The Perfect Pushup: Diagnosing the Pushup

Pushups are probably looked down upon so often because they're the first exercise most people learned in grade school during gym class. They're often viewed as elementary and "too easy" for most, likely because they're not seen as sexy as another popular exercise: the bench press.

The funny thing is, the pushup seems to be one of the most frequently butchered exercises I see on a regular basis. When I walk around most gyms , I cringe at the form I see people using it's honestly very difficult to stop myself from running around like a Form Nazi in order to keep people from injuring themselves.

Today, I'm going to give the most common technique flaws I see take place during the everyday pushup, and some corrections on how to get much more "bang for your buck" from this exercise. The pushup is an AWESOME tool in your training arsenal, but the problem is it frequently isn't executed in a manner that will give people the results they're seeking.

I'll be giving video demonstrations of how NOT to do them, and then a video of what a real, perfect pushup looks like. All this on top of showing a few other pushup variations you can toy with once you master the perfect pushup. Aren't I a nice guy? You can buy me a cup of coffee later, no worries.

Anyway, let's get the geeky side of things out of the way. Here's where I'll be explaining the "why" behind pushups.

Why Perform Pushups?

* They teach you to control your body from head to toe. When performed correctly, they engage countless muscles in the pelvis, abdominals/low back, upper back, and then of course the chest, shoulders, and triceps. The nerdy way to describe the stabilization required during pushups is "lumbo-pelvic stability" which teaches you to control your core in a functional manner, leading to benefits both in and out of the weight room (I'll let you use your imagination here).

* It effectively trains movement of the scapulae (shoulder blades), giving you healthy shoulders for the long haul. Unlike the bench press, a pushup allows the shoulder blades to glide freely. When pushups are performed correctly (i.e. "pulling" yourself to the floor, and pressing yourself all the way up so your shoulder blades protract at the top) you engage the serratus anterior, a key player in shoulder health and function. The serratus, along with the lower trapezius, are two muscles that are pervasively dormant in our population. These two muscles work synergistically with the upper trapezius to upwardly rotate the scapula when your arm moves overhead (think: throwing a ball, or performing an overhead press). In fact, when I worked in the physical therapy clinic, the most common denominator in the patients with shoulder problems was weakness in both the serratus and the lower traps.

* They're a closed chain exercise, essentially making them more shoulder-friendly than the bench press (an open-chain exercise). * When done properly, they'll help boost your bench press, squat and deadlift numbers. Not to mention: aid you in your quest to achieve the look and function of a physical specimen. Hah! Now you're listening.

Anyway, below are videos of me performing various incorrect pushups. The technical flaws may evade you initially, but look closer, and you'll see them. You'll probably see some pushups that you weren't aware were even considered erroneous!

Note: The following 6 videos demonstrate INCORRECT form.

Error #1: Forward Head Posture

This is the most common error that people are unaware of, I believe. You'll see that my head juts forward, hitting the ground before my chest makes contact (the chest should touch the ground FIRST in a perfect pushup).

Error #2: No Scapular Retraction (aka "loose upper back")

Another common flaw most people are unaware of. You'll notice in the video that I "fall" to the ground, instead of intentionally "pulling" myself to the floor. The upper back is loose, there's no scapular retraction (think: pinching a pencil between your shoulder blades), and I'm essentially just letting gravity drop me to the floor.

Error #3: Excessive Elbow Flare

You'll see the elbows make a 90 degree angle with my torso (they should be tucked at roughly 45 degrees).

Error #4: Hip Sag

This is where the person lacks the "anterior-posterior" engagement of the core and the hips/low back sag to the floor (the body should form a completely straight line from head to toe, remaining stiff as a board).

Error #5: Elevated Hips

This is where the butt sticks up in the air. It's another compensation pattern (similar to #4) people slip into when they lack the core strength to effectively resist the pull of gravity throughout their entire body.

Error #6: Looking Straight Ahead/Looking "Up" (no video shown).

