How to do a Push-Up
The push-up is one of the most accessible exercises in the world, which is one of the reasons it’s such a great exercise.
You can do it any place at any time.
It’s also a great way to build upper body strength with no weights, equipment, or machines.
But oddly enough, very few people are actually taught how to do a push-up correctly.
Think about it. Has anyone ever actually taught you the right way to do it?
Or have you just been banging out push-ups your whole life assuming that there’s only one way to do them and as long as you are lowering down and pushing up then you are doing a push-up the right way?
Maybe you are doing them the right way, I don’t know.
But if you have any doubt whatsoever or if push-ups cause you pain then you are in the right place.
This article is going to teach you everything you need to know to master the push-up. And there may be more to it than you think so let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
Which Muscles are Used in a Push-Up
Correct Push-Up Technique
Push-Up Modifications
Push-Up Variations
How to Include Push-Ups in Workouts
Which Muscles Are Used in a Push-Up?
Most people view the push-up as an upper-body exercise but it’s a full-body movement if you want to do it right and get the most out of it. You are mainly using your upper body to move down and up but you need to have your core, glutes, and legs engaged to maintain proper body alignment.
Here’s a closer look at the exact muscles that you should be using when doing a push-up.
Chest(Pecs) - This is the primary muscle used in the push-up. It is the biggest muscle that will take on the majority of the work during a traditional push-up.
Shoulders(Delts) - This is a secondary muscle used in the push-up. It is a smaller muscle that will keep your upper body stable when doing push-ups. You can use different variations to increase the stress placed on the shoulder
Triceps - This is also a secondary muscle used in the push-up. They will get some work each rep but it’s not taking the brunt of the load. You can also increase the stress placed on the tricep by doing different variations.
Glutes - The glutes are used isometrically during a push-up. This means that you should keep them engaged the entire time and they are not used in the eccentric(lowering down) or concentric phase(pushing up) for the upper body. Engaging your glutes will stabilize your pelvis and help keep the arch out of your back.
Core - The core is also used isometrically during a push-up. You want to engage your core by bracing your spine to help keep your body in one straight line, like a plank. This is another way to keep the arch out of your back.
What is the Correct Push-up Technique
There are countless push-up variations out there(which I’ll get to later in this article) so you can adjust your hands and manipulate your weight in order to hit different muscles or increase the difficulty. But when it comes to doing a push-up with the correct form, there’s only one way.
The right way to do a push-up is the way that removes the risk of injury and allows you to recruit the proper muscles to put out the amount of force you need to move your body. And move it well.
You do this by keeping your body in a straight line the entire time, you should be able to draw a straight line from your head to your feet with no breaks or dips in body shape. Your elbows should be at a 45-degree angle and all of the necessary muscles should be active and engaged.
To do this you want to start out with a strong foundation before you even start your push-up.
How to Push-Up Step by Step
Plant your hands on the ground slightly wider than your shoulders with your index fingers facing forward.
Screw your hands into the ground so that your elbows are pointing behind you instead of out to the side.
Look in between your thumbs.
Squeeze your glutes and engage your core so that you can keep your body in one solid shape when you lower down and up. Think of your body as a stiff board and your arms bend and straighten.
Lower down while keeping your elbows back with your glutes and core engaged.
When your shoulders and elbows are lined up next to each other you can stop there and push back up to the start position.
The number one reason to have good form and to do exercises the right way is to make sure you don’t get hurt.
You always want to make sure you are focusing on proper technique because how you do one thing is how you do everything.
If you have bad form with a standard push-up you may be able to get by without getting injured. There’s actually a decent chance you can do regular push-ups with bad form and get away with it.
But what happens when you want to progress to more difficult variations? You may be able to get away with bad form during a regular push-up but carry that same technique over to a diamond push-up and you will open up a world of hurt. Not to mention even more advanced variations like one-arm push-ups, handstand push-ups, and even dips.
When you regularly do push-ups with bad form you are also putting yourself at risk of injury during other shoulder exercises.
Common Push-Up Mistakes
The biggest mistake that I see people make when doing a push-up is letting their elbows flare out the side. The reason that this is bad is that it causes an internal rotation impingement in the shoulders which will eventually result in pain that could possibly turn into an injury.
It’s also not the most effective way to do a push-up. You are putting stress on your joints instead of activating the right muscles for the movement.
When you do a push-up you want your shoulders to be in the externally rotated position because this will protect your shoulder joints.
You are in a safer and stronger position when your elbows make a 45-degree angle.
The good thing about this mistake is that it usually happens out of a lack of awareness, not strength. When you plant your hands on the ground twist your arm so your elbow is facing behind you instead of out to the side and keep that same energy as you lower down and push up.
*ADD SIDE BY SIDE PHOTO OF 45 DEGREES AND ELBOWS FLARED
Another mistake people make is a combination of strength and awareness.
