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What's up, guys?
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Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
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Today we're going to talk about the pushup.
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One of the most common exercises performed in the gym.
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However, it's also one of the most commonly mis-performed exercises.
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I feel that what happens with this exercise is we don't pay it the same attention as
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we do, say, the bench-press.
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That's ironic because we're going to cover both exercises side by side, creating a checklist
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so you can see the commonalities between the two exercises, therefore hopefully better
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understanding the cues that you're looking to integrate and make sure you follow them
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when you perform this exercise.
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So, you make sure you get the most out of it.
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Are you ready?
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As I mentioned in the opening, if you're looking at the two exercises, they are very
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much the same exercise.
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One is being done with a barbell and one is utilizing your own bodyweight as the resistance.
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If I were to lift my knees up onto a pair of dumbbells to try and equate the torso positioning
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here, you can see the mechanics of the 'pushing' portion of the exercise is the same.
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We want to make sure we're doing the same thing across the board, utilizing the same
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mechanics and focusing the same attention to get the most out of it.
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We start at the top here and work our way down.
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That is with the head and neck.
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Where do you want your head and neck to be?
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Well, we don't want them to do this.
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If you were doing a bench-press you would never try to push your head back into the
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bench.
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Although, that is a common flaw.
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As people try and generate more force away from their body, they do everything they can
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to produce force from the opposite direction.
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Often times, pushing with the back of their head.
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That not only creates neck strain most often, but it's also taking away from the mechanics
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of the exercise and how to do it properly.
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What we want to do is make sure, if anything, we keep our chin down and tucked in, so we
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prevent that from happening.
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With the pushup it's the same thing.
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We're not trying to bend our head all the way back or flex our head all the way down
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toward the ground, sometimes creating the illusion that our eyes and body are getting
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closer to the ground before it actually does.
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That's why we do that.
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What we want to do is keep it in neutral and maintain that position from the very first
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rep, to the last.
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The next thing we want to do is look at the shoulders.
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The most important thing you can do here is un-shrug them.
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What do I mean?
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If you look at a bench-press, one of the most common flaws people make is, in an effort
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to create that tightness or retraction that they hear we should have on the exercise,
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they pull up into this shrug.
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That's not what we want.
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As a matter of fact, we want the exact opposite.
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We want the shoulders together, but we also want them down.
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We can do that by consciously un-shrugging the shoulders here.
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The secondary effect of this is that it's going to put the elbows in a better position
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as we perform the press.
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Why?
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Because as we shrug up the clavicle is going to change its angle, dragging the scapula
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along with it.
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As those two go together we know the relationship between it and the shoulder joint itself,
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you're going to change the mechanics of the shoulder joint.
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Mostly elevating it inside the socket, creating a higher elbow angle as you go down into the
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press.
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We're going to cover that in depth as we get down here.
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But the most important thing you can do is start by initiating a conscious un-shrugging
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of the shoulder.
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It doesn't just apply for the bench-press, obviously.
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It does the same thing here in the pushup.
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Before you even descend into a single rep, consciously pull your shoulders down and back.
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We'll get into the specifics of what you want to do with your scapula next, but the
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most important thing you could do here, before you do anything else, is un-shrug those shoulders.
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Moving onto the upper back, the most important thing you could do here is create stability
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and tightness through here.
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Why?
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Because it's what provides the stable base from which you will press off.
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Whether you're doing a pushup or a bench-press.
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Let me explain.
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When people tell you to retract your shoulder blades what they're trying to do is tell
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you to create tightness there.
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Why?
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Because the bar will start and end over this base, if you're doing this exercise properly,
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and we're going to talk about this more when we talk about bar path later on.
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The fact is this: you have your most force and power when you can push off something
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stable.
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If I were to give you one opportunity to produce your highest vertical jump ever and I give
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you two chances to do it would you rather do it off sand, or off this hard floor here
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in the gym?
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Most likely, if you're smart enough, you'd be choosing the hard floor in this gym because
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you know you could generate the most force into that floor to push off in the opposite
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direction.
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The same thing applies here in both the bench-press and the pushup.
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You want to make sure you consciously pull your shoulder blades together and make them
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tight.
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Create as much tightness as you can right through that shoulder girdle.
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Realize that's where you're going to be pushing off and generating force in the opposite
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direction.
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If you get this right, guys, I promise you, not only will the pushup become easier, but
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the bench-press will as well.
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The next part is one that catches some people by surprise.
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That is activation of the glutes.
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We know that your body's ability to perform any exercise is infinitely made better if
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you can involve, not just the upper body, but the lower body as well, where some of
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the strongest muscles in your body reside.
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When you're looking at a bench-press you actively want to contract your glutes.
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This provides additional strength and force in that opposite direction from the ground
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up.
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As I push the bar away, I can drive my feet down, creating these equal and opposite force
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here, to allow me to do that with more efficiency.
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We can do the same thing here when we do the pushup.
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I want to make sure that I'm not lazily hanging out in the pushup position, but I'm
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actively contracting my glutes.
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The second I do this – we call this 'plugging the energy leaks'.
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You create more total body tightness.
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You create more efficiency from the top down throughout the entire kinetic chain.
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So, when I do a single rep, I'm not losing it and having the force dissipate from what
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I'm generating, pushing into the floor throughout the weak spots of my body.
