Explosive push-ups: types, technique of performing the exercise and its benefits

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CrossFit uses several basic exercises aimed at working with your own weight. One of the most popular and effective is push-ups. The peculiarity of this exercise is that with its help you can develop not only the pectoral muscles, triceps, anterior deltoids, but also significantly improve the speed of arm movement.

In this article we will take a closer look at a more complicated version of the exercise - explosive push-ups. It is they, when performed correctly, that most effectively develop both muscle strength and speed of movement. Why does this happen? Read on.

What muscles work?

First, let's look at what muscles work when doing explosive push-ups. As in the simple version of the exercise, the chest muscles, anterior delta and abdominal muscles are involved here. However, when you make an additional movement with your legs, the muscles of the buttocks, quadriceps, iliopsoas and quadratus lumborum muscles are actively involved in the work. Essentially, you turn on the so-called “core muscles”, which are responsible for the correct position of the body in space and maintaining the correct geometry of the spinal column.

Video "20 best push-ups"

Friends, after watching this video you will also want to work on your body. I think this is a good motivation for playing sports.

As you can see, there are many reasons, there are many reasons why a girl should do push-ups, if you are interested in how many repetitions should be done, then everything is individual. For those who are not in excellent physical fitness, 10-12 repetitions for 3 sets will be enough. Experienced athletes in good physical shape can expand the number of repetitions to 20-30 and do 5 approaches.

Be healthy! Lead an active lifestyle and, as the song says, “Old age will not find us at home...” Until we meet again!

With warmth and care, Ravila.

We decided to start training at home and the question became, how can a girl who has never done it learn to do push-ups from scratch? Do you think it’s a big deal if you’ve never played sports before? Believe me, every person can learn to do push-ups in a short time. Try the 3 best push-ups for beginners to learn how to do push-ups faster. These are easier exercise options that will bring you closer to your goal.

Are you afraid of push-ups like fire? We don't blame you—bodyweight exercises do look intimidating, especially for beginners. Before you try to find an incredible reason, and even more than one, why push-ups are not for you, know that these exercises are a real boon for those who are serious about achieving an ideal body.

According to trainer and nutritionist Michelle Hobgood, push-ups are an ideal exercise for beginners: “During push-ups, the pectoral muscles, shoulders, triceps, legs, and abs work.” In a word: no muscle group will be left behind!

There are quite a few variations of push-ups, which makes them an exercise accessible to everyone, regardless of fitness level. It will be much more effective to perform a couple of sets of simplified push-ups, paying special attention to technique, instead of injuring yourself and scaring others by trying to imitate classic push-ups.

By performing incline pushups or kneeling pushups, you reduce the load and reduce the amount of weight you need to “lift.” In this simple way, the exercise ceases to seem like a perverted torture and becomes completely doable. Start small. Gradually, subject to regular training, you will be given classic push-ups, and then more complicated options. Stronger every day! This should be your motto.

Exercise options

There are several options for performing explosive push-ups. We have selected the most effective ones for you and placed them in order of increasing complexity. In each case, the starting position is the same - lying down. Next come variations with the position of the arms, the use of the leg muscles, etc.:

With your hands off the floor

We place our hands slightly wider than our shoulders, lower our chests to the floor by bending our arms at the elbow joints. We push off from the floor with both hands, our hands come off the floor, but do not change their position - we push off from the floor - the “hands off” phase - we touch the floor with our palms.
Place your hands shoulder-width apart, lower your chest to the floor and push off powerfully from the floor. In the “flight” phase, we spread our arms wider than our shoulders and land in this position. Having landed, we perform push-ups from the floor with a wide grip, push off again and in the “flight” phase we change the position of the hands to the original one, that is, shoulder-width apart.
Before starting the exercise, place small bars 10-15 centimeters high on both sides of the hands. They can be placed both on the outside and on the inside of the hands, but at a short distance from the arms. We lower our chests to the floor, sharply straighten our arms at the elbow joints and tear them off the surface, moving our palms onto pre-prepared bars. We perform push-ups on the bars, push off again and return to the floor.
Starting position – hands shoulder-width apart. Next, we lower our chest to the floor, then sharply straighten our arms and throw them above our heads, as if we were trying to dive into water. At the end of the exercise, we land in the starting position.
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Place your hands shoulder-width apart and do a push-up. Next, we push off the floor with our hands and, in the “flight” phase, make one clap in front of the chest, after which we lower ourselves onto our palms.

