4 Key Reasons Why You Struggle With Push-ups.
I used to be terrible at push-ups.
My upper-body horizontal pushing strength was one of my biggest weaknesses.
I grew up playing sports like Aussie Rules Footy, Soccer, Tennis and Cricket.
None of these required significant horizontal pushing strength.
When I moved to London, I started competing in endurance sports - marathons, triathlons and Ironman events.
For several years, my training focus was on swimming, cycling and running.
My lower-body strength and upper-body pulling strength have always been stronger than my pressing strength.
But that all changed when I started going to the gym, lifting weights, building strength and getting ripped.
Bench presses and overhead presses were my main upper-body using exercises at the time.
Exercises that allowed me to choose the weight and gradually build strength. Unlink dips and push-ups where you must work with your body weight.
That was before I started doing CrossFit and WODS like Cindy that require 200 push-ups.
At the time, my push-up wasn't great.
I could do them, but not to perfect push-up standards.
You can get away with poor-quality push-ups in boot camp, circuit, and Crossfit classes. Nobody cares; the goal is to get your sweat on and have fun.
I get it.
But after a few years of CrossFit, my training focus shifted more toward gymnastics and callisthenics, and that's when I realised how awesome perfect push-ups are.
Push-ups are a foundation movement in gymnastics that, when done correctly, build transferable strength to movements like dips, muscle-ups, handstand push-ups, planche, hollow back press and more.
Push-ups are often overlooked as a strength exercise and yet a lot of people can't do a perfect push-up.
There are many different ways to perform push-ups:
Diamond Push-ups
Wide Grip Push-ups
Perfect Push-ups. (Cubit-Width)
Reverse Grip Push-ups
Push-ups on P-bars
Push-ups on Gymnastics Rings
and more...
After years of helping 100's of clients successfully unlock their push-ups, I've found it best to teach the perfect push-up technique from the beginning.
Once you can do perfect push-ups you can safely start training other variations.
The perfect push-up technique teaches us the mechanics of upper body pushing and allows us to build transferable strength for more advanced gymnastics movements.
It makes sense, you should be able to do push-ups before you start training more advanced movements such as dip, handstand push-ups, and muscle-ups.
What is the perfect push-up?
Here are the four key reasons why a lot of gymnastics skill seekers struggle with perfect push-ups.
1. Poor technique awareness.
The most common reason is poor technique awareness.
Push-ups seem like a simple enough movement, so nobody really teaches us how to do them correctly. We lack awareness because we just jump down and start doing push-up without thinking about:
Pushing the heels of the feet together
Contraction the quads to lock the knees and straighten the legs
Set a strong Posterior Pelvic Tilt (PPT)
Maintaining a tight hollow body shape for the entire movement
Pulling the ribcage down towards the pelvis
Protracting the shoulder blades at the top of the push-up
Retracting the shoulder bladed at the bottom of the push-up
Keep the the shoulder blades depressed during the entire movement
Externally rotating the shoulders as we push-up
Locking the elbows at the top of each rep with the elbow pits facing forward
Using the breath to assist the movement
Placing the hands one cubit distance apart with the index fingers pointing forward
Keeping the forearms perpendicular to the floor, elbows stay vertically stacked over the wrists, during the entire movement. Forcing the shoulders to move forward and down.
If you've got poor push-up technique you're going to increase the chance of injury and fail to effectively build the strength for more advanced gymnastics strength exercises.
Building awareness of correct technique is essential, but even then, you need to have the strength to maintain the technique. Signs that you're lacking strength include:
Elbows flaring our to the sides (lack of strength or shoulder stability)
Not maintaining a tight hollow body shape (lack of core strength)
Performing push-ups on our knees (lack of core strength)
Not touching our chest to the floor (lack of strength)
Favouring one arm and twisting during the push-up (lack of strength or shoulder stability)
Do any of these describe your push-ups?
If so, you'll want to keep reading.
2. A lack of upper body pushing strength
A lot of gymnastics skill seekers struggle with push-up because they lack the upper body horizontal pushing strength.
Performing perfect push-ups is equivalent to pressing around 60% of your body weight. If you weigh 75kg, that the equivalent of doing a 45kg bench press.
If you can't bench press 60% of your body weight, you've got some work to do.
If you can bench press 60% of your bodyweight, you've go the upper body pushing strength to do perfect push-ups, but that doesn't mean you've got the awareness or core strength for perfect push-ups.
When you're lying on your back performing bench press your "core muscles" are not working to maintain a tight hollow body shape like they do in the push-up. We can use the bench press to help build the upper body pushing strength, but its not the only tool we should be focusing on.