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Tightening the glutes alone will give you an instant fix, and an instant plug of that
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common energy leak, allowing you to do this exercise better.
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An additional benefit to not only getting your upper back tightness and your glute activation
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in place is that you'll also fix the positioning of your thoracic spine.
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Why?
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As we tighten from below and tighten from the top the thoracic spine will follow.
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We'll get proper extension.
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We'll give ourselves a chance to allow the chest to get out in front, as opposed to letting
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the shoulders get out in front.
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This is an important distinction to make when we're trying to press safely.
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We know if the shoulders tend to dominate the movement, not only will we have an underdeveloped
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chest from doing the exercises, but we're also putting ourselves in a position of a
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likely impingement and damage in that joint over time.
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By fixing the upper back and by fixing the glutes we're correcting the thoracic spine's
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positioning as an additional benefit.
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Up to this point, all the items in our checklist were things you could change or modify before
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you even did a single repetition.
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But at some point, we've got to get going.
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When we do, we need to make sure we focus first and foremost on what's happening here
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in our elbows.
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When we perform the bench-press what we do not want to do is allow the elbows to travel
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high because we know how dangerous that could be for the safety of your shoulders.
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Especially considering the fact that these are both exercises that you're likely to
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rack up lots of repetitions on over the course of your training in your lifetime.
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So, what we want to do is create a little more subacromial space by allowing our elbows
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to drift downward, about 30 degrees off the horizontal.
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Beyond that, we know it's further reinforcing what we talked about in the very beginning.
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That is to decompress those shoulders, to pull those traps down.
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The third thing we know it does is, we know it allows us to push with more force.
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If I were to ask you right now to push me away from you, the thing you would probably
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do is keep your elbows in the position here.
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It's a natural position for your elbows to generate the most amount of force.
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You would not try to flare your elbows and push me from here because you just turned
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a chest, shoulder, and tricep movement into a simple tricep extension movement that doesn't
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have nearly the same force generation capabilities.
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You want to make sure you get this right.
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Again, it carries over here to the pushup as well.
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You don't allow your elbows to drift all the way up here.
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The same things that were problematic for your shoulder in the bench-press would be
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problematic here as well.
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Just because you're not using the same amount of weight doesn't mean it's still not
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biomechanically bad for your shoulders.
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So, get those elbows tucked down and focus on maintaining this position from the first
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rep to the last, to not only keep those shoulders safe, but to get much more out of the exercise.
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Whether you're doing the bench-press or the pushup.
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So, we talked about the proper performance of the bench-press, we talk about the bar
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path being critical to that because we want an efficient movement pattern here.
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We can generate that by having a straight bar path.
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But straight doesn't necessarily mean straight up and down.
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It means straight at an angle.
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We go from that position of power that we talked about up here with the upper back.
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From this position of stability, it travels down because we know the elbows are taking
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us in that direction to align lower across your chest.
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From there we want to get back to that position of stability.
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We know if we press straight out from there, we're going to create much more strain and
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stress on the front delt than we want.
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We want to get it back to that position of stability, which is straight up over our shoulder
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blades, and up over that stable base.
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So, the bar path is going to be angled.
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So how do we do this on a pushup?
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Well, we can't move a bar in space like we can on a bench-press.
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But what we can do is manipulate our body in space.
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So, as I go down into a rep, I want to allow my body to drift a little bit forward into
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my hands, so my hands are lined up along that lower chest line at the bottom of the repetition.
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From here, as I press up, I simply allow my body to drift back just a little bit, so my
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hands come back up to a position like they started, above that stable base of my shoulder
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blades.
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There's a slight rocking component to this.
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It's very, very subtle, but very important to make sure you're maintaining those same
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mechanics.
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Nothing changes between the bench-press and the pushup.
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You still want to have that same path, whether it be with a bar or your body, if you want
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to maintain efficiency, and you want the greatest power output.
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Lastly, guys, one of the things that drives me crazy about any exercise is when people
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bastardize the form in an effort to just perform the exercise.
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It's more important to do it right.
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So, we don't want to bounce any bar off our chest just to lift more weight.
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What we want to do is convince ourselves that it was our muscles that did the work and not
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the momentum.
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So, when you get down to the bottom of a bench-press, pause.
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Hold the bar against your chest for a split second and then push back from there.
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There's not difference with a pushup either.
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Guys, there's nothing stopping you from turning this pushup into a much more difficult
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version of a pushup by weighting is.
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The fact of the matter is, everything would still stay the same.
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When I get to the bottom, I want that brief pause because I want to know when I initiate
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the descent from that pushup, I'm doing it with the work of my muscles, and not simply
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bouncing off the ground, or bouncing the bar off my chest.
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There you have it, guys.
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A complete checklist to make sure you're not only getting the pushup right, but you're
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also seeing the correlation between it and the bench-press, so you can get all of them
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right.
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Guys, the mechanics of every exercise you do are important.
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The details matter.
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If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, that realizes
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everything you do in the gym matters, and you need to pay attention to it; head over
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to ATHLEANX.com and get one of our ATHLEANX programs.
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In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
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below.
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Let me know what else you want me to cover and I'll do my best to do that for you in
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the days and weeks ahead.
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All right, guys, I'll see you soon.