How to Do Push-ups: Beginner's Guide

We all know this exercise, but do you really know how to do push-ups correctly?

Push-ups, often regarded as a quintessential bodyweight exercise, are your perfect gateway to a healthier, fitter you. They're a fantastic exercise that can help you build upper body strength, tone your muscles, and improve overall fitness. They are a classic bodyweight exercise that can be done virtually anywhere, making them perfect for beginners looking to kickstart their fitness journey.

The HUGE PROBLEM is that push-ups are also considered a proper beginner exercise. Well, that's not a bad thing because it's true. However, people tend to underestimate the push-up. Not every beginner can do a single push-up, not to mention ten reps! This causes beginners to force themselves to do push-ups with horrendous form just to hit the recommended reps and sets.

In this article, we're going to fix that problem. We will guide you through the basics of push-ups for beginners, including everything you need to know, such as:

• Benefits of push-ups
• Push-up technique and form
• How to improve fast in push-ups
• Push-up progressions
• Beginner push-up workout
• & finally, frequently asked questions about the exercise

This article will equip you with the tools and knowledge to get your first-ever push-up quickly.

Benefits of Push-ups

Before diving into the nitty-gritty details, let's take a moment to understand why push-ups are an excellent choice for beginners (and everybody else):

1. Strength Building: Push-ups primarily target the chest, shoulders, triceps, and core muscles. Regular practice can help you develop upper body strength, essential for everyday activities.
2. Muscle Building: Even if you don't want to bulk up, muscles are vital for daily function and longevity! If done correctly, push-ups can build muscle from beginner to advanced.
3. Convenience: No equipment is required to do push-ups. All you need is yourself, making them accessible for everyone, even if you're working out at home, at a gym, or on the go.
4. Improved Posture: As push-ups engage your core and upper body muscles, they can aid in improving your posture, reducing the risk of back and neck pain.
5. Increased Endurance: Over time, push-ups can help improve your muscular endurance, allowing you to perform more repetitions and other exercises more easily.
6. Carry over to other movements: The general strength and habits built through this basic movement set a good foundation for more advanced bodyweight exercises.

Push-up Technique

1. Start with a high plank position by placing your hands on the floor shoulder-width apart. Arms straight. Legs extended and together. Bodyline straight.
2. Lower your body by bending your elbows until your chest touches the floor lightly.
3. Squeeze your chest and triceps, and push back up until your arms are straight.

Push-up Check List

The push-up exercise execution is relatively straightforward. However, it's easy to miss critical pointers that could ruin your progress or cause injuries.

If you really want to progress with your push-ups, you should follow a good form. Below are the things you need to remember while performing this classic exercise.

• Shoulders depressed - The chest and triceps are usually targeted during push-ups, but your shoulders also get stimulated and play a massive role in the movement. If you want to optimize your gains while keeping your shoulders safe from impingement, depress them by pushing them away from your ears throughout the movement.

• Scapula position - Proper scapular position is vital to capitalize excellent chest muscle activation. Do this by letting your shoulder blades move towards each other when going down the push-up. This motion is called scapular retraction. The motion stabilizes your shoulders, optimizes chest activation, and reduces the risk of injuries.

• Straight body line - Maintain a straight body throughout the push-up by engaging your core and staying mindful of your posture. This straight body alignment relieves undue strain on your lower back during push-ups and cultivates a rigid posture that carries over to various calisthenics exercises.

• Full range of motion - From the top position, you have to lower your body until your chest lightly brushes off the floor and then push back up to the starting position with straight arms. Each repetition should follow the same movement pathway.

• Controlled movement - Pushing up requires engaging your entire body, but beginners often struggle with uncontrolled descent, especially when lacking sufficient strength. This lack of control can hinder muscle activation and heighten the risk of injury due to undue stress on inactive muscle groups.

• Movement pattern - How you go down should also follow the same movement as how you push back up to the starting position. Since we're stronger during the push-up's negative phase (lowering down), we might be performing well at that point. However, it's common for beginners to have a crooked movement pathway when pushing up.

If you're having trouble performing a push-up with some or all of the key pointers mentioned, you might have a weakness that must be addressed. We can do this by simply making the push-ups easier.

How I First Learned Push-ups

My first-ever attempt to master push-ups looked good...... at the bottom. As you can see in the GIF, I was only doing a limited range of pulsing motion from the bottom.

Believe it or not, doing a ton of these eventually helped me reach the full push-up.

