“Fitness is a journey, and we’re all at different places”
Push up is considered a great exercise as it helps in building upper-body and core strength. It uses muscles in the chest, shoulders, triceps, back, abs and even the legs.
Going by the dictionary definition a Push up is an exercise in which you lie on your stomach and raise your body off the ground by pressing down on your hands until your arms are straight.
If you are unable to do a push up currently this article will sure be helpful. We will start with the easy variants that we can do safely and correctly and later move on to more advanced variants. So, below will be the progression.
Breathing plays a very vital role when doing any kind of Exercise. So, when you do Push ups always “inhale when you go down and exhale when you come up”.
1. Wall Push ups
To perform a wall push up stand up facing a wall with your hands on the wall. Hands should be a little more than shoulder width apart and at shoulder height. Your legs should be around two feet away from the wall. Now bend your elbows,bringing your chest towards the wall.
Target – 3 sets of 50.
The reason we need to do so many is to practice the pushing motion.
2. Incline Push ups
For this we need an stable object to keep the upper body elevated (railing,exercise box,kitchen top, bench etc.) To start with the recommended height of the object should be higher than your hips. Place your hands on the edge of the object and bend your elbows to bring your chest closer towards the object.
Target – 3 sets of 40
Difficulty increases as we decrease the height of the object.
3. Kneeling Push ups
It is similar to a regular push up but instead of supporting the lower body on the toes we use the knees. Bring your chest closer to the floor by bending your elbows. Make sure you do not put too much pressure on the knees as it may lead to injury.
Target – 2 sets of 25
Once you are able to reach the above mentioned targets you should be able to do regular push ups easily.
If you start getting joint pains you must have progressed too quickly. This happens sometimes because our muscles are strong enough to move on but our joints are not. In this case go back to doing the easier version.
Written By- Prateek Dwivedi
