And so if your dream has always been to be able to do some really cool things with pushups like this,
well, you're on the wrong friggen video because I can't do any of that shit.
But I do promise to help you find the right type of pushup to help you build more muscle today.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com. So look, unless you are in the military right
now or your goal is to simply do more pushups, I think we could all agree,
pushups are more of a means to an end to something bigger and in this case, a bigger chest. If you're
looking to build a bigger chest through pushups I would ask you not to try to simply increase the
number of pushups you're doing, but to actually increase the difficulty of the pushup that you're
doing. Think about it this way. When an athlete is trying to build more muscle in the gym,
they have the option to simply add more weight to the end of the bar in the form of progressive
overload, which is a tried-and-true method for doing that. But what is the calisthenics athlete
do? Or what is somebody that's just looking to build their body through pushups? You have to
find a more difficult version of the pushup. Something that mechanically challenges those
same muscles in a more difficult way to provide the progressive overload that you're looking for.
In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to do that from beginner to advance,
what level of pushups should you be doing, and how do you progress yourself
to make sure you're building muscle? Let's start breaking them down one by one.
So when you're trying to build muscle with pushups, you need to make sure that the volume
that you're accruing is effective volume. In other words, the reps that you're doing or
doing something. And when we're talking about just doing a certain number of pushups or increasing
the number of them, you're not ensuring that. And there's a big relationship between the overload
that you create through choosing more difficult version of the pushup or more challenging for you
and the number of reps that you do. So what we have to do is pick a rep range, and for me,
I always say somewhere between 20 and 30. If you can get to 30 of any variation of a pushup,
it's time to stop doing that pushup and instead focus on something more challenging.
So what would the beginners do? Well, let's say we start all the way at the bottom a knee
pushup. If you can do 30 knee pushups, it's time to move on. But if you can't do them like this,
you need to focus on doing them correctly. And what we're doing is keeping that straight back
and keeping that butt down. Because far too often people do this and it makes the exercise
not even really that effective for the chest, it turns out almost more to a shoulder exercise.
But instead, if you keep that butt drop down and you will lower your chest down in every
rep and importantly, on all these pushups you'll see extend your elbows all the way out. At that
point when you can hit 30, it's time to move on to the next exercise, which would be this.
And this would now be the classic pushup. So we get those knees off the ground and again,
lower yourself all the way down, touch your chest to the ground and come up. And the key here,
as always, is to get that full extension of the elbows. I've made videos all about this
in the past. In fact, Pushups are Killing Your Gains, and that is because people always cut
off the last two inches here, which is the most productive part of the exercise. If you can get
through full extension and you can work your way up to the point where you can do 30 of these, then
it's time to move on to the next variation. Well, now the next challenge will become the hand
release pushup. And what's interesting about this is that slight little additional movement at the
bottom is going to do a few things to make this a lot more difficult and challenging. Number one,
it's going to slow the tempo down, and any time you slow down tempo on a pushup,
it becomes more difficult. And the tendency is to rush through our reps to get to that number
again. But with the focus now on increasing the difficulty level to drive that muscle growth,
this is now an option for you. And here again, what it does is also challenges some different
muscles to the rotator cuff. The simple act of lifting your hands off the ground
is going to engage the rotator cuff, which is a shoulder stabilizer muscle that's important
to the move. But more importantly, it's just increasing the range of motion of
every single repetition that you do, ensuring that you get your chest down to the ground.
But if even 30 repetitions of the hand release pushup is below your ability level, well, it's
time to now start doing something different and that is playing with the tempo of the exercise.
I mentioned how slowing them down makes them more difficult, well, if you do a pause pushup,
you're going to have a more challenging time doing the exercise. But again, challenging equals
more muscle growth. In this case, you simply go down to the bottom and you pause for about three
seconds on every rep. Again, it's actually more difficult to hold this pause in this very shallow,
low depth position because your muscles are still firing to hold you there. But when 30 repetitions
of these aren't even able to make your arms quiver anymore, well, we still stick with the same theme
of tempo, but we move on to a more challenging exercise and that's the one and a half pushup.
In other words, for every one pushup you're doing, you can do an extra half. You have to go down,
have the body control to lift yourself up halfway, go back down again to the hardest, most difficult
range of the pushup and then push yourself back out of it again. Again, we're playing with the
tempo, but more importantly, here we are, playing with the overload and tension felt by the chest,
and that is the main driver of the exercise s ability to build more muscle growth for you.
