How to master a push-up?

A push-up is a common exercise beginning from position facing downward . By raising and lowering the body using the arms, push-ups exercise the pectoral muscles, triceps and anterior deltoids. Push-ups are basic exercise used in common physical education or military physical training.

Benefits of doing pushups:-

1. helps in strength building.

2. helps in building muscle mass.

3. helps in loosing calories.

4. improved posture

5. muscle stretching

6. helps preventing back injuries

7. improved cardiovascular health.

How to master a push-up?

Pushups are bit challenging and might take some time to master, so one needs to be patient along the process of mastering push-up, usually it takes six to eight weeks for someone who has never been able to perform pushups. Push-ups are challenging, as they involve full body strength and recruit many muscles, but with practice one can master them. 

Here are some keys that can help you master pushups:-

1. Plank hold

Plank is a bodyweight exercise which involves holding the trunk part of your body in a straight line off the ground. The exercise involves your shoulders, arms and glutes including muscle groups which helps in improving your endurance and strength. This can immensely help in mastering a push-up as a classic push-up is directly related to how long you can hold a plank position.

2. Wall push-ups

Wall pushups are suitable for beginners. They put less stress on muscles alongside building shoulder and chest strength. You just need to lean your body towards wall bending your elbow keeping back straight and try to distribute body weight evenly. While you progress towards regular pushups, wall pushups are an effective way of gaining strength in your chest, arm, back and shoulders.

3. Incline push-ups

Another effective way of strengthening your arms, incline push-up is an elevated form of main push-up which means that it needs a box or any equipment to perform them. Higher the hands, easier the incline pushups, gradually you can bring the elevation down to make it more challenging. Incline pushups are step up from plank hold and wall pushups.

4. Knee push-ups

A knee push-up is a variation in full body push-up and is a good start for beginners. it’s same like a push-up just on knees( as the name suggests), keep your elbow tucked in while knees touching the ground keeping the back straight. Prefer doing it on carpet or mat to prevent any unnecessary force or injury to knees. Knee push-ups help in improving upper body strength and are good gateway towards main push-ups.

5. Eccentrics

 Variation in push-up that helps as stepping stone to be able to perform the body weight push-up. Eccentric pushups help in performing bodyweight push-ups by building chest, shoulders and triceps, also known as pushing muscles.

6. Full body pushup

This is the final goal, some people directly starts by full body push-up, but the slowly you train your body, the better it will be trained. It might also take couple of months to master full body push-up and that’s completely fine. After all it requires ,overall body strength and muscle endurance.

How many pushups are ideal for beginners?

You can simply start with a set of 5, with time and training you can make it more hard and challenging by slowing down push-up pausing at bottom between reps and can increase the number to 10 or above as per your suitability.

Remember when you say master a push-up you do not mean some crazy number of pushups that no one has ever imagined but building core strength and most importantly learning the correct technique of doing them. Building core strength, muscle and developing endurance might take good amount of time but it is worth the effort.