Ever wondered why push-ups seem easier for some and nearly impossible for others? Learn the secrets to mastering this challenging exercise in our latest episode of Tea with Tina. We'll break down the differences in upper body strength between men and women, and show you that push-ups, while not crucial for fitness, are an excellent addition to your workout routine. Through consistent practice and specific variations like negative push-ups, wide grip push-ups, and band-assisted push-ups, you'll discover how to target different muscle groups, especially the triceps, to perform push-ups efficiently and safely.
But that's not all! The episode also tackles the broader topic of strength and proper form in exercise. Sometimes, feeling like you can't hold a position or noticing your form falter means the weight is beyond your current strength. I share my own fitness journey, highlighting how perseverance and practice led to better execution and strength over time. If you're on a quest to enhance your push-up game or simply want to understand the importance of form and strength in your fitness routine, this episode is packed with insights and personal anecdotes to guide you. Don't forget to share this with your fitness buddies—let's master these moves together!
Ever wondered why push-ups seem easier for some and nearly impossible for others? Learn the secrets to mastering this challenging exercise in our latest episode of Tea with Tina. We'll break down the differences in upper body strength between men and women, and show you that push-ups, while not crucial for fitness, are an excellent addition to your workout routine. Through consistent practice and specific variations like negative push-ups, wide grip push-ups, and band-assisted push-ups, you'll discover how to target different muscle groups, especially the triceps, to perform push-ups efficiently and safely.
But that's not all! The episode also tackles the broader topic of strength and proper form in exercise. Sometimes, feeling like you can't hold a position or noticing your form falter means the weight is beyond your current strength. I share my own fitness journey, highlighting how perseverance and practice led to better execution and strength over time. If you're on a quest to enhance your push-up game or simply want to understand the importance of form and strength in your fitness routine, this episode is packed with insights and personal anecdotes to guide you. Don't forget to share this with your fitness buddies—let's master these moves together!
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Tea with Tina podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be chatting about how to get your first push-up or possibly improve your push-ups. If you can already maybe do one or the form's not that great and you want to tighten it up, alright, so let's dive in. All right, so let's dive in. Welcome to the Tea with Tina, your favorite podcast, where we talk all things health, fitness, lifestyle and maybe a little bit of tea gets spilled. We chat all about this in a super casual environment, so grab your beverage of choice back, relax and enjoy. All right.
Speaker 1:
So push-ups, you know it's push-ups and pull-ups, especially for females. It's not the end all be. All. Males are usually born with better upper body strength, just the way their genetic makeup is and their body is. I literally remember I have a friend and he was overweight, pretty chubby, and he's like, yeah, I just started doing pull-ups when I jumped up on the bar and I did one and I'm like you're kidding me, like can you imagine just jumping up, having no prior experience and being able to whip out a pull-up? But have no fear, ladies, for the places where we miss the mark on upper body we tend to make up for in lower body. This is why, in those action movies you know, what do the girl superheroes do they like? Wrap their thighs around a guy and slam them down because their legs are their source of power. That's pretty badass, okay, um. So we could definitely probably out deadlift out, squat out, step up, whatever. Something that comes easy to us is difficult for the males typically, but as far as push-ups go, this might be something that you kind of just wanted to want to do. Push-ups aren't necessary for reaching goals or being healthy. It is just a cool body weight move that needs to be done properly, because you can really overwork your shoulder and possibly put unnecessary stress on the shoulder joints and tendons and, you know, potentially cause problems if we're not doing things properly. So, as always, it's good to learn to do it the right way.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so I have a couple tips for you guys, and they may not sound earth shattering. Okay, there's no fancy program, but these are key to helping you get your push-ups all right. So the first step is going to be practice, okay. Push-ups, pull-ups, a lot of that stuff. It's kind of like if you don't use it, you lose it. So if you're planning on learning how to do it. You want to incorporate some sort of practice with a high frequency. You know whether you do a certain amount every day. Maybe you do it a couple times a week, whatever, just make sure the frequency is there so you can get the reps in. You have time to practice. You can keep that strength and endurance and continually progress, okay. So just remember, if you don't use it you'll lose it all right. So that is one.