But if even those are now no longer providing a challenge for you, what are you going to do now?
Well, again, we have another option for tempo, and this time we take it to the extreme. These
are slow motion pushups, and what we're talking about is five seconds down and five seconds up.
And what makes this more challenging is the five second eccentric or the lowering portion of the
rep. And why that's challenging is because that's actually an additional driver of muscle growth.
Well, now you've got two things working at once, you've increased the difficulty level
and you've added that extra component. But once again, your goal here is 30 when you can do 30
of these, once again, it's time to move on. And at that point, the best thing you can do is
actually start to decrease the number of points of contact that you have with the ground. The
pushup is done with four points of contact on the ground, two hands and two feet. But when we start
to lift one of those off the ground, the exercise becomes instantly more difficult because now the
remaining limbs are in control of more and more body weight. So what are we talking about? Well,
we have exercises like the prowler pushup, which is going to again take one of those feet off the
ground, shifting more of that load, especially as we anteriorly shift our whole body weight forward.
Then we have the spider man push pushup, which is going to open up that hip, take it out to the side
once again, creating more overload for the muscles that are pushing the rest of your body weight up
with one less limb helping out. And of course, we can do the step three push up. This requires
maybe a little bit more flexibility and the leg that steps through and across. But once again,
it's still doing the same thing, decreasing those points of contact on the ground and making it more
challenging. And finally, we have the cross knee pushup, which might be the easiest of these for,
but it doesn't really matter whatever version you choose, choose one that's
going to provide that challenge that once again takes whatever pushup count you were doing before
lowers it down to that more challenging level so it can produce the growth you're after.
But we're not done yet because we can actually keep the challenge coming by increasing the
challenge on the chest alone. Meaning taking away some of the assistance that we're getting from the
triceps. And the best way to do that is what they wider and pushup. The wider the hands go,
the less elbow extension we're getting to perform the pushup, the less tricep contribution to the
exercise. That means the chest is going to have to do more work here. And so while the traditional
version of the pushup may be more efficient, it's inefficiency that you're seeking when you're
trying to drive new muscle growth. Remember, if it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you.
To change your chest, you've got to challenge your chest, and this is a great way to do it.
But we can become even more challenging and dynamic than that and that's with the archer
pushup. And here it's the same wide arm approach, with the same effect of minimizing the tricep
contribution here and making it more difficult. But the dynamic nature of it shifting the load
from left to right and left to right is going to definitely make this more difficult for you.
Every move from right to left is considered a separate repetition, so when you can do 15 to
the right and 15 to the left, you've reached your 30 count. Well, you still got one more step to go,
and that is something much more explosive. And for explosive we're talking about plyometric
variations of the pushup. And we all know how difficult that can become,
but again, they can drive muscle growth through that difficulty. Whether it be just simply a
regular plyometric clearing yourself off the ground, or an additional clap that's going to make
you get a little bit higher off the ground, and therefore you have to push a little bit harder.
Or actually taking it to an extreme level with the superman pushup, having to get yourself
even higher off the ground. Or finally, something more athletic like the Hannibal push up here. The
idea is find that key variation that drives the muscle growth through the increase in difficulty
and not just an increased focus on reps. So let's do a quick, helpful recap here. If
you're currently doing knee pushups, then you can do 30 of those, it's time to move on to pushups.
If you're doing push and can do 30 of those in one set, it's time to move on to hand release pushups.
If you could do him release pushups for 30 reps, it's time to move on to the pause push up.
Once you can knock those out, increase that range of motion to one and a half pushups.
From the one and a half pushup, once you're able to do 30, it goes on to the slow motion five
seconds up, five seconds down pushup. From here, look to take one of those points of contact off
the ground through some variation of a three-point pushup. From there, you're going to widen those
arms out to take the triceps out of the equation for a wide arm pushup. Next, we're going to make
it more dynamic through an archer pushup. And when 30 archer pushups can be done, you're going
to move on to something much more explosive, some variation of a plyometric pushup.
But if at the end of the day, you still insist on doing traditional regular pushups, well, for God's
sake, do one thing for me, stop doing one hundred pushups a day. Watch this video over here for an
explanation of why. And also, if you're looking for a complete pushup workout, the perfect pushup
workout is one you can watch there. If you're looking for a complete step by step program,
guys, you can find them all over at athleanx.com. And also, if you haven't done so, click subscribe
and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when we pull one out. See you soon.