Explosive Push Up Progressions
Although plyometric training is becoming more and more popular amongst athletes, there are many individuals and teams that do not train their upper body to be explosive in the same way that they do their lower body. For most this may be due to a lack of knowledge, or imagination and creativity when it comes to training the upper body for explosive force.
The movements shown in this section will build a great deal of relative strength, power and coordination that will carry over well to nearly any activity involving pushing mechanics.
While performed at high velocity they will be sure to build more upper body power, strengthening your chest, shoulders and triceps.
Plyometric Push Ups
There are numerous explosive variations of the push up, that all involve forcefully pushing yourself up off of and away from the ground as fast as possible. The idea is to remain in contact with the floor the bare minimum amount, so that you can get lots of time in the air, by pushing yourself up with as much powerful force as you can generate, and get as high as you can.
The Plyometric Push Up involves keeping your feet in contact with the floor at all times, descending into a push up, and then pushing yourself up as explosively and high as you can so that your hands leave the ground and you get a little time being airborne. As you return back down to the floor, be sure that you don’t land with your arms locked out, otherwise you will end up injuring your elbows. Perform your plyometric reps fast, furious and with ferocious power.
To make this movement even more challenging, you can perform the plyometric push up with a diamond close grip.
Hands Elevated Plyometric Push Ups
This is plyometric push ups 101, the hands elevated position offers a beginner friendly stepping stone if you are not quite ready for standard plyometric push ups. The elevated hand position makes the exercise a little easier as you won’t be lifting as much of your own bodyweight, with the bench or whatever elevated object you use takes some of the strain off.
Keep your abdominals and glutes tight throughout this movement, maintaining a straight line from your heels up to your shoulders at all time, not allowing your bottom to stick up into the air or your stomach to sag down towards the ground. Over time as you become stronger look to use a lower platform on which to place your hands, until eventually you are comfortable with standard plyometric push ups.
Clapping Push Ups
Once you’ve got the hang of plyo push ups, you can start making the movement more difficult by clapping your hands together each time you push yourself up into the air. You’ll have to forcefully push yourself up into the air in order to get enough height to get the clap in between reps, which also adds in a significant coordination component to the exercise.
You’ll have to really engage your core and keep your whole body tight in order to generate enough full body strength to really explode up off of the floor and get the required height. Clapping push ups are fantastic for building the chest, triceps and deltoids along with explosive pushing force.
Aim to get as much height as possible with each explosive rep, and try to minimize the amount of time your hands are in contact with the ground, as soon as your hands touch the floor immediately explode back up and get airborne again.
If you want an even tougher challenge, you could try clapping your hands behind your head, an exercise which is known as chin splitters. They are named chin splitters for a very good reason, you do not want to mess them up!
Feet Elevated Plyometric Push Ups
If you are looking for more of a challenge and make the standard plyometric push up more difficult (as if it wasn’t tough enough already), then the feet elevated variation is right up your street. Elevating your feet as shown forces you to lift a higher percentage of your bodyweight and thus increases the difficult, if you are looking for a more challenging variation that keeps you in the lower rep ranges, this one is for you.
The elevated foot position shifts more of the focus from the chest and onto the smaller deltoid muscles, and forces more midsection core integration, making this variation a little more difficult that the standard plyo push up.
Place your feet up onto a bench or box and maintain tension in your abdominals and glutes, along with proper posture, your body should essentially create a straight line from your shoulders down to your feet, or as much of a straight line as possible. Be sure not to bend too much at the hips by pushing your bottom up into the air, this makes the movement much easier and less effective.
Push yourself up as high into the air as you can, and upon returning to the ground, push yourself back up as quickly as possible, minimizing ground contact time and maximizing the amount of time spent in the air.
Power Overs
Power overs are one of the most effective upper body power builders you will likely find, a cool looking variation that will also improve your coordination and balance, and most of all it is a great deal of fun. Sadly however, you’ll seldom see this exercise being done by athletes or gym goers, which is a shame as it is as effective as it is enjoyable.
Begin in the push up position with one hand on the ball and the other flat on the ground, descend into a push up bending your arms and moving your chest towards the ground, then using both arms forcefully push yourself up and over the ball getting as much height as you do so.
