I'm going to take your push-ups to the next level in a few easy to follow steps we're going to show you how to optimally set up your body position how to stabilize that position during your push-up by activating the right muscles and finally combine it with a few modifications to unlock its maximum potential after this video your push-up strength and the muscle growth you get from performing it will be taken to a whole new level first setup we'll start with hand placement set up your hand so that at the bottom of your push-up two things
happen first your forearms should end up on top of your wrist in a straight line avoid having your forearms bent at an angle if your wrists aren't very flexible you may need to hold on to dumbbells to accomplish this the second thing that should happen is your elbows should tuck to roughly a 45 to 60° angle if you were to look down from an overhead view this means your elbow should make an arrow shape flaring your elbows out will turn this into a t-shape we want to avoid this as it'll weaken our push-up up make
it more difficult to properly stabilize this exercise and put our shoulders in a riskier position for injury having these two things occur during your push-up will help unlock several muscles that'll help maximize your strength as you push something will continue doing in steps two and three now to actually find your sweet spot hand position lie down on the floor with your hands at the level of your mid chest take a look at your forarm and elbows move your hands wider or narrower until you find the hand width where the forearm is positioned position directly over
the wrist and the elbows are tucked into that Arrow position that we talked about earlier most of you will end up with a hand placement at the mid chest level and place just outside the shoulders so once you get your hand position nail down you're going to come up onto all fours and your hands and knees like so with your knees under your hips and once you're in this position you're ready for step two this step is where we're going to focus on turning on several muscles that'll help better stabilize your body as you perform
your push-up it's something that we teach our members how to do for all the exercises in our bu with science programs which I'm going to talk more about at the end of the video this step is going to improve your push-up strength dramatically because we avoid what's called Energy leaks and maximize your push-up potentials start by pushing your knuckle down into the floor and spreading your hands such that there's space between each of your fingers this will help us incorporate more of our powerful chest muscles next slide your shoulders down and away from your ears
you should feel your lats turn on as you do this the lats are a powerful stabilizer muscle that'll help contribute to your push and strength so we want to get them involved as much as possible then while maintaining this activation in your lats push the floor away to open up your shoulder blades this is going to help integrate an important muscle to help further improve our stabilization and pushing strength at this point your head will likely be protruding forward adjust this by pulling your chin back to draw your head back in line with your body
this helps avoid stretching the neck and also puts our midback muscles into a better position to help stabilize our bodies as we do the pushup at this point we're done stabilizing the upper body and are ready to move to the lower body after we stabilize our lower body we'll be ready to finally perform our first perfect push-up so we're going to start with the lower body by setting your hips in the right position to do so think about tucking your tailbone like so once you've made it here you're ready to step back take a breath
in engage your core and then extend one leg back dig your toes into the floor and squeeze your thigh really tight to fully extend your leg hold that then step the other leg back and squeeze the other thigh tight now you're ready to do a push-up don't forget if a standard push-up is too difficult or in the other hand too easy for you I'm going to show you how to modify them in the final step but for now let's look at the execution of a standard push-up to perform your push-up we're actually going to start
by pulling and then pushing so from the top position we established in step two do not just let gravity flop you to the floor this will cause you to lose all the stability that we work so hard to create in the previous steps instead think about using your back muscles to pull yourself to the floor as if you were performing a row your body will have to travel forward slightly as you do so in order to keep those elbows directly over the wrist like we talk about in step one then once you reach the bottom
position while squeezing your butt and thighs push away from the floor to the top to open up your shoulder blades again as we did during our setup at this top position your head hips and feet should make one straight line maintain this as you proceed to your next reps now that we've nailed down your perfect push-up it's time to modify it based on your current strength level and body type if you struggle with push-ups and you can't do more than 10 good push-ups in a row with the form that we previously covered then here are
some good options to build that strength up this exercise is my personal favorite and something I found to be more effective than the common modification of knee push-ups to perform it Loop a bound around two fixtures such as in between squat rack there should be about a foot of space between the bottom band of the floor the higher the height the easier your push-up will be so just adjust the height based on your strength level get into your starting push-up position such that the band is at waist level and then proceed into your push-up the
band is going to help provide more and more assistance the lower you go the area of the push-up where people have the most difficulty so if you guys are unable to do the previous setup then one alternative is just come on over here you can go to a squat rack or any Smith machine or even any table or elevated surface at home and just do your push-ups on there right so that incline it helps unload the upper body makes the movement a lot easier and gradually over time to make it harder and harder as your
strength improves just lower the amount of incline that you're doing and then eventually you'll be able to do the standard full push-up now for those who have instead mastered the standard push-up and could perform more more than 20 good reps with them it's time to increase the difficulty this will be more effective for strength improvements and gains as opposed to just aiming to do more and more reps and you have a few options to do so the most convenient way is just just slow down the Reps instead of taking 1 second to go down extend
it to 3 seconds do the same on the way up once that becomes too easy incorporate a 1 to 2 second pause at the bottom position as well this is going to help apply more tension to the Target muscles and result and more growth for the same number of reps my personal favorite however is something called banded push-ups and it's something that we incorporate in our build science programs because of how effective they are they've actually been shown in the research to improve upper body strength as much as a weighted bench press does so what
you're going to do is you're just going to wrap a band around your back like so put the band in each hand and then you're going to come down into your proper push-up position like we explained earlier and then you're just going to perform a push-up it's going to add a lot more resistance throughout the push-up make it a lot more harder and just give you a little bit more to progress on with your push-ups by pecking the push-up that's perfect for your level you'll be challenging your body with the right difficulty rather than doing
something that's too easy or too difficult for your body if you want to maximize your growth and strength then it's important to apply the same level of detail and execution with all of your exercises not just your push-up to do so take our free 60-second analysis quiz over at buildwi science.com and you'll find out which of our programs are best suited for you and your specific goals anyways I hope you enjoyed this one you can click somewhere here to watch some of my more videos and I'll see you next time no [Music]
