Push ups... the ultimate nemesis, challenge, and reward!

At first, you hate them...  the dreaded push ups.  Then, as you get a little bit stronger, you develop a love/hate relationship with them.  You still hate doing them, but you love that you are seeing improvement.  Then, finally, you master the full push up and relish the feeling and reward.  But what happens when you reach a sticking point, you see improvement but just can't seem to get to the next level?  Push ups are probably the exercise that we get the most questions about, and the exercise where we see participants experience both the most frustration and success.

Participants often ask what muscles push ups are working so that they can work on improving strength in those muscles.  The better question might be, "What muscles don't push ups work?"  The push up is a full body exercise.  The obvious muscles used in a push up are the chest (pectoralis major), shoulders (anterior deltoids), and the arms (triceps).  However, the push up also uses several other stabilizing muscles that help fixate the joints at work.  The biceps muscles in the arms stabilize the elbow joint.  The serratus anterior, rotator cuff muscles, and rhomboids stabilize the scapula.  The rectus abdominus (abs), obliques, and erector spinae (back muscles) all work together to stabilize the spine.  Finally, the quadriceps of the front thigh act as a knee stabilizer and the gluteus maximus acts as a hip stabilizer. 

So with all of these muscles being engaged as primary, assistor, or stabilizer muscles in the push up, it is easy to see why it is a full body exercise, and why, if any of these muscles are weak, it will impede progress toward being able to do full push ups. 

So back to the question of "What if I can't seem to progress beyond my current level?".  Again, if you have a weak link in the chain of muscles necessary to do correct full push ups, you will find progress slow and limited until you strengthen those weak links.  A very common area of weakness is in the core stabilizer muscles.  If these muscles are weak, your push up may look similar to this:

 

To correct his sagging hips, this individual needs to strengthen his rectus abdominus, obliques, erector spinae, quadriceps, and gluteus maximus.  Following are two exercises that you can do as "homework" to help you progress to full push ups.

 

 

Prone plank - work up to holding for 60 seconds without dropping hips.  Progress to one leg plank, holding for 30 seconds on each leg.

 

 



Cobra -  Hold for 2 or 3 seconds and relax back down to the floor. Do 2 sets of 10-15 repetitions.

S.M.A.R.T. Fitness metabolic participants can visit our website: www.smartfitnessaz.com and login to the members page to learn how to continue to progress toward full push ups.