This is where people tilt their head up and look straight ahead as they perform pushups. It seems every sports coach tells their kids to do this! Look straight down at the floor when you do your pushups (unless you desire cervical problems down the road...be my guest).

So, what does a Perfect Pushup look like?

Here (at last!) is the correct version:

Key Coaching Cues:

* Hands just be just outside shoulder width, and the elbows tucked at 45 degrees (or less) to the torso. Don't listen to people who tell you that placing your hands wider will give you better chest development! All that will do is fast-track you to shoulder pain and a subsequent physical therapy appointment. * "Pull" yourself down to the ground, actively engaging the scapular retractors and essentially the entire upper-back musculature. * Keep your chin tucked (think: give yourself a "double chin") so you don't "reach for the ground" with your head. * The chest should touch the floor first (i.e. not your hips or your head) * Squeeze your abs and glutes tight throughout the entire movement * Entire body should be perfect alignment, and you should remain as tight as if someone were about to come along and try to knock you over.

Once you master the basic perfect pushup (it will take longer than you think: you should be able to do at least 20 before progressing further), there are a number of ways to increase difficulty. One way is wrap a sturdy resistance band around you, so that the movement will become harder as you reach the top portion of the pushup (as the band tension increases). You can elevate the feet as well.

Both versions are combined and shown in the video, here:

There are a million different variations you can use (in truth, you really don't need many, but it's always nice to spice things up from time to time). You can do walkover pushups, as shown here (much harder than they look!):

Or tempo pushups, in which you perform both the eccentric and concentric slowly:

Or suspended pushups, as Kelsey (my lovely fiancee) is demonstrating here:

The list goes on, but this is more than enough to get you started!

Take home message: you'll receive far greater benefit from performing 5 perfect pushups then you will from performing 20 incorrect pushups. - Steve

Hill Sprints...

Real quick, I had a great time in Charlotte at our business getaway/powerlifting meet.  I was quite inspired by how the SAPT’ers competed; beautiful, strong lifts were performed by all. I’m gonna ride this wave of inspiration as long as I can.  For those who don’t know, my training has taken a little dip in recent months (just not as frequent or as focused as I’d like), but I intend to turn that around.

One of the mechanisms I’ve reintroduced into my regimen is hill sprints.  Readership, meet my hill:

I like hill sprints for many reasons, those being:

Safer

For those who haven’t done much sprinting since their “glory days,” hill sprints will be a much safer option than flat-ground.  The risk of having your hammy blowout the backside of our leg, our achilles run up into your glute (yes, slight exaggeration) will be minimized in this setting. The reason being, due to the grade of the hill, there will be less eccentric stress placed on the joint (and it’s connective tissue) and surrounding musculature. 

Builds Strength

Your posterior chain will be barking for days (hammy, glutes, etc.) after a hill session.  Just ask my wife (whom I’m very proud to say has been accompanying me on these hill ventures).  The day after our hill sprint session I received a text saying, “My behind is starting to hurt!”

Adaptable

By adjusting your work to rest ratio you can just as easily acquire speed and acceleration improvement as well as improved conditioning.  Longer rest periods will be needed to improve speed (think 3 min between sprints), and for conditioning more of a constant pace (less rest between sprints). 

Before you go all willy-nilly on a hill sprint session, heed the following precautions and recommendations:

Warm-Up

Perform a dynamic warm-up prior to engaging in the sprints.  Then, run up the hill at about 60%, then 70%, and finally about 80% before kicking into hyper drive. 

Protocol

For beginners I’d recommend finding a hill that’s about 20-40yds.  Start with about 5 sprints (trust me, this will definitely be enough), and then gradually increase volume over time.  Two hill sprint sessions per week will be more than sufficient.  I’d also recommend running with about 90-95% intensity as it’ll allow you to recover more quickly between sessions and incur less CNS fatigue.

