The push-up can only challenge someone so far. Well, you can certainly keep upping your push-ups each and every time, but there becomes a certain point when you probably don’t want to bust out hundreds of push-ups in a row just to feel the effects. So if you have the perfect push-up then we challenge you to take your push-ups to the next level with this little trick.
Push-ups have been called the perfect exercise time and time again and we tend to agree. The push-up is a very effective exercise because it works more than one muscle group at once. It works the chest, upper body, back, and even glutes all while just using your own body weight. Believe it or not, push-ups are a great exercise to build endurance too. Don’t believe us? Try doing as many push-ups as you can as fast as you can–we think you will see what we mean pretty quickly.
Seriously though, only try this exercise if you have warmed up thoroughly and have the perfect push-up. You could really be setting yourself up for injury otherwise, as this type of push-up adds more stress to your muscles and joints. This type of push-up is also a little bit different when it comes to muscle fatigue. With a regular push-up, you can do to pretty much exhaustion and just fail on the floor without worry for injury. Since this type of push-up is elevated, you will want to make sure you stop yourself on purpose a couple repetitions before failure. If you do reach failure, the muscle failure could cause you to fall back to the ground with your arms still elevated which could be a bit more traumatic to your muscles and joints.
Okay, so here it is–the way to take your push-ups to the next level. In order to do this, you will need a couple wood boxes about 6″ in height. Another good alternative to this is yoga blocks or parallettes. Position two boxes (or whatever you are using) a little wider than shoulder-width apart. You will be performing a push-up pretty much like you normally would except your hands are on the boxes. Throughout the move, maintain a straight line from heels to head. As you descend down through the push-up, think about squeezing your shoulder blades together, then pressing them outward as you ascend back to the starting position.
And there you have it. This is a very easy change but an extremely challenging one at that. How many can you do in comparison to a regular push-up–probably a fraction of the count?
