Have you ever been in a fitness class and the coach instructed all the women to do ‘ladies push-ups’ for the next exercise? And the term didn’t sit quite right with you? But you also felt like you couldn’t say anything because … well, you couldn’t do a full push-up? In today’s blog we’ll show you how to fix this - we’ll cover 3 exercises that will build you up to that full push-up in no time! 

First things first - to be able to do a full push-up, you need to strengthen the following: chest, shoulders, triceps and your core! Ideally, you will be doing isolation exercises (a single joint exercise that targets a specific muscle) for all of these muscle groups - this will definitely accelerate your push-up journey. However, there’s no better way to learn how to do something than ... attempting to do it. Here are the top 3 push-up variations you don’t want to sleep on if you want to be able to rep out full push-ups like a piece of cake (from easiest to the hardest):

Knee push-ups or incline push-ups

These are a great place to start and will help you get comfortable with the push-up movement pattern. This is also a good time to start building good push-up habits:

• Keep your elbows at 45 degrees - elbows too close to your body and you’ll be doing tricep push-ups (way more difficult!), elbows too flared out … you’ll be injuring yourself

• Engage your core - we cannot emphasise this enough!! Imagine someone is about to punch you in the stomach (sorry about the anxiety-inducing analogy) - the way you’d engage your core to protect yourself in this scenario is exactly what ‘bracing your core’ means. If you’re doing incline push-ups - against a barbell, bench, box - or your kitchen counter - , make sure your lower body is travelling down with your upper body too (think about your chest and your hips being in a straight line and moving through the push-up together)

Negative push-ups 

These are your push-up besties. A negative push-up is essentially half a push-up - starting in a plank position and lowering yourself all the way to the ground under control; inchworm back to a plank. The beauty of this push-up variation is that your body gets to experience the full range of motion, without modifications. Because you’re only performing the eccentric (lowering) part of the exercise, you’ll be able to do it under control and build tons of strength! The only thing to be mindful of is exactly this - controlling the movement on the way down for 2-3 seconds; we don’t want to see any of you dropping down on your stomach in a split second!

Booty band push-ups

Let’s do some big girl push-ups now. Full range of motion, full movement … plus a band. Grab a booty band and place it over your elbows. As you lower yourself, you will feel the resistance of the band supporting your chest - this will be especially helpful on the way up! Experiment with the band resistance until you find one that allows you to perform 6-8 reps for 4-5 sets (strength building reps/sets range). Once this becomes too easy - or you can do 8-12 reps - drop down a band (i.e. switch to a band with less resistance). When you can do 8-10 reps with the lowest resistance band - congratulations, you can do a full push-up!

So next time that fitness instructor tries to make you do ‘ladies push-ups’, you can tell them to STFU and show them exactly how you can do a push-up! 

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