Push-Up
Trains the Pecs.
- Equipment
- Body only
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Push
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Place your hands on the floor slightly wider than your shoulders, roughly level with your chest rather than your face.
- Extend your legs behind you and support your weight on your toes, so your body forms one straight line from your head to your heels.
- Brace your stomach and squeeze your glutes. This is what keeps the line straight — a push-up is an anti-extension core exercise as well as a chest exercise.
- Lower your chest toward the floor under control, letting your elbows travel back at roughly forty-five degrees rather than straight out to the sides.
- Descend until your chest is just above the floor, then press back up until your arms are straight.
- At the top, push a little further so your upper back rounds slightly and your shoulder blades travel forward around your ribs. This last few inches is the serratus anterior working, and it is the part almost everyone skips.
Common mistakes
- Letting the hips sag. The line breaks, the lower back takes the load and the abdominal work disappears. Squeezing the glutes and thinking about a straight line from head to heels holds the position; if it still sags, do the movement with your hands elevated on a bench until it does not.
- Elbows flared straight out to the sides. Same problem as a bench press with a high bar path — the work moves from the chest to the front of the shoulder. Keep the elbows nearer forty-five degrees from the torso.
- Stopping short of the floor. A half push-up trains the range you are already strong in. Chest to just above the floor every repetition, and elevate your hands if you cannot yet.
- Stopping the top at straight arms. Straightening the elbows is not the end of the movement — pushing further so the shoulder blades travel forward around the ribcage is what trains the serratus anterior, and nothing else in a typical program does.