Increase Your Upper Body Strength With the Ultimate Pushup WorkoutPushups are an excellent no-cost way to improve your upper body strength and your physique. Regardless of what shape you are currently in, you can see dramatic improvement in strength with the following pushup routine. We’re going to progressively build up your upper body strength in a safe way. Unless you are currently in good shape, try starting off with what we call “vertical pushups.” For those who are already in good shape, scroll down the page to the Ultimate Pushup Workout section. The Vertical Pushup: The vertical pushup is the same as a regular pushup, with a unique twist. With the vertical pushup, you’re going to do standing pushups by using a wall instead of the floor. 1. Stand with your feet about three feet from a wall. Rest your hands on a wall, so that you are leaning against the wall. Let your face come close to touching the wall. 2. Now push off the wall with your hands just as you would push off the floor if you were doing a horizontal pushup. Repeat this 5-10 times (each time is called a “repetition.”) Start slowly, with just 5-10 vertical repetitions. Build up to 3 sets of 10 repetitions per day. It won’t take but a few minutes each day to do this. The vertical pushup is an easy way to gradually build up to doing regular horizontal pushups (traditional pushups). The Traditional Pushup: Once you have built up your upper body strength (or if you are already in decent shape), you are ready for the traditional pushup. With the traditional pushup, the proper form is to keep your body as flat as you can as you lift off the floor. But, for those who are transitioning from the vertical pushup, you can build up to the horizontal pushup by bending your knees or even by resting your knees on the floor while doing the horizontal pushup. This will also help save your back if you have back problems. Work up to 3 sets of 10 repetitions of the horizontal pushup. So, your pushup routine will look like this: 10 pushups rest a few minutes 10 pushups rest a few minutes 10 pushups Ultimate Pushup WorkoutUsing the above pushup routine (3 sets of 10 reps), we’ve quickly built upper body strength by progressively adding more repetitions to the sets. For example, we’ve gone from doing 3 sets of 20 reps to doing 3 sets of 50 pushups in a surprisingly short amount of time. By progressively adding repetitions to our sets, we’ve been blown away by how quickly our strength improved. For the Ultimate Pushup Workout, we suggest you build up to 3 sets of 50 pushups: 50 pushups rest a few minutes 50 pushups rest a few minutes 50 pushups Now here's the twist - do the pushups as quickly as you can (this is the advanced level). Try not to cheat while doing the exercise. By blasting out the pushups as quickly as you can, you are going to see your upper body strength increase in a mindboggling short period of time. You will see your upper body strength increase so quickly and dramatically, you will be amazed at not only how many pushups you can do, but how quickly you can do them. We can now blast through 50 pushups in about a minute (about 1 pushup per second). The entire Ultimate Pushup Routine (all 3 sets) can be done in less than 5 minutes once you’ve built up to it. If you can do more than 50 pushups per set, then go for it. We’ve quickly been able to build up to doing more than 50 pushups per set. We recommend doing the pushup routine on days you are working your chest and triceps. We do the Ultimate Pushup Routine in the evenings after working the upper body with weights. This routine can be done at home while watching TV, in a hotel room while traveling, etc. It’s a no-cost, easy way to dramatically increase your upper body strength. Fitness tip: You can vary the position of your hands on the floor when doing pushups to target different upper body muscles. With the traditional pushup, your hands are just to the side of your body. This will target your chest, shoulders, and your triceps evenly. If you widen the placement of your hands, so that your hands are spread out more, this will target your chest more. If you narrow the placement of your hands, this will target your triceps more and makes for an even better tricep exercise. So while you are doing pushup workouts, try varying the position of your hands to target your chest and
tricep muscles in different ways.
Related Physical Fitness Articles:The Full Squat - The King of All Weightlifting Exercises Return from this pushup workouts page to the physical fitness category page |
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