You can spend lots of money on exercise machines and equipment and pills throughout your life.
I can guarantee that all of them combined will not be as useful as the totally free and utterly doable PUSH UP!
I put it in caps because it really is the granddaddy of them all. I’ve been putting off placing it in our Monday file because I was anticipating groans and the “Really?” comments. I get caught up in that kind of thinking too. Shouldn’t we use some new fangled, fancy thing to get strong? It can’t be that easy, and besides, doesn’t it get old? Maybe.
Today I looked at our exercise library (and my happily sore chest muscles) and decided to get over it, for the love of our wallets. In searching for a good photo to post I also realized we have over 100 different variations of the everyday, seemingly mundane Push up in our coffers! No joke. Strike the mundane from that sentence and let’s start with the basics…
The Perfect Push up:
- Place your hands a little wider than shoulder width apart.
- Your feet should be shoulder width apart as well.
- Beginners can lower one or both knees to the floor – Mimi demonstrates here:
- Intermediate and Advanced exercisers should create a nice straight line from the shoulders to the ankles.
- Inhale and lower your body slowly toward the floor maintaining that straight line.
- Intermediates can place a target under the chest to lower toward like Kriss is doing here (later she used the 5 lb sugar as a shoulder press weight in our Green Odyssey Adventure – she is a rock!):
- Advanced should lower as far as they can (Chris does the absolute most perfect push up in all the land, by the way). Observe perfection:
- Pause at the bottom for 1-2 seconds.
- Exhale and push up, back to start.
Repeat 10-20 times (10-20 reps). Rest 30 seconds and do another set. Work up to higher reps with less rest between sets. When you get stronger, we’ll bring some variations to your repertoire. Each of our Adventure programs bring you through just such a push up odyssey! Come join us!
You can do push ups while traveling or for your normal weekly routine. There are star athletes who report doing hundreds of push ups every other day. On the off day they do hundreds of sit-ups. Add in lunges and pull ups and you’ve got yourself a free and simple total body workout — no gym required. Ba-da-bing!