Name: The Official Push-Up Checklist (AVOID MISTAKES!)
Uploaded: 2019-11-12T12:20:13.000Z
Duration: 10 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Today we're going to talk about the pushup.

One of the most common exercises performed in the gym.

However, it's also one of the most commonly mis-performed exercises.

I feel that what happens with this exercise is we don't pay it the same attention as

That's ironic because we're going to cover both exercises side by side, creating a checklist

so you can see the commonalities between the two exercises, therefore hopefully better

understanding the cues that you're looking to integrate and make sure you follow them

So, you make sure you get the most out of it.

As I mentioned in the opening, if you're looking at the two exercises, they are very

One is being done with a barbell and one is utilizing your own bodyweight as the resistance.

If I were to lift my knees up onto a pair of dumbbells to try and equate the torso positioning

here, you can see the mechanics of the 'pushing' portion of the exercise is the same.

We want to make sure we're doing the same thing across the board, utilizing the same

mechanics and focusing the same attention to get the most out of it.

We start at the top here and work our way down.

Where do you want your head and neck to be?

If you were doing a bench-press you would never try to push your head back into the

As people try and generate more force away from their body, they do everything they can

to produce force from the opposite direction.

Often times, pushing with the back of their head.

That not only creates neck strain most often, but it's also taking away from the mechanics

of the exercise and how to do it properly.

What we want to do is make sure, if anything, we keep our chin down and tucked in, so we

We're not trying to bend our head all the way back or flex our head all the way down

toward the ground, sometimes creating the illusion that our eyes and body are getting

closer to the ground before it actually does.

What we want to do is keep it in neutral and maintain that position from the very first

The next thing we want to do is look at the shoulders.

The most important thing you can do here is un-shrug them.

If you look at a bench-press, one of the most common flaws people make is, in an effort

to create that tightness or retraction that they hear we should have on the exercise,

As a matter of fact, we want the exact opposite.

We want the shoulders together, but we also want them down.

We can do that by consciously un-shrugging the shoulders here.

The secondary effect of this is that it's going to put the elbows in a better position

Because as we shrug up the clavicle is going to change its angle, dragging the scapula

As those two go together we know the relationship between it and the shoulder joint itself,

you're going to change the mechanics of the shoulder joint.

Mostly elevating it inside the socket, creating a higher elbow angle as you go down into the

We're going to cover that in depth as we get down here.

But the most important thing you can do is start by initiating a conscious un-shrugging

It doesn't just apply for the bench-press, obviously.

It does the same thing here in the pushup.

Before you even descend into a single rep, consciously pull your shoulders down and back.

We'll get into the specifics of what you want to do with your scapula next, but the

most important thing you could do here, before you do anything else, is un-shrug those shoulders.

Moving onto the upper back, the most important thing you could do here is create stability

Because it's what provides the stable base from which you will press off.

Whether you're doing a pushup or a bench-press.

When people tell you to retract your shoulder blades what they're trying to do is tell

Because the bar will start and end over this base, if you're doing this exercise properly,

and we're going to talk about this more when we talk about bar path later on.

The fact is this: you have your most force and power when you can push off something

If I were to give you one opportunity to produce your highest vertical jump ever and I give

you two chances to do it would you rather do it off sand, or off this hard floor here

Most likely, if you're smart enough, you'd be choosing the hard floor in this gym because

you know you could generate the most force into that floor to push off in the opposite

The same thing applies here in both the bench-press and the pushup.

You want to make sure you consciously pull your shoulder blades together and make them

Create as much tightness as you can right through that shoulder girdle.

Realize that's where you're going to be pushing off and generating force in the opposite

If you get this right, guys, I promise you, not only will the pushup become easier, but

The next part is one that catches some people by surprise.

We know that your body's ability to perform any exercise is infinitely made better if

you can involve, not just the upper body, but the lower body as well, where some of

the strongest muscles in your body reside.

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The Official Push-Up Checklist (AVOID MISTAKES!)

properly

effort

matter

straight