Go slow, brace your core and don’t let your hips sag: how to start push-ups | Well actually

IIf you want to show how fit you are, you drop and make pumps. This is what is happening on television anyway. In the top gun: Maverick, Buff hunting drivers make hundreds of pumps on a hot tarmac. At the end of the 90s, Demi Moore seduced the audience by pumping with an arm in the film Gi Jane, then on David Letterman. Once, Michelle Obama and Ellen Degeneres competed to see who could make the most pumps (Obama won).

Do the pumps really worth the media threshing? According to fitness experts, absolutely.

“In my opinion, the pumps are one of the most underestimated movements of the physical form,” said Dr. Andrew Jagim, director of sports medicine research at Mayo Clinic Health System. Jagim says that they are often overlooked because they seem basic, but if you practice them regularly, over time, you will probably notice improvements in the strength of the upper body, as well as “posture, basic control and global athletics”.

Pumps can be a good way to assess its general physical form. “I learned that the way someone can do a push-up tells me about its overall movement of movement,” explains Mark Bohannon, director of experience and personal coach at Ultimate Performance. They also don’t cost money and can be made anywhere.

Here’s what you need to know about how to start pumps properly.

How do you make a push-up?

The pumps require a significant strength of the upper body, but they are really a complete body exercise.

Start in board positions, hands and toes on the ground. The hands should be placed slightly outside the width of the shoulders, explains Bohannon, with fingers spreading and facing the front. The feet can be adjusted wide or narrow – the closer they are, the more difficult the push -up, explains Joslyn Thompson Rule, Peloton Trew and Force Instructor. “The more your feet are more and more, the more stable your base,” she explains.

In this position, you activate the muscles of the chest, shoulders and arms, as well as your basic muscles and glutes. “Push-up requires complete stabilization of the body,” explains Bohannon.

Lower yourself until your body almost touches the ground, Keep your elbows at an angle of 45 degrees. Then push yourself back.

“Consider push-up as a moving board,” says Bohannon. “Your body should maintain an uninterrupted line of the crown from your head to your heels.”

What are the current errors?

One of the most common errors that people are making during a push-up is not to maintain this head line with heels. Jagim says he often sees people “let their hips sag” and “drop their heads”. (This describes each pump I have ever done.)

To avoid this type of spaghetti push -ups cooked, prepare your nucleus – “as if someone was about to hit you in your stomach,” says Bohannon – and press your glutes.

Jagim says that another current error he sees, they are the people “rush into representatives with poor control and / or simply fall to the ground and push [themselves] save “.

Speed ​​is not an equal efficiency, he said. Instead, he suggests targeting slow and controlled rehearsals with good alignment. This will “maximize muscle engagement and time under tension and will reduce the risk of injury,” he said.

Are there different variations in push-ups?

If you cannot do a push -up with an appropriate shape, do not worry – you are far from being alone and there are alternatives.

Bohannon says that when he works with customers on pumps, he must often “regress” at a beginner level to ensure that people have the appropriate shape.

If you have never done the exercise before, start with wall pumps. Keep the length of the arm of the wall, then put your hands on the wall and make a push-up with a correct shape: the body in a straight line, the nucleus, the tight glutes and the arms leaning at an angle of 45 degrees. Once you have mastered this, you can progress to pumps with your hands on a bench, or with your hands and knees on the ground to reduce the load on your muscles.

When you strengthen strength, you can make them more difficult, explains Jagim. He suggests progressing to refuse pumps (where your feet are raised on a box or other stable surface), triceps pumps (where you keep your hands narrow and elbows returned to your body while you go down) or adding weight, like a weight of weight, on your back.

How do you integrate pumps into your fitness routine?

Learning to do pumps does not have to consume your life. Rule says that she likes to consider pumps as “a skill on which you could spend three to five minutes working at the start or at the end of your training, twice a week”.

To start, she suggests strengthen your strength in board position: keep a board for 30 to 60 seconds, three to four times. Once it feels comfortable, a rule suggests trying negative pumps. Start in the board position and drop slowly in a controlled manner, building up to a decrease of 10 seconds before postponing. Repeat these three to four times. After that which does good, she recommends trying isometric sockets – reducing a difficult position and holding for three to five seconds. Do this for a few titles with as much rest time between the two that you need it.

Perform these high variations – say, with your hands on a bench – can be a good way to maintain the shape and strengthen the strength when you start, says Rule.

Is there someone who should avoid making pumps?

“If you have a kind of shoulder or injury, the pumps will worsen it, it is therefore preferable to avoid,” explains Rule.

Others may need changes, especially those with injury. Push-up handles-These resemble traction handles that you place on the ground-can be useful, he says, because they reduce the wrist tension and keep the shoulders in a more stable position. And if in doubt, ask a personal coach how to make pumps safely for your body.

If you hate the pumps, what can you do instead?

If you absolutely cannot bear pumps (maybe they evoke bad memories of the presidential fitness test), there are alternatives. But Bohannon says it’s worth asking you why you hate them.

“Most of the hatreds of the exercise arise from a repeated failure or a bad instruction,” he said. “If we can regress at the right level of motion, improve quality over time and progress appropriately, hatred often disappears.”

That said, he adds, exercises like dumbbell plans and machine thoracic presses can act as alternatives that target many of the same body muscles as pumps. But they are not as effective as the full body training: “We lose additional stability challenges that make pumps such a precious exercise,” explains Bohannon.