Digital Streets

Once upon a time, in a universe far, far away, I used to be a fitness trainer and bodybuilder. Lifehacker took me back to those days recently with two separate posts on push ups. The first was on the push up belonging in your fitness routine and the other was on a six week training plan to get you doing one hundred push ups. The fact is that the push up is a very effective exercise in strengthening and developing your shoulders, triceps, and chest. If you want to make your push up work out even more effective, you can make some adjustments to better target the muscle group you are wanting to work.

1. Keeping the elbows away from the body – By keeping your elbows away from your body, you can place more focus on the chest (specifically the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor) and reduce the focus on the triceps (the back of the arm). By elevating your feet by placing them on the seat of a chair and keeping the wide hand base you can bring the focus to the upper portion of the chest and begin placing more stress on the anterior deltoid (the front part of your shoulder). Using a narrow hand base (less than shoulder width apart), you can focus on the inner half of the chest, and by using a wide hand base (greater than shoulder width apart) you can focus on the outer half. If your really up to a challenge, use three chairs, one for each hand and one for your feet. Your down position of this push up should finish at below hand level, giving you greater stretch of the chest muscles and requiring you to have to push longer to return to the beginning position.

2. Keeping the elbows close to the body – With the elbows in, you shift the stress from the chest to the triceps (the back of the arm). These can be done from a normal position or if you need a little more resistance, elevate the feet so that your body weight is shifted more towards your arms.

3. Perform push ups from a “handstand” position – With the help of a wall, position yourself into a handstand that will allow you to do the pushup. You want to be as close to parallel with the wall as possible. Doing push ups from this position will place the majority of the stress on the anterior deltoids and the rhomboid and trapezius muscle groups (the upper and middle back).

4. Perform “negative” push ups – If your push ups are starting to get too easy, you can shake things up by doing “negative” push ups. These are performed by resisting gravity as you lower your chest to the floor, moving slowly and steadily until it is time to push back up. The push upward should be performed at regular speed. These can be a real killer, so be ready.

By using these methods for doing your push ups and adding stomach crunches, leg raises and wind sprints to your workout, you can have a full body workout that requires very little resources.