I know I was reluctant at first to get back into doing push-ups … I had too many bad memories dating back to grade school gym class. When I was a kid I’d rather take an entire hour of dodgeballs to the face over 10 minutes of push-ups, that’s how much I hated them. But now that I’ve grown up and am a bit wiser and smarter, the decision to add push-ups back into my routine was an easy one. Hopefully, it’s something I can convince you to do as well.
I’ll talk a bit about why push-ups aren’t as bad as you remember in a bit, but first I want to go over the basics. Push-ups hit all sorts of muscle groups: arms, shoulders, chest, abs, and legs. They provide awesome bang for buck with your arms and pecs and take care of a lot of upper body muscles that don’t get used when you’re doing typical weight lifting routines.
If these muscles are ignored then at best you’re going to have less functional strength than you should and at worst you leave yourself open to injury. A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, right?
Now back to bringing push-ups into your routine and how to do it with as little pain as possible. The two things I used to hate about push-ups was that I couldn’t do very many at the start – I’m talking about a struggle to get 20 done. When you hear stories of senior citizens cranking out 1000 push-ups, that can make you feel pretty inadequate.
The other issue I had was that push-ups HURT! My wrists would begin to ache after a while and my elbows weren’t too happy with them either.
As for the first issue, it’s pretty normal to be bad at push-ups at first. Even if you’re already in decent shape, there’s a good chance you’ll find your body betraying you much sooner than you’d expect. That’s because of all those muscles we were talking about that push-ups tap but other exercise don’t.
Results Before You Know It
The good news is it doesn’t take long before you start seeing improvements in the number you’re able to do. There are many websites out there that are devoted to 100 push up plans which take between 3-6 weeks to complete. I’ll share the plan I follow another time, but for this post we’ll stick to the basics.
The key point here is that results manifest pretty quickly with push-ups, both in the form of strength and physique and in the number you’re able to accomplish.
As for the annoying discomfort some get from doing push-ups, there’s a couple of different things you can do to deal with this:
- Buying push up bars or rotating hand grips
- Use a closed fist
Push up bars are cheap and straight forward: they’re designed so that you don’t have to bend your wrists out of shape. If you’ve never used bars before, you might be surprised at how much more pleasant push-ups can be without all that pressure on your wrists.
Some people perform push-ups on their fists to avoid this, but even with a mat this can get uncomfortable rather quickly if you’re older. Arnold said “No pain, no gain” but he wasn’t talking about sore joints and fingers!
Another major advantage of push up bars is the ability to go lower than you would if you were doing push-ups normally. The extra inches of downward motion really does the trick for getting every drop of effectiveness out of your workout.
You’ve probably seen rotating hand grips in the form of those ‘Perfect Push-Ups’ ads – developed by a former Navy SEAL and so on and so forth. It’s almost unfortunate that this product has ended up on the late night TV exercise circuit because unlike most other products found there, these actually work.
I have many friends who swear by them and laugh at my simple push up bars. Rotating hand grips are the tops for comfort when you’re doing push-ups, although I’m happy with my solid bars and probably won’t upgrade till I run out of other things to buy on my list of home gym essentials.
In the end, push-ups are an excellent addition to your home gym routine and they are the gold standard for testing functional strength and general health. If you haven’t tried to incorporate them into your workout, you’re overlooking one of the best, easiest, and cheapest exercises out there.
Top Suppliers of Home Gym Equipment Online
Related posts on HomeGymJunkie.com
