Friday, June 20, 2008

TRAIN to Improve Your PUSH UP Power

So many women have trouble building up the strength, or just say they hate doing them and give up. It's very important for women to have stong upper body strength. Just follow these steps:

1) Start standing arm's length away from a wall and count as many as you can do against it. If you can do more than 20, move on to the next step. If not, practice every other day until you can do 20 against the wall, trying to do one or two more each day. (You need to give yourself a day to recover in between.) Finish by stretching your chest muscles: link your fingers behind you and lift your arms upwards for 15 seconds.


2) Find a table, couch, weight bench, bed or counter. This should be around knee- to waste-level high. Stand back far enough so that you can lean your body diagonally onto the bench, holding yourself up with your arms. Do the pushups at this level, working slowly up to 20 at a time, practicing every other day. Bring your chest down to the bench or whatever you are practicing on, and be sure to focus on keeping a straight line from your ankles to your hips to your shoulders. Hands should be farther than shoulder width apart. Keep the body aligned and don't hinge at the hips. It's better to only do one perfect move rather than 10 with poor form. Watch yourself sideways in a mirror or have a friend watch you and tell you if your hips tilt up to the sky or you let the belly sink to the floor instead.


3) Move to a step (either like one from an exercise class or a step at home on a staircase.) Start on your knees with feet together. Again focus on your form being a straight line from your knees to hips to shoulders while bringing your chest and chin to the step and work your way up to 20.


4) Now you are ready to do them on your feet, still on a step. Ankles, hips and shoulders in line, chest and chin to the step.


5) Congrats! You are ready to try the full pushup. Once you work up to 20, you can start trying to do more.


Quick Push-up Tip: You should always work your upper back muscles -- the opposing muscle group -- to avoid a muscle imbalance. An imbalance will cause the shoulders to round forward, tight pectoral muscles, overstretched trapezius and rhomboids, and other back conditions, even pain. You can strengthen your back by doing weighted dead rows, weighted reverse flys, or by laying on the floor, arms out to the side away from body at shoulder level -- forming a T -- and lifting the chest and arms off the floor. You squeeze the shoulder blades towards each other and release down for 20 reps.


Good luck with your workouts this week!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Why PUSH UP?

This exercise are one of the basic and most common exercises for the human body. Push ups are not only great for your chest, but do a great job of defining your abs, triceps, shoulders and torso.

Push ups can be performed no matter where you are, and best of all, they are completely free - no expensive equipment or instructor required! If you're looking to develop a great chest and shoulders, you could do much worse than follow along with the hundred push ups plan. Your core strength will also go through the roof too!



To improve your strength, fitness and general health all you need to do is commit about 30 minutes of your time per week, and follow the push ups training program as closely as you can. I promise you will feel much better about yourself and much more confident after just a few short workouts.

To perform the test, simply execute as many good-form push ups as you can. Don't cut corners and please don't cheat - the last thing you want to do is end up in the wrong level of the training program! The results may be humbling, but trust me, honesty is the best policy if you want to maximize your strength gains!

Once you've collapsed in a sweaty heap on the floor and your arms have stopped trembling from the exertion, make a note (mental or otherwise) or how many, or how few, push ups you were able to perform. As an example, the first time I performed the test, I managed to seek out just 19 consecutive good-form push ups.

Introduction To Push Up Training

PUSH UP MORE FOR GREAT CHESTHave you ever think to increase your strength without risking your money? Then you're visiting the right place. If you're serious about increasing your strength and to change people perception about your strength, follow this six week training program and you'll soon be on your way to completing 100 consecutive push ups!

Think there's no way you could do this? I think you can! All you need is a good plan, plenty of discipline and effort achieve this goal!

No doubt some of you can already do 50 consecutive push ups, but let's face it, you're in a big minority. Most of you reading this won't even be able to manage 20 pushups. Actually, I'm sure many of you can't even do 10.

However, it really doesn't matter which group you fall into. If you follow the progressive push ups training program, I'm positive you'll soon be able to do 100 push ups!