Speaker 1:
Number two do push-up variations and skill moves to enhance your strength. So what does this mean? So just doing different variations of a push-up can help you because you're working the muscles used for a push-up in different angles and there's plenty of different push-ups. Things like negative push-ups are great to help with push-ups. That's kind of where you go slow on the way down slow and controlled on the way down and then you just drop onto the ground and then you can just push yourself up kind of regularly. So it's not quite a full push-up, you're just lowering yourself, which allows you to work those muscles in kind of the greatest point of tension in that movement. There are wide grip push-ups which kind of have your elbows at a 90 degree angle when you go down, which those can tend to be a little bit easier than the regular kind of tricep style push-ups. You can do incline push-ups, decline push-ups, one hand elevated push-ups. You can do incline push-ups, decline push-ups, one-hand elevated push-ups, side-to-side push-ups. There's many, many variations of push-ups and I would encourage you to play around with them, see if there's any that maybe are easier to you, harder for you, if you can kind of use them to your advantage. Like maybe you have a weaker spot so you want to try a different style.
Speaker 1:
You can do banded push-ups okay, to make it a little easier, putting the band around your hips and tying that band to something to kind of help pull you up. I found this to be very helpful in mimicking the same muscles, like you're working the same muscles to go through a push-up. But you know you're not on an incline or anything. Incline push-ups are not bad, push-ups on your knees are not bad, but most people's bodies tend to compensate unless we're really in tune with our mind muscle connection. So we don't get that full experience of what it's like to truly go through a push-up, so our muscles don't get as primed. But I found with the banded push-ups you know it allows our muscles to go through the same movements as if we did a bodyweight push-up. It's just using less weight, right? Kind of like an assisted push-up machine, right? Instead of an assisted pull-up machine. So we have those different types of push-ups.
Speaker 1:
There's also some moves that you can do to help enhance your strength. Particularly, working on tricep strength might be something you need. I know for me, my triceps for some reason just tend to really struggle when I do push-ups, but when I strengthen them, my form gets a lot better. Everything else doesn't really seem to be an issue for me, but for you it might be your shoulders or maybe too much pressure on your hands, and you need to work on grip strength to build up your forearms and get better hand strength right. So, depending, you know. Again, this is why it's good to practice.
Speaker 1:
If you need the help of a coach, see if you have a local trainer or knowledgeable friend in your area that can help you. Also, if you want to reach out maybe you have nobody feel free to send me a video or ask me some questions. You can actually ask me a question. In the description box of this podcast episode it should just say ask me a question or send me a message or something down there and you can click it and I will receive that message. So feel free to reach out if you're struggling with your push-ups. Receive that message. So feel free to reach out if you're struggling with your push-ups.
Speaker 1:
But back to the moves. The one move that I really love is scapular retractions. Okay, they're kind of hard to explain. I would rather you just look up a video, but there's different variations of it. So you have your scapula in the back of your back, okay, and again, again, super hard to explain, but it does retract and press away, and that's something that happens for pull-ups and push-ups, and a lot of people don't have that muscle mind connection to do it or build up the strength for it, or they might not even realize what it is or that they're doing it. So it's just something really great to do. Again, look up a youtube video for what it is, because then you'll it'll make more sense once you see it. It's something for me that's very hard to coach clients on until they really get a feel for it.
