Who fears that drop and give me 20 saying?

Maybe you shutter when you hear, “we are doing push-ups today and they are on your toes”. They are full push-ups. Does your mind start going oh, I don’t know if I can do that. I am not strong enough to do that.

Well, let us talk a little bit about push-ups. And find out why and how we can move our way towards full push-ups.

First up, when you do your push-ups, do you find your joints, your shoulders, your elbows and your wrists are taking the brunt and there is a lot of pain involved in doing push-ups?

Number two; are you not confident that you will be able to push your body weight back up and you are going to hit that floor really hard? Or you are not confident that you are able to complete it compared to the next person?

Are you not sure how to do a push-up?

– Where do you put your hands

– How low do you go?

– Do I lean forward?

– It is leaning backwards?

– Are my hands wide

– Are my hands close?

– Do I have my elbows in, elbows out?

– All things going through your head.

I believe push-ups are a vital part of our daily living. Push-ups are not only just useful for getting up off the floor, there is a range of ways we benefit from them. From pushing a door opened or closed, moving a piece of furniture out the way or just getting ourselves off something ie off the couch, off the table etc. A lot of the muscles that are worked in push-ups are used to get through the day.

Using S.M.A.R.T. Principle

Say the goal is to now be able to feel confident in doing push-ups, let us say it is full push-ups. Just like every other goal, use the SMART principle. Which is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and most importantly it is Timed. Now, we have probably heard this repeatedly. Let us work backwards with this goal.

So, start with time. Have you got a period in mind? Three months, six weeks, a year, one month? Choose a period where you want to feel you have ticked your goal. Then move it backwards.

Realistic. Am I going to do this wearing a skirt? Or am I going to do this hanging over the cliff face doing push-ups? No, you are probably going to make sure that you are in a safe & comfortable environment.

Make it so it is attainable in reaching this goal. Can I do 50 push-ups in a minute? Is this attainable for you or is it not achievable for you?

Measurable, make sure there is a start and there is an end. You want to know where you progress towards. Giving yourself a benchmark, feeds information back so you can adjust accordingly.

The specific part of it, is making sure you have got the numbers that you want to achieve and the time period you wish to do this in. Once you have these two dates, you are going to work up to that ending date.

Building up to full push-ups

You know that you can now work towards achieving that elusive goal of doing full push-ups. But in the back of your mind there is a bit of concern going oh, this is going to cause me some pain. Whichever way it comes, whether it is doing it or just mentally. The big thing about the pain is that you can change it. You can reduce it, you can modify it. Take the load down so it takes less of your body to work towards it. And build yourself up with variations.

When we are working towards this goal of doing push-ups, use the differing techniques or variations. Which it might be an incline push-up using a wall or an edge. You might start using dumbbells to assist you in the same movement pattern that you will with a push-up. At the same time, you might find that you need to make some adjustments to where you are positioning your hands. Use that time to take the pressure off any pain points and we are going to work our way up to the end goal.

One other little tip that I would probably recommend, is don’t rush to get your push-ups finished. Get through the best range of motion as you can, all the way down and all the way up if you are able to. Then build from there.

If after all this, you don’t feel confident, seek the advice of a fitness professional to help you achieve those push-ups.