As your body travels over the ball you’ll need to switch hands, the hand on the ball moving onto the ground on the other side, while the hand which started on the ground moves onto the ball.
As you land on the other side of the ball, descend straight into the push up position moving your chest towards the ground, and immediately reverse the movement to power over to the other side again, thus completing one full repetition.
Full Body Projections
If you’re still looking for some fun and interesting ways to perform plyometric push ups and build some explosive strength, here is another fun variation. The full body projection, which involves performing a standard plyometric push up, but instead of only bringing your hands up off of the floor, you’ll look to get your whole body airborne, bringing your upper and lower body up evenly.
You’ll need to push through your toes a little during this one, but do so with straight legs. If you want to add a little extra challenge, you can try extending your arms out straight in front of you at the top height of the movement, which is known as a superman plyometric push up.
Superman Plyometric Push Ups
The superman push ups is an extension (literally) of the full body projection push up, you’ll need to explosively push yourself up as high as possible, bringing both your hands and feet off of the ground as you do so and at the height of the jump raise both arms out in front of you in order to create a straight line with your body from your fingers to your toes.
This variation is a lot of fun, but requires a great deal of core and upper body pushing strength, timing and coordination. If you are going to attempt this variation I suggest doing so on a fairly forgiving surface such as grass or some kind of matted area. It takes a lot of guts and if it goes wrong you could probably lose a few teeth, so proceed with caution when doing the superman push up.
Try your best to throw your body up explosively but in a straight line, avoid piking upwards and sticking your butt up into the air.
Behind The Back Clap Push Ups
This is one of the more advanced variations of the push up shown thus far, and requires a fair bit of upper body and core strength. During this push up you’ll push yourself up as with a standard plyometric push up so that your hands come up off of the floor, and at the height of elevation perform a clap behind your back, then on the way back down you must quickly bring your hands back in front of you to place them on the ground as you land.
This is quite a step up from the previous variations and requires a great deal of not just strength, but speed too, in order to clap behind you and then bring your hands back in front to safely land both hands back on the ground, before going back into the next repetition.
So attempt this variation with great caution for the first time, you’ll notice that you’ll also need a certain amount of shoulder flexibility in order to even clap both hands together, if this is something that you struggle with then performing the skin the cat stretch/hold can help with this a great deal.
Double & Triple Clap Push Ups
The triple clap push up is an amazing feat of strength and power that is sure to drop a few jaws and raise one or two eyebrows and is the gold standard of explosive pushing strength. You’ll improve your hand speed, strength, speed, and shoulder flexibility with this dynamic movement.
Some may view this exercise as nothing more than a party trick, but they are mistaken as the triple clap push up does indeed offer significant athletic benefits. Others will label it as a dangerous exercise, well I would say that performing any advanced strength movement before building a solid foundation of strength first could be dangerous, one should simply not attempt this before being fully prepared for it.
You should have put in the work with plyometric, clapping and behind the back push ups before trying the triple clap. I’d also suggest training the double clap push up which involves exploding up into the air as with a plyo push up and clapping once behind and then once in front each rep, before making contact with the ground again.
This exercise must be performed with speed and all out explosiveness, pushing yourself forcefully upwards into the air and clapping once in front, then behind and in front again before dropping back down to the floor and going straight into the next repetition.
If the triple clap is to daunting to begin with, I suggest starting with the double clap push up, during which you’ll perform a plyometric push up where you clap once in front and once behind your body performing returning back down to the ground.
One Arm Clapping Push Ups
If you’re becoming quite skilled with one arm push ups, the one arm ‘clapping’ push up will be right up your street, requiring a unique blend of strength and speed making this a tremendous power movement.
You’ll need to perform a one arm push up so explosively that your hand rises up off of the ground and quickly slaps your chest or claps your free hand, before rapidly returning the hand to the floor upon landing.
The only trouble with this movement is that you already need to be incredibly strong to begin with, before you can even think about trying it you will have to get to the point where one arm push ups for 10 reps are becoming easy. But for those highly advanced athletes who already possess extremely high levels of pushing strength and power, this can make an excellent training tool to further increase your those qualities and coordination also. To begin with, I definitely recommend performing this exercise with your feet spread wide apart.