However, now that I've learned more about calisthenics, I wouldn't recommend taking this path toward push-up mastery. There are problems with this method:

1. Scalability - It won't cater to every beginner level, especially if you're on the heavier side.
2. Not comprehensive enough - I couldn't address certain weak links that must have slowed my progress.
3. Difficult to measure - The idea I had at that time was to build more reps and slowly increase the range of motion. Measuring my progress with reps was fine, but I didn't quantify and set my movement range, so I felt my progress was painfully slow.

How to Improve Fast in Push-ups

Push-up mastery doesn't happen overnight, but you can get much faster results if you work on these tips below.

You'll learn how to do push-ups much faster than I did.

Do push-ups - It should be obvious, but not many people apply this. To enhance your performance in push-ups or any skill, the most effective approach is engaging in the activity. This principle is commonly referred to as the "Principle of Specificity" or "Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID) principle." The crux of this principle lies in the idea that your body adapts specifically to the demands placed upon it. In the context of push-ups, if you want to get better at doing push-ups, the best strategy is to incorporate push-up training into your fitness routine consistently.

Progressive overload - This means to keep each work out harder than the last one. You can do this firstly by adding more reps gradually. You don't need a lot. Adding one rep per set is enough as long as it's genuinely challenging for you. Once you're ready, you can move to the next exercise progression.

Train close to failure - Going back to progressive overload, to maximize progress; you would want to do reps close enough to the point that doing one rep feels impossible without technique breakdown. This point is known as the point of failure. As current research suggests, you don't need to train to failure every time for progress, but getting close to it optimizes results. To do this, you'll need to choose the correct exercise progression for you.

Address weak links - Supplementing your push-up exercise with related exercises can boost your progress. The usual weak links are the scapula and core, which we will address in the push-up workout below.

Lose weight (fats) - Since you will work with your body weight as resistance with push-ups, losing weight will give you a massive advantage in your progress. You don't need to add many more activities to your push-up workout. All you need to do is to achieve a good amount of caloric deficit (around 200 - 500 fewer calories of maintaining) per day, and then you're set.

Push-up Progression for Beginners

Making an exercise more challenging in weightlifting is straightforward: you have to add more weight.

The same principle applies to push-ups and other calisthenics exercises: add more weight. However, changing the intensity is not so apparent as weightlifting.

In this calisthenics, we make use of progressions and variations. A progression is a set of exercises designed with increasing difficulty until the final step or the goal exercise.

To better visualize how we can do this, check out the equivalent body weight you will push on each push-up variation. The data here was gathered by a 2011 study interested in quantifying push-up load.

As you can see, push-ups aren't that easy. If you weigh 100 kilos, you're basically 64 kilos during your regular push-ups.

Let's get into the simplified progression you can take to get started.

Incline push-up

The incline push-up is the BEST push-up variation for every beginner simply because of its scalability. This means that you can easily adjust the difficulty or intensity of the exercise. You can do this by adjusting the height of where you're placing your hands.

Complete beginners can start at the wall, commonly called the wall push-up. It's still an incline push-up, but with your hands at a much higher starting point. From there, you're going to place your hands into a lower elevation to make the exercise harder.

Push-up negatives

The negative (also known as eccentric) work refers to lengthening the primary muscles during an exercise. In push-ups, this is when you're going down. We can take advantage of the fact that we're stronger during the negative phase. While you still can't perform the full range of motion of push-ups, you can use the negatives to build up strength toward the complete movement.

To do the exercise, lower your body from 4 to 8 seconds, then reset back to the starting position. You don't have to push back up. Use your legs to reset.

Partial range of motion push-ups

Once you've built the strength to push back up to the starting position, we can limit how low you can go in a push-up.

Placing a small item between your chest and the floor will keep you honest and accountable in every rep (unlike how I started my push-up journey). Go lower and lower until you're performing the full push-up.

Should I do kneeling push-ups?

Another popular beginner exercise variation is the kneeling or non-standard push-ups. I didn't include this in the main progression since you can easily transition to the full push-up position on the floor without going through the kneeling push-up. The incline push-up should be sufficient to build you enough capacity for the full variation.

Kneeling push-up is still a good exercise even though it's not necessary. Feel free to use it in your workout if you still benefit from the exercise as long as you perform it properly.

