Push-Up
Push-ups are bodyweight exercises that work the triceps, shoulders, and chest. They also work the core and stabilizing muscles. The movement involves lowering your body toward the ground by bending the elbows and then pushing back up to the starting position, keeping your body straight throughout the exercise.
Push-ups can be modified in various ways, such as by changing hand positioning, elevating the feet, or performing them on the knees, to adjust the difficulty or focus on different muscle groups.
Muscles Involved
The pectoralis major is the agonist. The pecs extend and regulate the speed of your drop as you lower yourself toward the floor. When you push back up, they get shorter.
An eccentric contraction occurs during the exercise’s lowering and extending phase, whereas a concentric contraction occurs during the lifting and shortening phase.
The primary antagonists (muscles that oppose the agonist) are the rhomboids, posterior deltoids, and middle fibers of the trapezius muscle, which are located on the other side of the torso with respect to your pecs.
Helper muscles, also known as synergists, are crucial because they support the agonist even if they are not the exercise’s target muscle.
When doing a push-up, the triceps and anterior deltoids work in tandem. They support shoulder flexion and elbow extension, respectively.
Fixators include your rotator cuff, which keeps your humerus’ head securely in the glenohumeral joint, your upper traps, which aid in the scapulae’s upward rotation, and your core muscles, which maintain your spine straight and mostly consist of the rectus abdominus and transversus abdominis.
How To Do Push-Ups Correctly?
Steps:
Positioning your hands slightly wider than your shoulders, you must get on all fours on the floor to perform a push-up. Elbows should be kept slightly bent rather than locked out. To balance on your hands and toes, extend your legs back until your feet are hip-width apart. This is how you will perform a push-up once you are in this position.
- To tighten your core and contract your abs, draw your belly button toward your spine.
- After taking a breath, carefully bend your elbows and drop to the floor until they form a 90-degree angle.
- Breathe out while tensing your chest and pulling yourself back up through your hands to go back to where you were before.
Benefits of Push-Ups
During the push-up, the rectus abdominis and the internal and external obliques are the abdominal muscles that keep the body rigid. Because Push-ups use many joints, it is a complex workout.
The deltoids, pectoral, triceps, and biceps of the upper arm, the gluteal or hip muscles, the erector spinae of the back, and the deltoids of the shoulders are the upper body muscles used in the push-ups.
In everyday life, you frequently have to push against things like doors and shopping carts. Push-ups help you build the functional fitness that gives you the strength to execute these activities. One way to prevent rotator cuff problems is to strengthen the stabilizer muscles surrounding your shoulders.
A 2019 study also discovered that those who can perform 40 push-ups had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease events compared to those who can only perform 10.4 By using push-ups as a gauge of upper body fitness, you may determine whether you need to increase your exercise routine to maintain optimal upper body function.
Physiotherapy
Push-ups also raise the metabolic rate, which aids in weight loss. One quick and inexpensive way to evaluate a person’s functional ability is to have them perform push-up challenges.
According to research by Justin Yang et al., which involved active adult men, those who could do more than 40 push-ups had a decreased risk of cardiovascular illnesses than those who could complete less than.
They are frequently used because they are very simple to learn, need no special equipment, and may be adjusted for varying degrees of difficulty according to the patient’s level of physical fitness.
To change the difficulty of the traditional exercise, which calls for the hands to be placed in a natural position beneath the shoulder, the back straight, and the head up.
Instead of concentrating only on strength training, push-ups plus exercises are advised for doctors treating patients with shoulder dysfunctions or diseases.
The push-up plus is performed with the arms extended from the same starting position as a push-up, as opposed to the standard push-up.
The athlete, however, extends their scapula rather than lowering it to the floor.
Variations
Numerous versions exist for the push-up exercise, each focusing on a different muscular region. These include:
- Push-ups on the knees (excellent for novices).
- Wall push-ups
Beginners might benefit from these torso-elevated, inclined push-ups, which are a little more difficult than wall and knee push-ups.
Maintaining your hands on the floor and your legs on a higher plane is necessary for decline push-ups with lifted feet. To perform this push-up, you can utilize any piece of furniture, such as a bench or box. Higher levels of training employ this since it requires a larger percentage of body weight.
of the body weight, making it suitable for higher workout levels.
Wide palmer width enhanced the activity of the serratus anterior, a muscle crucial to scapular stability, whereas narrow palmer width increased the activity of the triceps brachii, infraspinatus, and pectoralis major and minor.
Push-ups, both forward and backward, should be done carefully since they increase the compressive stresses on the intervertebral joints by activating the stomach and back muscles.
In comparison to traditional push-ups, the serratus anterior muscle was more activated during push-up exercises performed on unstable surfaces, however not all unstable devices do so. Unlike earlier unstable devices, the lumbar multifidus, rectus femoris, and serratus anterior muscles were better activated while using a suspension device.
Starting at the tip of a push-up posture, perform push-ups plus or serratus anterior push-ups by moving only the scapula into protraction and retraction. This can correct the scapular kinematics as it produces high muscular activity of the serratus anterior and low muscular activity of the upper trapezius; however, scapular protraction decreases the subacromial space, which can increase the risk of impingement of the rotator cuff tendons. One-arm push-up: an amazing challenge to face.
Research On Muscle Activation
Some research indicates that if the goal is to increase muscle activation during exercise, then push-ups should be performed with hands in a narrow base position rather than a wide base position. Yet, studies show that young men who execute push-ups on unstable surfaces do not have a higher increase in muscular strength and endurance than those who perform push-ups on stable surfaces.
In contrast, research that examined the force produced by six different push-up variations performed by 23 physically fit individuals discovered that push-ups performed from the knees or with the feet raised produced the least force, while push-ups performed with the hands lifted produced the greatest. The force generated by the various push-up variations seems to be independent of height and gender.
The triceps and pectoralis major muscles had the highest electromyography amplitude during conventional push-ups, incline push-ups with hands, and other shoulder electromyography variants, according to a 2020 study. on a ball, suspension push-ups, and unstable push-ups. The study found that during incline push-ups and push-up plus, the serratus anterior muscle had the maximum electromyography amplitude.