4 Tips To Increase Your Reps
When it comes to bodyweight movements, the most common ones that people tend to struggle with most are pull ups, dips and push ups. If one of your biggest issues is the latter, here’s 4 great tips that will help massively strengthen and condition your body to do a lot more reps over time.
- Swap To Incline
Instead of dropping to your knees to make things easier (which dramatically lowers your ability to hold your own weight on push ups), swap it up and raise your hands on to a bench/box/chair, feet still on the floor and do incline push ups. Make sure to get your chest all the way to your hands, pause then press back up. - 10-Second Descents
One of the biggest issues with push ups is the ability to hold your bodyweight under tension. By focusing only on the downward phase of the push ups (aim for 10 seconds), you’ll strengthen all the supporting muscle groups needed to do more reps. This is a great drill to see results in short time. Try 3–4 sets of 2–5 reps with 10 second descents. - Static Holds
Static holds, also known as Isometrics, have you performing little to no movement while contracting muscle fibers. To benefit your push ups, position yourself in a plank position, lower your chest to the floor and hold there for 30 seconds. Straighten back up to the starting position, rest and repeat. The key benefits of static training are: Increased muscular endurance and increased muscular strength. - Low To Mid Reps
Another area of the push up many may struggle with is not the lowering, but actually pushing your own bodyweight up from the ground. This is basically a lack of strength in the arms, chest, shoulders and core, so simply counter-act this by performing half push ups from the ground to mid way and back down again. This will strengthen you up in this portion of the movement, then the top portion of locking out is the easiest!
Bonus Tip
Instead of setting up with your hand position high and wide like the letter T… keep your elbows closer to your body instead at a 20–40 degree angle for better leverage and overall stronger push up!!!
The workout below hits all the necessary muscles to strengthen yourself up to perform push ups much better and for more reps. Add this in to your routine and test your max amount of push ups at the end of every week.