With the entire body lifted off the floor

This movement is similar to that described in paragraph 5 of the previous section. The difference is that in this version you need to push off with your hands, but at the same time lift not only your palms, but also your toes from the floor. You must land in the same position you were in initially.
© Mediteraneo — stock.adobe.com
We also start this exercise by placing our hands shoulder-width apart and lowering our chest to the floor. Next, we sharply push off the floor with our hands, enter the “flight” phase, while almost in the air we turn our whole body, changing the direction of the body by 90 degrees, and land on outstretched arms.
For the end we left the so-called “Aztec” push-ups. This is the most difficult variation of the exercise, so if you are a beginner athlete, you should not try to do it right away, as you may get injured. Take the starting position with your hands shoulder-width apart. Push off the floor with your hands, and also lift your socks off the surface. Having lifted off the floor, during the flight phase, sharply pull your pelvis up and, as it were, fold in half, touching your toes with your fingers. Immediately lower your pelvis down, returning your body to its starting position. Land in the starting position, that is, again taking a prone position. Ideally, you should not bend your knees in the “flight” phase, however, if you cannot do this exercise with the correct technique, pull your knees towards your chest - the range of motion of the pelvis will be smaller in this case, and the exercise will become easier to perform.

Alligator push-ups

Difficulty level: 3 out of 5

Alligators are not only fast chewers, but also good runners, so this exercise will require some free space. From a lying position, put one hand forward about half shoulder width and in this position do one push-up. Then with the hand remaining behind, take the same “step” forward, placing it in front. Do another push-up. Keep crawling forward until you get tired.

Tip: to maintain the desired tempo, move your legs in time with your arm movements!

Exercise technique

Regardless of what type of explosive push-ups you decide to practice, there are a number of general technical points that are important to observe when performing the exercise:

The chest and triceps muscles need to be tensed sharply and simultaneously in order to create an impulse of the required strength. The more powerful the impulse, the longer the “flight” phase, and the more actions you will have time to do in this phase (we are mainly talking about push-ups with cotton).
Immediately after the push, you need to relax your hands - this is the only way you can quickly change their position relative to each other or perform some kind of movement.
The abdominal muscles must be tense to keep the pelvis in the correct position.
When you need to push off from the floor and tear off not only your arms, but also your legs, the correct solution would be to place your hands shoulder-width apart, below the level of the shoulder joints, and at the moment of the push, give yourself additional momentum with your toes.
If you are doing explosive push-ups to develop fighting skills, the most optimal mode of operation is to perform as many push-ups as possible for 10 seconds, followed by a 50-second rest. Such approaches need to be made from three to five. If your goal is endurance, then you don’t need to try to perform as many push-ups as possible in a certain period of time. Instead, concentrate on continuing to do the exercise for as long as possible.

Dips: a little theory

Dips on parallel bars anatomically copy the bench press, but are not as “convenient” as the bench press, and therefore are relegated to the background in modern bodybuilding. Meanwhile, this exercise is more “beneficial”, since the lower position of the movement stretches the pecs more strongly. It is well known that powerful stretching at the start of an exercise increases its impact and accelerates the accumulation of muscle mass. In addition, the positive phase of the push-up puts stress on the lower area of the pectoral muscles. This allows you to “draw” the lower border of these muscles much faster.

As a strength exercise, dips are no worse than the bench press. They confidently increase the total strength of the shoulder girdle and pectoral muscles. If you can't do a horizontal press, replace it with dips.

Development of hand speed qualities

The high-speed qualities of your hands, which, in addition to strength, help develop explosive push-ups, will be useful to you not only in strength and game sports, but also simply in life.

Neuromuscular synapse

The rate of muscle fiber contraction is strictly limited. The nerve that transmits impulses from the brain to the muscle cannot perform its function faster than a certain time interval. However, if we talk about the everyday concept of speed (and strength, by the way), then this quality does not depend on the time of impulse transmission along the nerve fiber, but on the ability to voluntarily put a large number of motor units into work at once.

