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This Epic Push-Up Variation Can Transform Your Upper Body
The smallest adjustment makes all the difference!
While you may think the push-up is a basic, thoughtless movement, you’d be shocked to hear just how many people perform this exercise wrong. We’ve overcomplicated cues around this foundational upper body pattern to the point where it’s no longer the safe, transformative movement it’s supposed to be.
I see this overthinking mindset in a lot of my client’s exercises, particularly in chest-related movements. Fortunately, this can be fixed quite easily when one returns to the real function of these patterns. All it takes is a look at basic anatomy to realize that we’ve been doing a lot of chest exercises incorrectly for a very long time. This has led to far less mobility and functionality in the upper body as a whole.
If you want to free your upper body and get maximal strength and mobility, it’s time to start doing the push-up the way it was designed to be done.
Unlocking the Pushup You’ve Been Looking For
Before we dive in, please note that while this modification is subtle, it may lead to complications for those with a history of pain and injury at the site of emphasis. If you’re aware of shoulder or upper body complications that may interrupt the safe application of the exercise below, please check in with a trusted health provider before going any further.
Now before we get into your new push-up modification, I want to break down what goes wrong for many gym-goers out there. The most frequent error I see is people setting their shoulder blades ‘down and back’ throughout the entirety of the exercise. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just try pinching your shoulder blades together and then lowering them down as far as possible. While this cue has a time and place for extremely heavy lifting, the average population should be discouraged from doing it all the time due to the limitation it brings to the natural movement of the shoulder complex.
The reason why this mindset is so limiting is that the pectoralis major muscle’s job is to bring the arm bone (humerus) across the body towards the midline. For example, this occurs when you punch, throw, bench press, do…
