You CAN Increase Your Pushups (JUST DO THIS!)

If you’ve ever wondered if it was possible, it’s true; you can increase your pushups. In this video, I’m going to show you how to increase the number of pushups you can do right now by offering a simple progression of pushup variations to increase the difficulty and intensity of the exercise.

I’ve mentioned before that in order to get a bigger chest from doing pushups, you should avoid ineffective volume (i.e. doing 100 pushups a day). In fact, you should be increasing the difficulty and intensity of the pushup to create progressive overload, similar to adding weight to the bar. When should you progress to the next difficulty level? When you can perform 20-30 reps with relative ease.

For the beginner, knee pushups are the best place to start. The important thing, however, is to make sure that you are using proper form to make sure that not only increases the difficulty of this specific pushup variation, but also drives greater muscle growth. If you can do 30 repetitions of these, we move on to the next pushup exercise.

This would be the standard pushup. I find that most people that are serious about their training can bang out 30 or more reps with relative ease in a given pushup workout. The important thing to note here is that many people performing the standard pushup are shortchanging their reps by avoiding full lockout at the top of the rep. Making sure that the last two inches are taken into account, the exercise is more difficult itself.

The third pushup exercise in this progression would be the hand release pushup. This ensures that you are moving through full range of motion by making sure your chest completely touches the ground. The rotator cuff is also involved as a stabilizer of the exercise itself, which is an added benefit.

Next up is the pause push-up. This variation increases the amount of tension of at the bottom of the rep, which just so happens to be the most difficult portion of the exercise.

This more difficult exercise variation of the push up is the 1.5 rep push up. While this technically will increase the number of push ups you are doing in a given set, the intensity is much greater. This means that a new stimulus of the exercise will create further muscle growth, which is what your goal should be by performing push ups in the first place.

Continuing with the theme of tempo reps, we introduce the slow motion pushup. By lowering down for 5 seconds and returning to the top in a 5 second cadence, you are increasing the time under tension. Not only that, but this pushup allows for eccentric overload, which we know is one of the three main drivers of muscle growth. To grow your chest, this variation of the pushup is going to be great.

Once 30 reps of that exercise is achieved, it’s time to move onto the 3-point dynamic push-up. This can be achieved through the use of the prowler push-up, the spider-man push-up, step through push-up, or the cross knee push-up. By keeping just 3 points of contact on the ground, you are requiring the muscles involved to do more work.

Next, we introduce the wide arm push up. This version takes the triceps out of the equation, which means more load introduced on the chest. While the standard push up is a more “efficient” exercise, when it comes to muscle growth, we must seek out inefficiency. This means challenging your chest more in order to change it.

To make this move more dynamic, you’d be performing the archer pushup. This again takes the triceps out of the equation but increases the difficulty of wide-arm pushup by having to move laterally with each rep. Left-to-right and the opposite each equal one rep. That means when you can do 15 reps to each side, it is time to move on.

Finally, the most dynamic version of the push-up is a plyometric variation. This means creating an explosive movement off the ground to make the exercise as difficult as possible. 4 variations of this push-up would include a simple plyo push-up, a clapping push-up, an extreme version being the superman push-up, or even something athletic like the hannibal push-up. The point is to find the variation that challenges you to get to 30 reps.

Let me know which variation challenges you appropriately in the comments below.

If you’re looking for a complete workout and nutrition plan that will help you to not only get stronger with pushups and build a bigger chest but build a complete, athletic and ripped body – head to athleanx.com via the link below and check out the ATHLEAN-X training systems available.

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