Push-up Workout

In this workout, we're solely going to focus on how to master push-ups. You can include other exercises such as squats and pulling movements (i.e., pull-up progressions), but for pushing, it's best to stick to these or just at a dip variation to the

Instructions

• Follow good technique. If you can't perform the exercise, move to an easier progression
• Rest 2 - 3 minutes per set
• Perform 2 - 3 times per week with one rest day in between
• Gradually add reps in each session

Exercise 1: Push-up Variation

Goal - 3 - 4 sets of 8 - 15 reps

Choose the push-up variation for your skill level. Start with the hardest variation to let you perform the lowest range of reps.

For the negatives, the recommended volume is 3 sets of 4 - 8 reps.

Exercise 2: Scapula Push-up

Goal - 3 sets of 6 - 10 reps

This exercise prepares the shoulders and the serratus anterior for the more challenging push-up variations. Find the push-up position that's comfortable for you to perform the exercise.

Exercise 3: Elbow Plank Hold

Goal - 3 sets of 45 - 60 seconds

Push-ups stimulate the core. If you're core's weak, your form will break, and it might cause lower back pains. A strong mid-section also allows for maximum force output to master push-ups quickly.

We're not going to use sit-ups or crunches to build up core strength as the motion on these exercises doesn't transfer directly to the push-up, unlike the classic plank.

Tips for Success

Here are some additional tips to help you succeed in your push-up journey as a beginner:

1. Consistency: Incorporate push-ups into your workout routine regularly. Gradually increase the number of reps and sets. Move to a more challenging progression as you get comfortable.
2. Warm-Up: Always warm up before doing push-ups to prevent injury. Research also shows that an effective warm-up can improve your performance, resulting in better gains. A few minutes of light cardio or dynamic stretching can help.
3. Rest: Allow your muscles to recover by giving them enough rest between push-up sessions. Overtraining can lead to injury and hinder progress. Allow 24 -48 hours of rest in between sessions.
4. Nutrition: Maintain a balanced diet to support muscle growth and overall health. Your hard and consistent workout will not reflect well if your nutrition isn't in check.
5. Patience: Progress may be slow initially, but stay patient and persistent. You'll see improvements over time.
6. Commitment: Understand that there will be times when the exercise will feel repetitive. That's just the nature of how to make progress. You need to keep doing the same movement while applying progressive overload. Switching up your workout too much can be counterproductive. Keep in mind the SAID principle.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long before I master push-ups?

There's no definite answer to this question. It really depends on your starting point, rate of progress, genetics, recovery, and so much more.

As a beginner, expect faster progress thanks to the "noob gains". Progress will naturally slow down as you get stronger and better.

But push-ups don't compare to advanced movements like planche or front lever. Complete beginners can definitely master them within 1 - 3 months or even much less time!

Should I lose weight before doing push-ups?

No, you can immediately start doing push-ups right from that bat. Although it does help when you lose weight, there's no sense holding up your start time.

Just choose the variation that you can manage at the time being.

Can push-ups help me lose weight?

Technically it the exercise does burn calories, but it's not sufficient enough to drop your weight quickly.

Shift your mindset from losing weight, to improving strength, building muscle, and restoring function with push-ups. Losing weight is best done through a proper caloric deficit.

Which is better: push-ups or bench press?

In an interesting 2020 study by Tillaar, the two exercises exhibited no significant difference in muscle activation and motion. If the intensity is matched based on your strength, both can build muscle and strength of the pushing muscles.

I recommend opting for specificity. Do you want to learn more calisthenics skills in the future? Opt for the push-up. Do you want to bench press? Opt for the bench press.

They are interchangable for general strength and muscular gains.

Can I combine push-ups and weight lifting?

Of course you can. You can use your push-ups in substitute of the classic bench press. You also have the option to alternate them in between training days.

However, you can also use both exercises in your workout. Just make sure that you're adjusting the intensity of the exercises. A good example is using bench press as your main HEAVY exercise with a low rep volume, then using light push-up variation (that suits your strength and fatigued state) at the end of your workout for high reps.

It will depend on context.

Wrapping Up

Mastering push-ups as a beginner is an achievable goal with the right approach and commitment. By focusing on proper form, gradual progression, and consistent practice, you can build both strength and confidence in your ability to perform this fundamental exercise.

Remember that everyone starts somewhere, and it's perfectly fine to begin with modified versions or lower repetitions. The key is to stay persistent, stay patient, and celebrate your progress along the way.

While you're mastering your push-up skills, you'll not only witness physical changes but also experience the satisfaction of achieving a significant milestone on your fitness journey. So, keep pushing, keep striving, and soon enough, you'll find yourself conquering push-ups with ease.

Let me know if this article helped you out!