength. Skipping steps 2-5 increases the chance of injury and limits the potential progress we could be making. Learning to slow down and build a solid foundation of strength and movement quality will deliver higher success.
You can spend years attending a high-intensity class or a boot camp and see zero progress in your push-up strength. These classes us to:
move faster
perform a high number of repetitions
value a sweaty workout over good form and strength development
High-intensity training has its place. Once you've built the strength and technique to perform a particular movement in a controlled environment, you can add intensity to challenge the movement.
Movements that are currently outside of our strength and capacity should not be included in our high-intensity workouts as they:
increase the chance of injury
teach our body to move with poor technique (ingrain bad habits)
decrease fitness
cause us to fatigue sooner
slow down strength development and limit progress
If you want to start progressing, you must dedicate time to movement quality and strength development. If you're looking to master push-ups, check out the TSTM Skill-Based programs
