How to Achieve the Perfect Push Up
The Vitruvian Fitness Method to learn the Perfect Push Up
The Perfect Push Up is an expression of strength that demonstrates serious determination and movement organization. Plus it comes with, in my opinion, more self-satisfaction than any other exercise after the Perfect Pull Up.
Part 1 - The Set Up
The position of the arms and shoulders is most important. Begin by lying face down on the floor and imagine looking down at yourself from directly above. You are going to make the shape of an arrow with your body.
Place your chin at the imaginary point of the arrow with your upper-arms positioned at 45º to your torso and your hands directly below your elbows. If correctly positioned, your forearm will be pointed straight down or perpendicular to the floor.
Looking down at yourself, you should look like a straight arrow with your arms flared out 45º. The reason for this is because when your arms/shoulders are in the 45º position, the joints and muscles are at their medium-est positions which, in simple terms, means they are positioned optimally to recruit all the muscles to help with the pushing up. It’s also healthier for your shoulders since you’re not rubbing up against any end ranges of motion.
Next, drop your heels back and try to tuck your toes under your feet so your weight is resting on the balls of your feet. If your toes don’t bend that far, it’s ok but you’ll want to wear shoes. Whether your toes bend that much or not, you’ll still want to drop your heels as far back as you can.
When you drop your heels, you’ll feel how your quads engage which is part of organizing your core to be as stiff as possible for the upcoming movements.
After all, a Push Up is just a great plank with elbows that flex and extend. So, a solid plank is the precursor to the Perfect Push Up.
Part 2 - Getting Stronger
Push Ups are hard and take strength and good posture. Keep reminding yourself why you’re doing these - because people who can do great push ups have a lot to be proud of.
In this part, we’re going to focus on the “down” phase of the Push Up. This is also known as the
eccentric phase. It’s pronounced EE-sen-trick. (Not ECK-sen-trick like your goofy uncle.)
It doesn’t sound intuitive at all but you can actually build strength faster by focusing on a very slow descent from the top of your ever-improving plank to the floor.
So, get into the arrow position as described above and then get up into a high plank position by any means necessary. It literally doesn’t matter how good or bad it looks - just get to the top. Make sure your feet and hands don’t move out of their positions though. This is important.
While maintaining your perfect plank – head, neck, core, hips, quads, feet all as stiff as a board – slowly lower yourself to the floor counting 5 Mississippi OUT LOUD along the way. When you reach the floor, take a breath and recommit to doing another 1. Repeat. Do this for a total of five 5-Mississippi Top-Down Push Ups.
This all takes about 1 whole minute with 3-5 second rests in between each repetition. You’ve got 1 minute, don’t you?
NOTE: You may
not do these from your knees. They can only be done from your toes. Are they hard? Yes they are. You got this.
NOTE 2: If you can’t time the descent to last 5 whole Mississippi’s, that’s OK. You’re still going to count out loud. If you get to the floor at 3 Mississippi, that’s fine. You’ve got 2 more Mississippi’s of strength to build. And these are hard enough that you might not be able to hold any Mississippi’s on your 5th rep. That’s OK! You know exactly where you are and what you’ve got left to gain. Start there and work on getting stronger.
Once you’ve done five 5-Mississippi Top Down Push Ups, you’ve accomplished something terrific.
Part 3- Repetitions
The reason we never do Push Ups from our knees is because the difference between our knees and our toes is about 20 inches of body-length and that’s actually a huge jump in difficulty. Imagine if you were doing biceps curls with a 5 pound weight and then suddenly you had to do them with 25 pounds. (It’s not actually the same thing but the difference feels equally abrupt.)
So, instead of doing Push Ups from the knees, we do them on an incline that we can gradually decrease which makes the Push Ups from our toes do-able and we can get in a lot of repetition.
If you have stairs in your home, this will be super easy. In a gym, you can use a barbell in a squat rack, a smith machine, or anything you can get your hands on and gradually get lower.
We’re going to use a “rep range” of 8-12 reps. This is important because this is how you’ll know when it’s time to increase the challenge.
Your set up is the same as before - upper arms at 45º to your torso with your forearms pointing straight down and your heels dropped back. However, instead of your hands being on the floor, they're on the 5th or 6th stair up from the bottom.
In this position, do as many push ups as you can stopping at 12 if you get there. If you couldn’t get to 8 reps, reposition your hands on the next stair up. If you did get to 12, reposition your hands on the next stair down.
You’re seeking the stair where you can do at least 8 Push Ups but not 12. Can’t do 8? Make it easier. You can do 12, make it harder. Once you find that stair, keep working until you can do 12 Push Ups. That’s when you drop down a stair.
Every time you get to 12, you drop a stair until you’re doing Push Ups with your hands on the floor.
But what if you can do 12 Push Ups from one stair but you can only do 6 from the next one down? That’s OK! Do all the Perfect Push Ups you can do on the lower stair and then move back up one to finish the set.
When the day comes that you can do 12 Push Ups from your toes and your hands on the floor, you’ve accomplished something so awesome. Congratulations!
Be dedicated to the process and be kind to yourself. You got this.
Curious to learn more?
We encourage you to do a 14-Day Trial Membership. In 14 days, you will get a private onboarding session that includes the Functional Movement Screen®, then unlimited semi-private training sessions doing the program we design based on that first session. And you’ll get to be a part of one of the most inviting, inclusive, and fun communities you’ll find anywhere. At the end of your trial, you get to decide if you liked it and if you want to continue with a regular 6-month membership. All the options and prices are on our Membership page.
You might also enjoy these posts . . .
