Push-ups: How to Do, Benefits and Common Mistakes to Avoid

Push-ups are one of the most basic yet effective exercises for strengthening your core and upper body. While many different workouts and diets have evolved in recent years, push-ups for men have sustained the test of time and become a staple of any fitness routine.

It is a simple exercise yet requires stamina and upper body strength. Just doing this exercise regularly can boost your overall fitness level as it activates every muscle in your body, including your arms, hips, abdominals, chest, and legs.

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How to do push-ups?

To reap the benefits out of every single push up, it is very important to focus on its correct form. Without maintaining the correct form, you can easily strain your muscles and injure yourself. If you want to engage all your muscles and develop strength efficiently, make sure you do this exercise correctly.

Here’s how you can do a basic push-up in the right manner:

• Take a plank position on a flat surface by keeping your arms straight and don’t lock your elbows.
• Put your palms on the flat ground and align your shoulders, wrists and elbows.
• Keep your core tight and don’t allow your back to sag downward.
• Your spine should be straight from your neck to hips.
• Now slowly bend your elbows in a controlled motion and at 90-degree angle.
• Hold this position and then push yourself up to the starting plank position.

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Key benefits of push-ups

1. Works on multiple muscles at once:

Push-ups require compound movements, which is why they target various muscles at the same time. This exercise doesn’t target muscles in isolation but activates different muscle groups while increasing your strength training efficiency. Most people have a perception that push-ups only work on the triceps and chest. But when performed correctly, this exercise works on your anterior shoulders, core, legs and other muscles of the body.

Muscles worked in push-ups. (Photo by Monis Yousafzai on Unsplash)

2. Different variations and modifications:

The best thing about push-ups is that they can be easily modified to suit your fitness levels and requirements. Initially, you can start with knees or incline push-ups and further challenge yourself by doing diamond push-ups, declines or clap push-ups.

Decline push-ups. (Photo by MART PRODUCTION via pexels)

3. Strengthen your bones and joints:

This exercise just doesn’t strengthen your muscles but also works on your joints and bones. And because it involves movement of your shoulders and elbows, doing it regularly will help boost your body’s supportive structures.

Healthy muscles (Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash)

4. Helps burn calories:

If you are working out specifically to lose weight, including push-ups in your daily exercise routine will prove beneficial. As this exercise helps build strength and mass muscles, it will speed up your metabolism, burning more calories throughout your body.

Burn calories (Photo by i yunmai on Unsplash)

Performing this workout regularly can also improve your cardiovascular exercise performance as well as your body’s overall posture.

Undoubtedly, this exercise has a whole lot of amazing benefits, but to gain all these advantages it is also very crucial that you avoid certain mistakes while performing it.

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Some common mistakes to avoid while doing push-ups

Why are push-ups so hard? (Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash)

Keeping your hips too low

When doing push-ups, it is important to keep your hips aligned with your shoulders. If the hips are too low, it will put a strain on the lower back and cause pain.

Doing too many reps

It doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner or a trained fitness person; limiting your push-up reps and speed is very essential. You should never crank out reps in your regular workout regimen. The fast pace not only affects your joints but also strains other muscles.

Wrong elbow angle

When doing this workout, flaring out the elbows is one of the most common mistakes that people make. Thinking that keeping your elbows in a wide position will make your chest grow more is not true, instead, it leads to injury and muscle tear.

Correct posture (Photo by Fortune Vieyra on Unsplash)

Hence, by avoiding these mistakes and making small changes to your push-up form, you will reap all the benefits of the exercise. So, just be careful while performing it and maintain range of motion and correct posture.