How To Do A Push-Up and Why It Took Me 15 Years To Be Able To Perform One
The Push Up is a very hard exercise to execute…and only after 15 years of hard work on the movement have I actually managed to achieve it. This article is going to explain how you can practice and progress your push-up but also I want to delve into why we the Push Up is one of those exercises that make us feel so useless when we cannot perform it.
Also…before we get into it…Push Up or Press Up? I’m going to use the term Push Up for this article for two reasons. 1. My Grammar App prefers it. 2. It is a Pushing Movement of the body. Press would indicate speed…and my Push Ups are not fast. At all.
15 Years….seriously?
I kid you not. I remember when I was an Air Cadet at the tender age of 15 and one of my punishments, yes punishments, for something like not having shiny enough shoes, would be to go out into a dark cold English Winters Night with an NCO and I would have to do 10 Push-Ups.
Now I am a very tall, very skinny, floppy eared human, and so the ability to do a Push Up was not something that would ever come naturally to me.
Nor is the cold dark environment of someone shouting at me likely to motivate me to succeed at this punishment. In truth, we were bordering on abuse, but it was cloaked in Military Discipline…so its alright…right?
Because of how long my levers (arms and legs) are, it naturally makes a movement like a Push Up a lot harder.
It comes down to Three Things, as the brilliant blog Art of Tall States,
- Distance Travelled: The longer your limbs the more work you have to do to move your body through a range of motion. For every inch your arms are longer than someone of a shorter height you have to travel an inch further to execute a push-up. When you increase the distance you need to travel, you increase the amount of work you need to do!
- Leverage: Push-Ups are a second class lever. Your Centre of Gravity hovers around your hips. Your arms do all of the moving. Gravity is pulling your body down at the Hips. Consequently, you need a certain amount of abdominal strength to complete a push-up, to keep your hips from sagging*. The taller you are, the longer your body and the further your hands and feet are from your hips. The further your base of support moves from the centre, your hips, the greater the amount of force that pulls the hips down.
*a point that will become very clear in the latter part of this article.
3. Muscle To Weight Ratio: Generally the taller you are the more weight you have to carry (more dense and bigger bones, longer legs). As you get taller, your organs and bones get larger and heavier, but you still build muscle at about the same rate as everyone else (regardless of height). So, if you are lean (like most tall people), you require a certain amount of strength to be able to execute a push-up correctly.
It’s usually a lack of strength coupled with distance travelled and leverage that makes push-ups harder if you are tall.
So unbeknown to myself at the time, as well as Lance Corporal Craig, a very short yappy thing…the kind of person that loved to exploit the tiny amount of power he had over anyone…I was at a significant disadvantage from the outset. But this didn’t stop the ridicule, the failure and the outright sense of uselessness I had from not being able to do a Push-Up.
It was a mental scar that was well and truly ingrained deep within me. It all linked to the bullying I would receive on a daily basis at school combined with the usual worries that a teenager would have about the world.
I was scarred from ever having to do a Push-Up.
Fast forward a few years, I’m now in the Gym. Having pretty much-avoided Push-Ups since I was an Air Cadet. I got through Drama School, travelled the world filming, played Soldiers in Films, I even Refereed in the FA Cup…but always managed to sidestep the P…U.
Until I started training Clients…I would have to joke about my inability to not demonstrate one correctly…and I would silently hear the other trainers mock me. Laugh at me…in my head they would say things like:
“Call yourself a PT and you can’t do a Push-Up????”
Well yeah. I did. I have many misgivings…and not being able to do a Push Up is (or was) one of them. Of course, this was all in my head but it still felt very real.
Then I decided to take my Strength Training seriously, I hit the Bench Press, The Overhead Press, The Pull-Up, The Barbell Row, I worked my Upper Body over and over twice a week (Legs was the other workout of the week) and I have done this now for 3 years until the other day I was in the gym with my fiancee and I was just hammering out a Push Up. Didn’t even think of it. It never felt smoother, it never felt more controlled…it did still make my face go red. But I was doing it. I then asked my fiancee to record it…onto Instagram Stories (follow me @thegymstarter) and I uploaded the video. It got a lovely response from lots of lovely people.
And I realised after 15 years my journey was complete.
Why was it so hard for me?
My mental block when it came to it.
The scars I had from my early exposure to the exercise, whether that was at school in P.E class or as an Air Cadet, it clearly made me put up a lot of walls in my mind whenever I was asked to execute a Push-Up.
Combine that with my physiology. But I’m not making excuses. I wasn't strong enough. Plain and simple. I could run a Marathon…but I couldn’t do a single push up. I had to build muscle…which is something that has always been hard for me… and that led to a long journey in being able to do the Push-Up.