And careful of the pine cones on the way down…

Chris

The Ron Reed Project

It's been awesome to see the number of adults training at SAPT consistently growing. I tip my hat to all those who work all day, drive their kids to every nook and cranny of NOVA, keep their kids from killing themselves on a regular basis, and still make time arrive at SAPT ready to get after it! It's very inspiring to see, and I'm excited to see more and more adults making vast improvements with us. One of our clients, Ron, recently went through an incredible body transformation that I wanted to share with you. Ron had been training with us for a little while already, but he told us that he wanted to enter a focused fat-loss plan as his health was beginning to suffer due to some weight he had put on.

We gave him an individualized nutrition plan, and tweaked his workouts so they would be a bit more "fat loss" oriented in nature. His results were nothing short of fantastic! See the video below.

I'd like to point out a few things that may be helpful to those of you reading:

1. Ron works full-time, both in the business world and at home as a dedicated father and husband. So, a transformation like this is certainly possible if you consider yourself a busy person (and I don't know anyone that doesn't).
2. Ron FREQUENTLY has to travel for work - often for 5-7 days at a time. So, even for those you that travel, you can definitely make worlds of progress with a schedule that demands regular travel. Ron would tell me what equipment he had available at the hotel (sometimes the hotels didn't even have a gym), so I would give him some "hotel room workouts" in which he could still get in some training with just his bodyweight, a chair, and a bed as his gym equipment. Your improvements in the physique realm will never depend on what fancy gym equipment you do or do not have available. It's the mindset that is going to be the difference maker.
3. Honestly, most of Ron's success was due to his consistency in the kitchen. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You can't out train a bad diet. Ron was constantly emailing me to make sure something was "approved" before he picked it up at the grocery store or added it to his meal. When he was on the road, he was sure to pick items on the restaurant menus that were going to help his progress, not hinder it.
4. He did not count calories, eliminate carbs from his diet, or partake in anything extremely complicated. It's important to note that nutrition plans really don't have to be as complicated or tedious as many may make it seem.
5. We did not do any carb cycling or sodium depletion leading up to his "After" picture (or at any point in his program).
6. Ron did not do a single crunch or sit-up throughout his program. Proof that you don't need to (in fact, you can't) sit-up your way to a lean midsection. It won't happen.
7. He performed zero steady state running throughout his program. Again, it is unwise (and unnecessary) to prescribe long distance running for someone in need of weight loss. Considering that all of Ron's blood levels returned to healthy levels during his program, this also goes to show you don't need long distance running to improve the health of your heart. Can it help? Absolutely. But I wouldn't recommend it as a modality of choice for a weight loss client.
8. He not only maintained, but increased his strength during this phase. I can't tell you how many times I talk to people (primarily males) that are frightened they're going to "lose all their muscle" if they enter a fat loss program. It's not going to happen if you design the program appropriately. As shown in the video, Ron hit a 40lb PR on his weighted chinup, a 30lb PR on his front squat, a 15lb PR on his close-grip bench press, and a 20lb PR on his trap bar deadlift. Note that these personal records occurred during this particular 16-week program (not throughout the few years he's been training with us).
9. Ron just turned 51 years old. 'Nuff said.

Here are his Before and After pictures (the before picture was taken while he was on vacation shortly before the start of the program):

Before

After (front)

After (side)

After (back) Congratulations, Ron! Who is ready to join him?

The Most Important Lession I've Learned

Everyone wants to succeed.

Regardless of what you may perceive as lackluster performance in someone, when it comes down to it, everyone has a deep desire to be successful. Once I identified and accepted this as a true principle in my life, it dramatically changed virtually all of my professional and personal interactions.

Here are a couple guidelines I use regularly to extract high levels of production from my athletes and, even, my employees:

1. What makes a person tick? Figure this out - it is a foundational key!
2. How can I help this person see the end goal (the success) for the process we’re currently going through? This can be applied to individual workouts, practices, and professional work projects.
3. Describe expectations. How can you expect someone to be successful if they don’t clearly understand the expectations of the event, team, work environment, etc.?
4. Finally, don’t let people down! For example, if you’re a coach and you’ve managed to get total buy-in from your players, don’t let them down by not putting together the best game plan of which you’re capable. Their success depends a great deal on what you’re doing, planning, producing, reading, writing… it depends a LOT on you.