I often use dumbbell bench press variations with my online clients to build the horizontal pushing strength needed for push-ups.
Incline push-ups are another option here. By using an incline, we can start to build the upper body pushing strength and the core strength required for perfect push-ups. The lower the incline, the harder the push-up. As strength increases, the goal it to gradually lower the incline and move to the floor.
A combination of bench press and incline push-ups is often the most effective way to make progress.
Both of these exercises target the chest, shoulders and arms.
But, we also also need to work on building core strength and shoulder stability if we're going to successfully accomplish perfect push-ups on the floor.
3. A lack of core strength and awareness
It's time to stop doing the worm!!
If you're lacking core strength and awareness your push-ups are going to be ugly.
Dropping down to your knees is not a solution because it's never going to build the core strength needed for perfect push-ups.
If you want to accomplish perfect push-ups stop doing push-ups on your knees.
You want to maintain a tight hollow body shape while doing push-ups as this will help you increase core strength and improve your push-up mechanics.
How do train the core strength that is needed for push-ups?
Firstly, we need to build an awareness around the Posterior Pelvic Tilt (PPT).
A common problem in push-up training is a lack of PPT. A lot of gymnastics skill seekers have never heard of PPT and hence they have no awareness of it.
It not uncommon to hear a a training cueing their clients to "brace your abdominals", "contract your abs", or "get tight." But they fail to connect the dots between the position of the pelvis and our "core strength."
Let me explain.
In movements like planks and push-ups we want to have a Posterior Pelvic Tilt (PPT). We accomplish this by tucking our tailbone between our legs and contracting the glutes. This removes the arch in the lower back and allows us to create a tight hollow body shape.
In this case, the glutes and the abdominals work together to create midline tension. When the glutes switch off, the abdominals switch off. When this happens the pelvis will tilt forward into an Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT) and the lower back will arch.
Not what we want when performing push-ups.
The Yoga Cat-Cow is often a good place to start for beginners as it teaches them how to tilt the pelvis into PPT and APT.
After building an awareness of APT and PPT, we start to challenge the movement by adding load. We do this by moving from the quadrupedal position into the Front Leaning Rest (FLR) or high plank position.
Now that the knees are off the floor, we're creating a higher demand for midline stability.
Can you tilt the pelvis into APT and PPT in the FLR?
Can you feel the difference?
Can you hold and FLR with a strong PPT for :45seconds? If not, you've got some work to do.
We can challenge our core stability even more by moving into a forearm plank and experimenting with APT and PPT. By decreasing the incline angle, we increase the demand for core stability.
Can you tilt the pelvis into APT and PPT in the forearm plank?
Can you feel the difference?
Can you hold and forearm plank with a strong PPT for :45seconds? If not, you've got some work to do.
Both the FLR and forearm plank have carry over to the perfect push-up. We can use these exercises to build core strength that is transferable to the push-up.
Not only that, both the FLR and the forearm plank can be used to increase upper body pushing strength.
Once you can hold these positions for 45sec, you can start training scapular push-ups and forearm plank scapular push-ups. Both of these exercises are going to increase shoulder strength and improve your overall horizontal pushing power.
At the same time, we can also be training incline push-ups at an incline that allows us to maintain a tight hollow body shape. As upper body pushing strength and core stability improve, you can slowly decrease the incline angle and progress towards the floor.
"Core stability" or "midline stability" isn't created by the glutes and abdominals alone. If you listen to the GST Junkies Podcast, in episode 2 you might have heard me talk about "being the bag of sand."
A solid object is much easier to move than a bag of sand.
If I give you a 20kg weight plate and ask you to run down the street with it, how does it feel?
It's heavy, uncomfortable, but manageable.
If I give you a 20kg bag of sand and ask you to run down the street with it, how does it feel?
It's a lot harder to carry because the sand want to move around. It's not a solid object.
The same principle applies to the push-up. If you're not holding a tight hollow body shape, then you're the bag of sand.
Its a lot harder to move the bag of sand.
Not only do you want to have the glutes and abdominals working together to hold a strong PPT, but your also want to have tension in the legs, torso, shoulders and arms.
Pushing the heels of the feet together, contracting the quads, squeezing the lats, pushing though the shoulders and knowing how to contract the pecs and triceps is going to help you improve you push-up numbers.
4. A lack of shoulder stability
Strong and stable shoulders are essential in gymnastics strength training. Would you really try to fire a cannon from a canoe?