Why is it so hard for anyone?
One of the most common things I hear from clients when asking them to do a Push Up is “Why can’t I do a Push-Up? I’m so weak it's ridiculous”
It's not ridiculous at all. In the world, there is a very common misconception that a Push Up is something we all should be able to do. We think of them as basic, simple movements that everyone in the world can do except for us.
Let's look at how heavy a Push Up is:
When in the Up Position of a Push Up you are lifting 69% of your body weight.
Therefore if you weigh 75kg you are lifting 51.75kg.
When in the Down Position of a Push Up you are lifting 75.04% of your body weight.
Therefore if you weigh 75kg you are lifting 56.28kg.
That's a heavy weight.
If you have attempted a Push-Up and felt like a failure…ask yourself this:
“Can I do a 55kg Bench Press?”
“A 55kg Overhead Press?”
“ Can I do a 55kg anything in the Gym?”
If the answer is no to just one of these questions then you are not a failure because you cannot do a Push-Up.
You are quite simply very normal.
How Do You Improve Your Push Up?
In order to develop your ability with any exercise that you are struggling with you can regress the exercise to try and make it more manageable for you to execute.
With a Push Up there are two regular regressions.
The 3/4 or Kneeling Push Up :
Or the Incline Push Up:
Of the two I favour an Incline a lot lot more. The Incline Push Up demands that you engage your Core Muscles* a lot more than the Kneeling Push Up.
*I told you I would come back to it
By getting used to the movement pattern with your Core Muscles engaged you are going to find the transition of from Incline to Flat a lot easier.
The other part of a Push Up that gets wildly ignored is the arm and head position in the lower part of the movement.
Many people believe that a Push Up goes straight up and down.
This misconception leads you to overuse of your arm and shoulder muscles and underuses your Chest Muscles.
We want to get the Chest engaged as much as possible in this movement pattern so that you can progress it with a much larger muscle group engaged…hopefully making the whole thing easier.
In order to do this we need two things to occur:
- You need to lower your body tracking to the shape of a quarter circle. This way your head and chest will finish in the lower position further forward than the starting position, and your hands should then end up next to your nipples on your chest.
2. If you get point 1 correct then that should allow your arms to form the much needed Arrow Position which will help you with the Push Up also. Many people allow their arms to head into the “T” position, which compromises the shoulder joint, combined with putting too much strain upon muscles which are too small for you to be able to lift 74.04% of your Bodyweight. Seriously, try doing a Tricep Extension with 50kg….(I was joking. Please do not attempt this idea).
If you want to build up your ability to be able to execute a Push Up I would suggest throwing in practice to your upper body day. Remember:
Practice Makes Permanent
A good Upper Body Workout to get towards a Push Up would be:
Barbell Bench Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 8–9
Incline Bench Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 7–8
Overhead Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 6–7
Super Set of Lateral Raise | Front Raise | 3 Sets | RPE= 6–7
Inverted Row | 3 Sets | RPE = 7
Paloff Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 7
Plank | 3 Sets | RPE = 7
Push Up Variation | 3 Sets | RPE = 6–7
To Conclude…
The Push Up is far harder than the world has told you, and your misgivings in being able to complete it are fully understandable.
Stop thinking that using regression is a sign of failure. It's not. Its a sign of knowledge and understanding of what it takes to reach your goal. Its a sign of rejecting what popular opinion is, and making sure that you are working on your own track, for your own goals, in your own way.
It took me 15 years to be able to write this article for you, with authority. That’s a long time.
I can’t say doing a Push Up was ever an “active” goal of mine, and I do think if I was able to shake off my negative experiences with the exercise quicker then I would have shortened this time frame. But I avoided it.
I avoided it because it reminded me of my weaknesses. But the only person that lost out was me.
You may have some mental blocks when it comes to your Health and Fitness, and you may need more help than just this article.
But work on your goals. Because you have a lot to gain from them. Yes they will take a long time to accomplish, but if you can open up your time frames and understand that the art of building muscle and losing weight takes a long long time.
The more you can engage with that…the easier it all becomes.
- Tall, A., 2020. Are Push-Ups Harder For Tall People? — The Art Of Tall. [online] The Art of Tall. Available at: <http://artoftall.com/are-push-ups-harder-for-tall-people/> [Accessed 30 March 2020].
- Cooperinstitute.org. 2020. How Much Weight Is Really Lifted During A Push-Up? — Cooper Institute. [online] Available at: <https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2011/03/how-much-weight-is-really-lifted-during-a-push-up/> [Accessed 30 March 2020].