Speaker 1:
You can actually start by doing it on a wall, okay, because it does require a level of strength. Then you can go to your knees and then up on your hands in a plank for push-ups would be the most prime position. If you were learning pull-ups, hanging from a bar and doing the scapular retractions would be what we would do for pull-ups. Okay, so all helpful things for the push-up and I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by this, you know, don't feel like you have to implement all of this right away. But these are just some tips and, you know, depending on your weaknesses and your strengths, you may only need to implement one or two of these. Definitely, start with one or two at a time, work on it. If you feel like you kind of reach a stuck point, add more in or experiment with something else, right? Number three Okay, we kind of actually already talked about this. I got a little ahead of myself. So we have practice, practice, practice. Just as a recap, do the push up variations and skilled moves to enhance strength.
Speaker 1:
Three is different push up variations, which I touched upon these a little bit, but I guess I can get a little bit more into depth. So you know, we have a kneeling push up, which may be is referred to as a girl push-up, which I hate that Modified push-ups. Right, we have an elevated surface okay, so you can start really as high as you would like. You can do it off countertops, any platform that you can kind of comfortably do a push-up. I actually really like doing these on a Smith machine. So if you use a Smith machine you can unlock the bar. You could do this on a regular squat rack. It's just more of a pain to like adjust the bar height, but it's nice because you can do push-ups at an angle and then you can unlock the bar, move it down a step lower, do push-ups at that height so you can kind of gradually get lower and lower as you progress to do push-ups right To get closer to the ground. So I guess these variations are more so beginner variations.
Speaker 1:
Before, when I was talking about the wide grip push-ups, the elevated push-ups, negative push-ups, these I would consider to be more advanced moves. But if you can't quite get a full push-up and you need those incline variations, this would be it. The kneeling, the incline and the banded I would say would be the best variations to help you get your first bodyweight push up. And don't forget, we can always make things harder. So if the bodyweight push up is relatively easy, we could always add more weight on there. You can go slower Again. One arm, I mean. It gets pretty crazy. So you have options, all right. So that is number Number three. And then number four make sure you have proper form. This is important.
Speaker 1:
Elbow flare is very common with push-ups. It's just our body's way of compensating. So when you look down if I were to look down at you your elbows should look slightly angled out like an arrow. Now if you tuck them in completely at your side, that becomes a tricep push-up, but we're just talking about like a standard push-up. You want them slightly angled out, almost like at a 45 degree angle.
Speaker 1:
I would say Okay, and you also with the hand positioning. That's another thing that I see. And in planks and like ab moves, like mountain climbers, I see this a lot and this could come from weak wrists and grip strength Okay. So you want your hands literally directly below your shoulders and this could feel weird. This might be like you need to play around with the distribution of your weight, like how much weight is in the back of your feet? Is your weight evenly distributed? Are you putting all the weight on your hands? You should not. You should be evenly distributing throughout your body. These are probably things that you're not thinking about very often, which is why I like to bring it up With your hands again. They're right below your shoulders. You want to spread your fingers out and you want to evenly put pressure throughout all the fingers and the palms of the hands. This takes pressure off from, like the wrists. Does it have any pain? It also gives you some grip, strength when you're actually doing your push-up, because that weight is evenly distributed, right. So, and of course, keep your core tight, nice and tight and straight, so we don't have that arch in the back or a sinking in the back, okay. So definitely some key points to think about.
Speaker 1:
With form and again, if you can't quite get it right, you're probably just not strong enough to do it Like. If you feel like it's slipping and you can't hold it, you're literally just not strong enough. When you get stronger, it will make sense and you're gonna be like, oh, I can do it now. That is something important to note. This goes for any move. If you feel like you're failing out or like your form becomes crappy, it's probably just too heavy.
Speaker 1:
There's been quite a few moves when I first started my journey that I simply could not do them right or even feel them the right way. I'm like this feels weird because I wasn't strong enough. And then, once I got strong enough, I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to feel, okay, and I was like all right, so again, it just depends, um, but be patient, practice. I hope. I hope that you learned something new in today's episode. I would love if you shared this with a friend. Maybe you guys are trying to do push-ups together. It's just how more people find this podcast. I do it for free, just to educate you guys, and it's nice for me to chat with you, maybe typing up a post or something like that. Okay, no-transcript.