Technique Tuesday – The Press-up
We’re going to start with the press-up ladies and gents. I wanted to start with this because it’s just about the only exercise that there’s apparently a ‘male and female’ variation…Strange that ?
In the picture below you’ll see a normal press-up (this can also be done by women), we’re going to go through a way to become better at these and if you can’t quite do these yet, how to get there.
Firstly the set-up (see above)
- Hands just outside shoulder width with your thumbs turned slightly forward
- Shoulders over your knuckles
- Abs and ass braced (squeezed)
- Stay on your toes
When we get to the bottom, we should have the following
- Vertical forearm
- Shoulder blades squeezed back and down into centre of your back
- Chest touching the ground
- Belly and quads off the floor (just)
From here press-up back to your starting position.
Now then, if you can’t perform these, NO, you cannot go on your knees and do some sort of offensive ass in the air yoga type movement. We will be doing the same movement on an incline to ‘scale’ the exercise to your level.
Remember just because it’s body weight doesn’t it can’t be made easier!
Using a squat stand and a bar (can be subbed for a bench also) here you can see we’re doing the exact same exercise just making it slightly easier.
The key points from above still apply although when using the bar, we aim to take our nipples to the bar, this gives us a strong start, finish and mid-rep position.
Of course, you may be reading thinking ‘I can crack out hundreds of press-ups, this doesn’t help me one bit’. So for our advanced trainers we can try something a little different.
Here we have a ring press-up. Exactly the same points apply to a normal press-up although with the instability of the rings it’s best to hold a slightly narrower grip at the start position.
Any questions guys, please fire away
Chris