We have the habit of focusing so much on the arms when doing a push-up that we forget about the rest of the body. A lot of people will lower down ok and then when they push back up their upper body goes first and then the rest of the body follows with an arched back.
You don’t want your back to arch when you push up, you want to keep your back flat so your entire body moves down and up in a straight line.
Do this by squeezing your quads and glutes while making sure to brace your spine.
Sometimes it is a matter of awareness and when the person starts to think of keeping their hips up as they press up it will fix the issue. But if you are engaging all of those muscles while lowering down and pushing up and you still arch in your back then you may need to strengthen your core a bit more.
In the meantime, there are a couple of modifications that you can choose from so you can still do push-ups without putting that stress on your back. I’ll talk about those in detail in the next section.
Another mistake people make comes from a misalignment of their hands. It’s when you lower down and your hands are lined up with their ears. This will also result in you driving your elbows out.
This is somewhat an easy fix but it’s important to address because this hand position is going to force you to drive your elbows out creating that internal impingement that I mentioned earlier.
To avoid this mistake line up your thumbs with your nipples. You don’t have to touch your nipples to your thumbs when you lower down and you don’t have to touch your chest to the floor but lining up your thumbs with your nipples will ensure the right pathway so you don’t hurt yourself and you get the most out of the exercise.
The last mistake that I want to talk about is the gaze, or where you should be looking when doing a push-up.
A lot of people look up and in front of them when doing push-ups which put your low back in a slight arch and even causes pain in the low back.
Instead, keep your head in a neutral position by looking in between your thumbs.
Push-Up Modifications
If I can teach you to understand how to leverage your body as a weight then my mission will be complete. That’s going to be a tool that you can use in your fitness journey for the rest of your life.
It’s pretty self-explanatory how you modify or progress weighted exercises whether you are using a machine, free weights, or even resistance bands.
If you are doing a bench press and it’s too hard then you lower the weight. If you are doing a chest press machine and it’s too easy then you increase the weight. If a resistance band is too easy or hard you adjust the band that you are using.
But how do you increase the difficulty of a push-up?
How Much Weight Do You Push in a Push-Up?
Below are 3 ways you can increase the amount of weight you are pushing during your push-up. If you ever want to test this out on yourself you can put your hands on a scale and note the different weight that comes up for each position.
Modified(Knees down) - About 64%
Standard - About 78%
Feet Elevated 18 inches - About 80%
The standard push-up is the middle ground so let’s start there. The top position could also be described as a straight-arm plank.
When you are in the plank position you are going to feel a certain amount of weight in your hands, it will be about 69% of your body weight.
If you drop to your knees you’ll notice instantly that there is less weight in your hands, roughly 44% of your body weight.
And if you go back into plank position and elevate your feet on an 18-inch box you will immediately notice more weight in your hands, about 72% of your body weight.
When you get to the bottom part of your push-up in each of those positions you will feel more weight in your hands. That’s how you know you are pushing a different amount of weight for each variation.
Choosing The Right Modification
The best way for complete beginners to do push-ups is to elevate their hands on a high surface like a box, a countertop, or even a wall.
This is going to put less weight on your hands to make them easier. The higher the surface the less weight in your hands. It’s a great way to learn the technique of the movement while building strength in your arms and core.
When you start to get stronger you can move on to the knees-down modified version that I mentioned. This will put more weight in your hands but it takes some of the core strength out of the equation. You want to make sure you still work on keeping your core engaged. If you have siblings think about one of them punching you in the stomach and you want to brace your stomach so it doesn’t hurt.
When those get easier you can start to work the push-up off your knees.
Usually what will happen is you are going to feel pretty strong lowering down but when you start to press yourself back up to the plank position things get a little dicey. There’s a good chance that when you straighten your arms your upper body will go up but your butt will stay down.
This causes an arch in your back because your body has broken the plank shape. It’s important to keep your body straight and rigid as I mentioned above.
If this happens to you I want you to try this.
Start in a plank position and then lower down with control. When you get to the bottom of your push-up you are going to drop to your knees and press back up.
This is also a great modification for people who can already do a few push-ups but want to start adding more reps to each set.
If you can’t do 5 or more push-ups then any of these modifications is going to be a great place for you to start.
Push-Up Variations
You can manipulate your push-ups to target different muscle groups with different variations. This could mean that you adjust your hand position or even leverage your weight in a different way.
You can make adjustments to hit your triceps, shoulders, core, and even biceps more than you would in a traditional push-up.
It is important to remember that even when you change the variation, the technique stays the same. Your elbows should never flare out to the side, no matter what kind of push-up you are doing.
