How To Get Better At Pushups

“Hey everybody! You have questions? Hopefully I have the answer. In today’s Q and A. I’m going to go over how to get better at pushups. If you haven’t seen my previous video, I have done one on how to get in a proper push-up position every single time, that is a great one to fix any alignment. We’ll briefly cover that today as well, but that videos can be a bit more in depth on that topic. So how do you get better at pushups? Common question we get all the time… You know, people either can’t do a full push up or they can do one, but they really struggle. And they’ve been working out for awhile. How do they get stronger at pushups? Really… There’s two real remedies here. There’s several, but two main ones that I found worked the best. 

(1) First thing you want to do is increase the volume at which you do those pushups. 

So think about it as practice throughout your day. Instead of just going into the gym and thinking, I need to do all these pushups for a great workout. If you could take the mindset, “Hey, I’m going to practice these pushups very regularly.” You’re going to get a lot better at them. So it could be as simple thing as you put something up in your house and every time you pass that, you know, to drop down, do a couple pushups. So that’d be the first step. Really, if you start to increase your volume, you’re going to more than likely see a great change.

2) Second thing. If that’s still not working, we’re going to want to check our alignment when we’re doing pushups and making sure we’re doing proper form. So a very quick example of this would be, you want to make sure I come in and see people put their hands way out in front of them. So they’re putting a lot of strain on their shoulders and they’re not loading up their triceps and the other supporting musculature that can really help you do a pushup. So very simple way to get into a good pushup is make a T here you fall forward and you kick your feet back. Okay? 

Let’s say you’re somebody that can’t do a full push-up. How can you go about progressing those? So instead of the standard knee push-up, just going down from your knees and pushing up and repeating that daily. I want you to try this variation because you can really load what’s known as the eccentric portion of the exercise, which will really load the muscles. So again, we’ll get into a good pushup position going out. You want to keep your hips up, nice core engaged here, and then you go down just like you would go down for a regular full pushup. And then from there, we’ll press up from the knees right there. So that’s going to really help load those muscles. I found great value in clients that do that as well.

So the two main things are, you’re going to want to increase your volume first and foremost, second, check your form, make sure you’re in the proper push-up position. And 3rd thing, make sure that when you’re doing the push ups, you’re changing it up. You’re not just always going from the knees. It could be the way  you are actually performing the exercise and the 4th a little bonus one here. If you strengthen other muscles around it that oppose those, especially the back muscles, you strengthen your shoulder muscles, which support you in a pushup, really work on that stability in your joints. You have a far greater chance of getting better at pushups. 

All right. That’s all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did give me a thumbs up, if you loved it, give me a heart. As always, stay strong.”

-EarthFIT Coach Sam