If so, the cannon ball won't got very far and the canoe will capsize. Why? Because the canoe has a very unstable base of support that doesn't allow for high levels of force to be created.
The same principal applies to your shoulders when performing movements like push-ups. If your shoulders aren't strong and stable you won't be able to produce enough force to successfully push-up.
The shoulder is a ball and socket joint and hence, it's the most mobile joint in the human body. High levels of shoulder flexibility is great, but what about shoulder stability? Can you create tension in the shoulder joint to handle high levels of force production.
High volumes of bench press and push-up often lean to shoulder pain and injury because they cause an imbalance between the larger upper body pushing muscles and the small upper body stabilisation muscles.
Two key reasons to train the small upper body stabilisation muscles are:
To improve structural balance and decrease the chances of pain and injury.
To turn your canoe into war galleon that has the stability to fire multiple canons - increase the overall strength and stability of the shoulder joint to produce high levels of force.
How do we do this?
We train the small upper body stabilisation muscles. Specifically, we target the shoulder external rotators, mid- and lower- trapezius muscles.
The four rotator cuff muscles are the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis. Together they work to stabilise the shoulder joint and allow the primary mover muscles (such as the pecs and triceps) to create high levels of force.
If the rotator cuffs are weak, our ability to produce force is limited. That goes for all upper body pushing and pulling movements, not just push-ups.
Isolating shoulder external rotation is therefore essential to shoulder health and strength development.
This is where movements such as side lying shoulder external rotations, knee-up shoulder external rotations, and half kneeing arm abducted in front shoulder external rotations can be a real game changer.
World renowned strength and conditioning coach Charles Poliquin was big on structural balance. He argued that the shoulder external rotators should be able perform 8reps of the knee-up shoulder external rotation exercise, with 9.8% of your maximum bench press weight.
If you can bench press 100kg for 1 rep, then you should be able to perform 8reps of the knee-up shoulder external rotator exercise with 9.8kg.
If we go back to our example of a 75kg person who wants to perform perfect push-ups. We said that they need to bench press 60% of their body weight, 45kg for 1 rep.
Which means they also need to perform 8reps of the knee-up shoulder external rotator with 45kg x 9.8% = 4.48kg. Let's round it up to 5kg.
We also want to train the mid- and lower trapezius muscles.
The mid-trapezius is the area of muscle that sits between your shoulder blades that helps to retract the shoulder blades and extend the arms behind your back, think bottom of the push-up.
The mid-traps bring stability to the shoulders in the retraced position. We also want to strength the mid-traps to counterbalance the work being done by the anterior should muscles in movements like push-ups. Again, this is where structural balance helps to prevent pain and injury.
We can train the mid-traps with movements like band pull aparts, scapular rows, reverse flies and Powell raises. Not to mention all of the rowing variations.
The lower traps are often over looked and undertrained. The lower traps are located in the middle of the back and run virtually the length of the thoracic spine.
During movements like push-ups, the shoulder blades must stay depressed for stability. If the shoulder shrug up towards the ears the total force production is decreases and the chance of shoulder pain or injury increases.
This is where the lower traps come to the rescue.
Movements like single arm, head supported trap 3 raises, incline bench prone trap 3 raises, and prone unilateral trap 3 raise, ankles crossed are useful for building lower trapezius strength.
It's important to keep the arm at a 45* angle away from the torso during these movements as this correlates with the alignment of the muscle fibres in the lower trapezius.
Charles Poliquin also recommended that you should be able perform 8reps of the head supported trap 3 raise, with 9.8% of your maximum bench press weight.
This means out 75kg person who's performing a 45kg bench press should also be able to perform 8reps of the head supported trap 3 raise with 5kg.
Summary
Building push-up strength that is transferable to more advanced gymnastics movements isn't easy.
I WANT TO UNLOCK PERFECT PUSH-UPS & CHIN-UPS.
A lot gymnastics skill seekers struggle to perform perfect push-ups because they lack the technique, upper body pushing strength, core strength, and shoulder stability.
Performing poor-quality push-ups, or push-ups on your knees is never going to help you progress.
It's essential to follow a program that helps you overcome each of these roadblocks so you can unlock the perfect push-up and then start training more advanced gymnastics movements like dips.
If you don't take the time to build a strong foundation, you'll always struggle to do push-ups.
We've helped hundreds of gymnastics skill seekers build strength, increase flexibility and unlock gymnastics skills like perfect push-ups.
If your ready to start building the strength required to unlock you first chin-up and pump out push-ups, check out the TSTM online programs.