Diamond Push-Up - This is a challenging push-up variation that gets the triceps involved a lot more than regular push-ups. Basically you form a diamond with your hands and put them on the ground under your chest. Since the tricep is a smaller muscle than your chest it makes these much more difficult. You are also making the base of your hands smaller which also increases the difficulty. You don’t even have to make an actual diamond with your hands to do this. Putting them close together with about an inch or two of space will also do the trick. Do not let your elbows flare out to the side when doing these.
Wide Arm Push-Up - In this variation, your hands will go on the floor much wider than your shoulders. This will target your chest and shoulders a little more than the regular push-up. It’s also going to require some extra core strength because your base is wider than normal. It’s also really important to make sure that your elbows do not flare out to the side when doing these.
Feet Elevated Push-Up - When you elevate your feet on a bench or a box you are increasing the difficulty of the push-up by pushing more weight. As mentioned in the previous section, there is more weight in your hands which will increase the difficulty of the pushup.
Chataranga Push-Up - This is also known as the yoga push-up and it is going to require a little more shoulder strength than traditional push-up variations. In this variation, you shift your weight forward as you lower down and then press up and back to return to the start position. You also keep your elbows tucked into your side so they are touching your body. This also gets the triceps involved making this a pretty challenging exercise.
Push-Up with 5-second negative - The negative is the lowering phase of any exercise. The slower you go in your negative the more your muscles are contracting and the more difficult you are making the exercise. Count 5 seconds to lower from the top of your push-up to the bottom of your push-up
These are the push-up variations that I recommend getting strong at once you have mastered the traditional push-up. After that, there are plenty more advanced variations that you can play around with to have fun and build strength. Check out the video below if you are ready for an added challenge by putting to use some of my favorite push-up variations. You can also see a visual demonstration of some of the variations mentioned above.
How to Include Push-Ups in Your Workout
REPS
Choose a variation that is difficult for 10 reps with reps 8, 9, and 10 being pretty difficult.
The variation can be modified from your knees or hands elevated on a bench, box, bar, or wall.
That doesn’t mean do 5 reps, shake your arms out, and do 5 more.
Pick a variation that allows you to do 10 challenging reps without sacrificing form.
If you are doing regular push-ups and you get to rep number 6 and can’t do anymore, drop to your knees and finish the set. Again, do not stop and shake your arms out before continuing.
When you do that you are doing one set of 6 and one set of 4. If you drop to your knees and continue the set then your muscles will start to develop the strength needed to get further than those 6 reps the next time.
If you are doing 10 push-ups with your hands elevated on a box and they get easier after 3 weeks then you can move to a lower surface or even try them from the modified position on your knees.
When you increase the difficulty you may not be able to get up to 10 on the more difficult version and that’s ok. If you get to 7 then that’s your number for a couple of weeks.
Eventually, you will build up the strength to push through that plateau and hit 10. Then you will train that variation at 10 reps for a few weeks until you are ready to take your knees off the ground.
Repeat that process until you are hitting 10 reps of a regular push-up.
SETS
Single Sets - If you specifically want to improve your push-up strength and are not in a hurry during your workouts this would be a good route to take. This is when you do one set of push-ups, rest for 90 seconds to 3 minutes, and then do another set of push-ups. That long rest period will give your muscles time to recover so that they have a good amount of energy to put toward the next set. You can do this for a total of 3 to 5 sets.
Superset - A superset is when you perform 2 exercises back to back with no rest. This is helpful if you want to save time during your workouts but I do not recommend doing a superset with 2 upper body exercises in a row, especially if you want a stronger push-up. You may be able to avoid the same exact muscles by doing a superset with push and pull but you are still using your arms and that may take away from some of the strength needed for your push-up. If you want to superset your push-ups choose a lower-body exercise to do right after. Push-ups followed by squats, or push-ups followed by lunges. This way your arms can rest while you are doing the lower body exercise.
Tri-Set - A tri-set is when you perform 3 exercises back to back to back with no rest. This is also great to save time, plus it gives your arms more time to rest. I program a tri-set by doing an upper body exercise, followed by a lower body exercise, followed by a core exercise. That way your arms are resting during the lower body and core exercise so that by the time you get back to your push-ups your muscles have recovered for a couple of minutes and are ready to put forth the energy to have a strong set. An example of this would be push-ups, reverse lunges, and reverse crunches.
Wrapping Up
The most important thing when doing a push-up is by far the technique. Follow the step-by-step process I mentioned in the first section and you will have strong, efficient push-ups for as long as you train.
If you are doing them wrong during the regular variation then you will carry those habits into the more difficult variations. And you are capable of doing more difficult variations. So create good habits from the start.
Train smart and stay disciplined.
I have worked with people of all ages who have gotten their first push-up or even increased the number of push-ups that they can do so if this is something that you want, it’s something that you can get.
If you have any specific questions in regard to push-ups or this article feel free to reach out to me directly via email. I answer all emails within 24-72 hours. Patrick@mimathletics.com is my personal email address.
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