One motor unit is a muscle fiber to which a nerve approaches, forming a neuromuscular junction. In order to perform a certain movement quickly and with maximum force, you need to engage many muscles at the same time. And this quality is developed not so much by training the muscles, but by training the nervous system. In this case, you need to perform the exercises as quickly as possible, and the movements should be sharp.

Reaction speed

One of the best exercises for this purpose is “explosive” push-ups. In most cases, in the “flight” phase, when you just push off, you need to have time to perform some additional movement with your hands, for example, clapping. In any case, you need to land on your palms - and you need to do this before you hit your face on the floor. That is, reaction speed and speed of hand movement are important. Therefore, explosive push-ups are most often used to train athletes in boxing, kickboxing, ARB, combat sambo, MMA martial arts, where a quick and powerful punch is needed. However, explosive push-ups have a number of modifications that will be useful for CrossFitters, so we advise you to include them in your training complexes.

Where should I “insert” dips?

It makes sense to insert this exercise either at the end of chest workouts or at the beginning of triceps work. The number of repetitions usually varies from 8 to 15 in 3-5 sets. It all depends on your training program. For example, if you are working on technique or muscular endurance, then do 15. If you have a strength complex, and you use dips as an auxiliary exercise, then you can do 3-4 repetitions more than in the basic movement. For example, if before this you had a bench press of 5*5, then you can do triceps push-ups 3*8. All this is very individual!

Experienced athletes can use all sorts of high-intensity techniques, such as partial reps, forced reps, drop sets, and negative reps.

Benefits of exercise

The benefits of explosive push-ups are as follows:

they develop intermuscular coordination;
increase the speed of movements;
provide the explosive power needed in martial arts.

The only disadvantage of explosive push-ups is the risk of injury. For example, you may miscalculate your strength and hit your face on the floor. Therefore, it is better to start your training on something softer than a rubber or concrete floor - a wrestling mat, in this case, is an ideal option.

Push-ups: Evaluate your progress

Have you mastered the above exercises? It's time to start real training.

Performance:

Starting position – lying on straight arms and toes. The shoulders are strictly above the wrists, the whole body is one straight line, without bends or creases. Tighten your abdominal muscles and make sure that your lower back and hips do not sag. Bend your elbows and slowly lower your chest down. Then return to the starting position. Perform 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions.

Trainer's advice:
If doing 3 sets of classic push-ups is still difficult for you. Remember how many repetitions you managed to do before your arms and legs began to tremble (this will be your kind of record, which will be nice to break in your next workout), then drop to your knees and complete the exercise.

How to replace crunches

Experts recommend replacing crunches with a regular plank. This static exercise is almost universal. It perfectly develops the muscles of the core, legs, back and upper body. Moreover, the exercise itself has a high fat burning potential. Nowadays, different options for making the plank have been developed. For example, some types of exercise focus directly on the obliques.

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What are the benefits of push-ups for girls?

Not only men, but also fragile women need to pump up their breasts. Strong, trained muscles will support your breasts and prevent them from sagging over time.

In addition, push-ups will cause your chest muscles to increase slightly, this will visually make your chest a little larger.

Push-ups also help train your abs. Yes, yes, you read that right! If twisting and lifting your torso does not give you visible results, then try push-ups. In addition, push-ups also train the muscles of the arms and shoulders.

This simple exercise burns a lot of calories, which is comparable only to intense jogging or jumping rope. But even these exercises do not train that many muscle sections. Therefore, you will not find an analogue to push-ups at home.

Technical errors

Beginners may indeed lack muscle strength. This is easy to determine. Stand at a support that is at the level of your waist. A Smith machine bar or a high jumping stand will do. Place your palms on it and, straightening your body, do a few push-ups. Those who can do 12-15 repetitions usually have enough strength to do without assistance devices.

If even from a support the movement feels too heavy, your arms tremble and refuse to bend, it’s worthwhile to train your strength in auxiliary movements for some time:

Push-ups with compensation. In this case, part of the weight will be taken by the rubber shock absorber. You need to secure it on a high support with the handles, step into the center, lower yourself into position while lying down and place the tape on your chest. Next, push-ups are performed, and when extending the elbows, the projectile helps to take the starting position;
Bend your elbows while resting on a gymnastic bench. Can replace a complete exercise for a beginner. The technique is similar to the most difficult option; during movement you need to monitor the position of the pelvis and prevent its lifting.