How to do Push-ups

Difficulty: Easy

Impact Level: Low

Target Body Parts: abs, upper back, chest, shoulders

Instructions

Start at the top of the push up position with your hands on the floor, arms straight and underneath your shoulders. Step your feet back behind you and lift your knees. Engage your glutes, tense your legs and brace your core to keep your body rigid.

Keeping your elbows in towards your ribs and your forearms vertical, bend at the elbows to lower your body towards the floor. Your head and shoulders should move forwards of your hands as you get closer to the floor. Use your full range of motion to lower your chest in between your hands, as close to the floor as you can, then push your hands into the floor, keeping you body tensed, to move it up away from the floor back to the start position.

Watch out for elbows flaring out to the sides away from your ribs. They should always point back towards your feet. Another common mistake is to lower down without moving your head and shoulders forward of your hands. These mistakes can lead to injury so focus on quality of movement rather than quantity. If you can’t maintain quality in this movement, try some of the easier versions of this exercise to build up strength and technique first.

How to make Push-ups easier

For an easier option, keep your knees on the floor and maintain a straight line from your knees up to your hips, shoulders and head. Then bend at the elbows to lower as per the full version. Or check out our wall push-ups, or push-up on knees to build up your strength before taking on diamond push-ups.

Push Up on Knees

How to make Push-ups more challenging

Once you have mastered this exercise with your knees off the floor, you can increase the challenge by putting your feet up on something stable higher than floor level. Start off gradually using the first step of a staircase, then progress to having them on a bench or a chair or the second step of a staircase.Or try our spiderman push-ups, divebomber push-ups, or the explosive push-up with clap as you get stronger.Make sure you can maintain a straight strong line through your body when trying these harder alternatives.