This isn’t my sneaky way of getting people to work really hard. It’s my straightforward way of helping to guide people towards what it is that they really want to achieve. And it doesn’t matter if it’s running a faster 100-m dash or earning a higher paycheck or even building and maintaining a happy marriage, accepting that "everyone wants to be successful" will help you in working towards virtually any goal!

- Sarah

Charlotte: Powerlifting, Golf, etc.

As most of you know, the SAPT staff traveled down to Charlotte, NC, for the weekend. It provided an awesome opportunity to talk shop outside the constant distractions of NOVA, get intense and "Do Work" at a USAPL powerlifting competition, and relax out on the golf course. Sarah, Ryan, Sean, and John all competed at the powerlifting meet, and I couldn't have been more proud of them. Sarah isn't even a year out from giving birth to her first child, so it was impressive enough that she was getting under the bar and compete postpartum. Ryan, Sean, and John all hit personal records in each of their lifts. Needless to say, I was proud to be a "SAPTer" on Saturday.

Getting right to it, below are a few highlights from the meet.

Here's a picture of Sarah at the bottom of the Squat. (Being the brilliant person I am, I didn't think to walk around to the front of the platform to shoot video footage until after the first wave, so I failed capture Sarah or John's squat on video.)

Next is Sean nailing his squat in the 3rd flight. My favorite part about the squat videos is that you can distinctly hear Chris yell his favorite coaching cue as they come out of the hole (hint: it starts with "H", ends in "s", and has "e-e-l" somewhere in the middle):

Sean easily wins the "Most Improved Squat" award of the weekend, as he made ENORMOUS advancements over his 12-week competition prep phase. I was with him when he squatted twelve weeks ago - helping him determine the weight to base his percentages off for the subsequent training cycle. I felt as if I needed to physically shove him down in order get his hip crease parallel because his hips were so tight. It was awesome to see him diligently attack hip mobility throughout the past few months - and also give himself an honest assessment of where he was at - so that he could make the most of his training. It paid off, to say the least.

Here is Ryan hitting another PR in his Squat. Ryan's body (and mind) definitely took a beating as he was finishing out his semester of grad school, so it was cool to see him remain consistent in training and come out strong with PRs on all his lifts.

Next we have John Delgado hitting a solid bench press.

For those of you who may not be familiar with powerlifting: your bench can easily be 20-50lbs LESS (depending) than your typical bench press in the gym, as you have to demonstrate control on the way down, pause on the chest, and then come up. Not to mention: your shoulders/head, butt, and feet (heels included) need to remain in contact with the bench/floor.

Moving on to the Deadlift, we have (in order): Sarah, John, Sean, and Ryan all killing it. I can confidently say we had some of the cleanest looking deadlifts of the competition (some of the pulls I saw made me want to crawl into a corner and curl up in the fetal position).

Sarah pulling a solid conventional dead (in the past she went Sumo):

Delgado hitting a big PR (and he sets the bar down as if he's holding a newborn. Love it.):

Sean "Sandbag" Healy breaking the big 400 barrier! "Easy" goes the moderator. He blasted through this one. And you'll have to ask Delgado about the nickname (which fit perfectly).

Ryan hitting a PR and then spinning around to watch all three white lights shining. Awesome.

And, just so we can prove we DO enjoy other things besides the weight room, here is the SAPT staff (me, Ryan, Chris, Sarah) getting some sun out on the UNC Charlotte golf course.

Chris still needs to take some lessons from me on the back swing, and the proper pendulum action in putting, but that's okay..... - Steve

SAPT Closed 6/2, 6/3, and 6/4...Powerlifting competition to blame...

Good morning SAPT'ers, Just a reminder that SAPT will be closed today (6/2) and the remainder of this week (6/3 and 6/4).  Sarah, Ryan, John and Sean will be smashing weights (aka lifting them with great fury) at a powerlifting competition down in Charlotte!

Be sure to check our Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr for frequent updates! 

SAPT will resume normal operations Monday, 6/6.  Have a great weekend!

I used to be sweet…

Chris