What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
It is Bodyweight Wednesday and I’ve got the best pushup ever for you today.
I’m telling you, it’s the best pushup for a number of reasons.
Number one: one of the limitations we have when we do pushups is that we’re not fully
contracting the chest because you don’t have the opportunity to get adduction at the
shoulder.
If we look at a regular pushup here, you can see that my hands are actually fixed into
the ground.
So when I come up I don’t have any movement of my hands that I can actually achieve any
type of adduction across my body.
We know that a full chest contraction is going to require that you come across your body
to do that.
So we can fix that by looking at the relative position of your arm, in relation to your
shoulder.
What do I mean by that?
I’ve covered this topic before.
It’s extremely important to understand that you don’t always have to move your arm on
your body to get motion at a joint.
You can move your body on your arm to get the same motion at the joint.
Therefore, involve the chest.
So what we can do is, we can do our pushups, and we can add a rotation to it.
I’ll get into the second reason why this is the best version of the pushup you can
do.
When we come down we do our regular pushup here, and as I come up I favor one side.
I’m pushing mostly 80% through my left arm – you’re right on the camera there – but
I’m going to come down, and I’m going to push up, and rotate my body in that direction.
By rotating my body in that direction I’ve now got the horizontal adduction at the shoulder
to fully contract the chest.
I’ll show you again.
I’m going to come down, I’m going to come up, and I’m going to rotate.
This is a little bit of the kickstand, this is doing more of the work.
So that’s the second reason why this is a better pushup.
You can overload your pecs more.
Yes, it’s one side at a time, but there’s nothing stopping me from alternating left
here, like that, and down, and then right.
Again, I’m pushing, and moving my weight into my right side to come across.
Watch again why this works.
I’m down, and I’m across.
Now, I’m not going to move my arm at all.
I’m going to come up here.
You see how much horizontal adduction we’ve achieve here at the chest.
What I did was, I didn’t move my arm on my body.
I can’t do that with my hands fixed on the ground.
I move my body on my arm, but it’s still that motion at the shoulder joint.
Therefore, the chest is getting the full contraction.
So one more time up close.
You can see that we have the arm, we come across the body – so we’re right here
– come down, come up, rotate, working more of the inner chest.
Again, down, up, rotate.
Again, you can see the inner chest working.
Down, rotate, down, up, and rotate.
We’re getting that horizontal adduction.
Now, is there an inner chest?
No, guys.
There’s no ability to contract the inner chest.
It’s more of an ‘upper-lower’ thing.
But, do realize this: in order to get a peak contraction of the chest you’d better have
some horizontal adduction going on.
Secondly, we’ve talked about it before in previous videos, the non-spending chest fibers
that sometimes don’t make it all the way across.
The best way to engage them and ensure that you’re getting a peak contraction is to
fully complete the contraction of the chest.
So this is the best pushup you can do.
How do you work it?
I don’t care if you need to load it up and add more weight to your body with a weighted
vest; whatever you have to do.
The idea is, you’re getting a one-sided overload – which is great – and you’re
also getting the ability to reach that full contraction.
Guys, if you’re looking for more innovative ways to train your body with nothing but your
own bodyweight; head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get our ATHLEAN0 program.
We don’t use anything to train your body.
Just your body, and space, and we can help you to build serious muscle by doing that.
if you liked this video, and of course these Bodyweight Wednesday videos, make sure to
leave your comments and thumbs up below, and I’ll continue to make these for you guys
in the coming weeks ahead.
All right, I’ll see you back here soon.