Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

Pro athlete physical therapist and strength coach Jeff Cavaliere shows you workouts, exercises and nutrition plans to get you looking and moving like a professional athlete.

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How to Increase Your Pushups by up to 30% (INSTANTLY!) 

01-29-2018

If you want to increase your pushups by up to 30 percent right now, then you have to watch what I am going to show you in this video. In order to do more pushups you have to understand that just like any other exercise, they require you to approach them as an athlete would. This means, you have to have an appreciation not just for the arms and chest that seem to be doing all the work but the legs and lower body that is allowing them to be maximally efficient in the first place.

The concept can be introduced best by presenting you an analogy. If you wanted to swing a sledge hammer as hard as possible, would you attempt it while standing on solid cement ground or while standing on a balance board? Likely, you answered the first. The reason is, your body is a kinetic chain and ignoring this can be costly when it comes to the generation of maximum power and force.

Power generation starts at the ground if your feet are in contact with it. It doesn’t matter if you are doing this while standing up or while horizontal to the ground as you are in a pushup. As soon as your feet make contact with your ground, their participation as stabilizers to what is going on above them is crucial. If you want to preserve the force that you generate above as much as possible then you are going to have to figure out a way to stabilize from the bottom up.

When it comes to a pushup, the energy leaks start occurring the minute you forget about the role of the lower body and core in the exercise. If you simply think about the arms and chest then you are destroying your ability to do as many reps of the pushup as you are capable of. In fact, if you make the corrections that I’m showing you here, you may see up to a 30 percent increase in the number of pushups that you can do in a single set starting with your next one.

This is the same concept by the way as attempting to carry someone. If their body is rigid, it is much easier to lift them with far less effort and move them where you want them to go. When they are loose (dead weight) it becomes much harder to lift them. The same applies to your own bodyweight when attempting to lift it during a pushup.

To plug the energy leaks as much as possible you want to start down at the ankles. Lock your ankles into a 90 degree angle. You cannot allow them to bounce during the exercise. If your ankles are rocking or bouncing because they are loose then you are losing force that could be directed through your arms into the ground.

Next, you want to focus on the knees. Straighten them out as hard as possible by contracting the quads and squeezing the glutes. This not only tightens up the legs from the front but from the back as well as you co-contract the muscles influencing the hip joints too. The last key is to make sure you tighten up the abs. This entire tightening effect from the chest down will provide your arms a stable platform from which to push from just as would happen when attempting to swing that sledgehammer with maximum force from a solid surface.

You will instantly see an increase in the number of pushups that you can perform. Some have reported up to a 30% increase in the amount of push ups that they can do in a single set just by plugging these energy leaks. The key from here is to not just do this but also incorporate the second tip I share here towards doing up to 100 pushups in a single set. As I always say, repetition begets repetition. As soon as you are done doing as many pushups as you can in a single set, prop yourself up into an incline pushup by putting your hands onto the back of a couch or piece of furniture and keep repping out.

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Filetype: MP4 - Size: 39.73MB - Duration: 4:39 m