How To Get Your First Push Up - Beginner Calisthenics and Motivation - Lucy Lismore Fitness

So your goal is to be able to do a push-up, now that is an awesome goal and the great news is is that push-ups are one of the exercises that form the foundations of calisthenics. So as you master push-ups with the correct form you're able to build strength and also advance in calisthenics and learn some more skills and progressions along the way as well. Now although push-ups look like they're actually an upper body exercise they're in fact a full body movement so what we'd call a compound movement and it's definitely a movement that people really aspire to be able to achieve. I know way back when at the beginning of my journey and if you guys haven't seen before I used to be overweight and I wasn't into fitness at all, not strong at all and I wanted to learn how to do push-ups I couldn't even do them against the wall and I think from going from that point to being able to do one sort of mediocre push-up on my toes on the floor was around eight to nine months and then from there it started to speed up and I was able to work on the correct form and also getting more reps as well. That being said it was a super frustrating journey there was definitely times where I was thinking this is so frustrating and I'm never going to be able to get a push-up it's just not going to happen but with a little bit of consistency and just pushing through it eventually we got there and you know obviously it's quite easy for me to do push-ups now although there's so many different progressions that I still am working on. So with that being said if you see any of the progressions through this video and you still find them challenging do not be disheartened just keep chipping away at it and you will get there in the end. So in this video we're going to talk about the correct form in a push-up we're also going to talk about some of the modifications and progressions towards being able to achieve your first push-up and then finally we're going to talk about some of the common mistakes that we see especially when we're starting out and things to avoid and just a quick side note there is so many variations of a push-up you can do wide grip narrow grip tricep all sorts of different things today we're going to be just talking about a regular push-up so nothing too fancy just going to be a regular grip push-up and that is probably going to be the best one for you to learn with and then you can advance it from there. All right let's get started. So the first thing that we're going to have a look at is having the correct form now it's really important that we do have the correct form when we're learning so that when we do progress to the floor everything is safe we're avoiding injuries and we're getting the most out of the exercise. So we're going to start in a plank position and you're going to create a nice long line with your body so try to think that you've got a broomstick that's going all the way from your heels through the top of your head. Now something that's really common in a plank is that people's bums will stick up in the air like this and to avoid this we want to create posterior pelvic tilt so to do this what we're going to do is scoop our tailbone under and pull our belly button in towards the back of our ribs which should help us create that nice long line. You're also going to have your shoulders come over your wrists with your hands just slightly wider than your shoulder width apart and then you're going to have your eyes looking around one to two feet out in front of you. So when we actually come in to do a push-up what we want to think about is bringing our chest down between our thumbs rather than bringing our head down between our thumbs. It can be super tempting to have your eyes look straight down to your hands rather than just slightly in front of you but if you focus on having them around one or two feet in front of you the alignment will be a lot better and then finally you want to think about your elbows as well so when you come to the bottom of your push-up you want your elbows to be around 45 degrees from your body. I will talk about this in just a second but don't forget to keep your core engaged throughout the entire movement and to do so I like to think that someone's going to come punch me in the stomach and you're going to brace for the impact. Okay so you can't do a full push-up on the floor right now which is totally normal because like I said it takes a long time to be able to get to this level so what can you do to modify? Well most people will do a push-up on their knees and there's nothing inherently wrong with this if you have the right alignment keeping your hands underneath your shoulders focusing on having your core engaged and also bringing your chest down in between your hands you can get a benefit from this exercise. This being said the only place to really progress from here is to go onto your toes and that's quite a big jump in terms of strength so a good option is to work on incline push-ups instead. This enables us to work with the form of a full push-up that's on our toes but instead change the height of the surface that we're pushing on so that we can slowly increase our strength and work our way down to the floor with the correct form. All the same form cues will apply so make sure you're keeping your body aligned, that posterior pelvic tilt, core engagement and bringing your chest down between your hands. To give you an idea of what you could potentially use you could use a wall which is where I started, a kitchen counter, the side of your sofa, a corner of a dining table, a chair or even a bottom of a staircase. I even used the corner of a bathtub when I was running a bath just to get some extra practice in. All right let's talk about eccentric training now this is a fantastic form of training for a lot of exercises in calisthenics and just in general which helps to build strength and muscle. This might be something that you want to just do separately once you find that you're working on an incline you're getting quite low but you still can't quite do them on the floor or it might be something that you want to intersperse with your training on an incline as well but essentially what we're going to do is slow down the eccentric phase, the muscle lengthening phase of the exercise. This will increase neural stimulation, it will increase muscle hypertrophy and also strength as well so super beneficial to put in. So what you want to try to do is with the correct form and really focusing on controlling the movement come down towards the ground for between four to eight seconds and then you can just drop your knees and come back to the top of that exercise. This type of training is quite hard on your muscles so you need to make sure that you are having adequate rest afterwards but also you probably want to drop your reps as well. So let's talk about some common mistakes to try to avoid in push-ups and the first one we've already touched on but that is having your butt up in the air and your head down towards the ground. Now this puts undue pressure on your lower back and something that we really want to avoid but it also reduces the range of motion in the exercise so we're not actually coming down as far as we could and we're not getting the maximal benefit that we could be. To fix this again just focusing on creating posterior pelvic tilt so tucking that tailbone under, pulling your belly button in and also knitting your ribs together, creating tension in your core as well and maintaining that throughout the entire movement. Of course we've touched on this as well but not forgetting core engagement so like I said imagine that someone's going to come punch you in the stomach you're going to tense up really hard and you're going to stay like that throughout the entirety of the exercise. It takes a little bit of practice but you should get there eventually. And just another quick note on breathing so with push-ups what we want to do is we want to breathe in on the way down and then big breath out on the way up. All right the next one is something that we've probably all seen time and time again and that's when people lie or use momentum to get reps out in their push-ups. Now if you're using momentum it just simply means you're not using your strength as much as you could be and you're not going to be getting as much benefit from the exercise plus it can also lead to injury too. So what you want to focus on is a tempo of 2-0-2-0 to start with so two seconds down and then two seconds straight back up with no rest in between. Obviously this doesn't apply to eccentrics. Okay and the last one we're going to talk about is really really common and that is having flared elbows. So when people are starting out they tend to want to really put their elbows out wide. I know that I definitely did but the problem with this is it puts undue pressure on your shoulders and elbows which has the potential to lead to injury especially over a long period of time. So instead rotate your hands so your middle fingers are facing forward slightly wider than your shoulders and focus on bringing your elbows to around 45 degrees from your body. If you find that your elbows are still flaring and you can't get your full range of motion it probably just means that you need to work on an incline for a little bit longer before you reach the floor or maybe switch to eccentrics. Okay and the last thing I wanted to touch on in this video is wrist pain because this is a question I get a lot and it is common to feel pressure and maybe a little bit of discomfort or pain in your wrists especially when you're starting out with exercises like this because it does put a lot of pressure on your wrists. One solution to this is to put your wrists in a more neutral position so that you're not putting your wrist in that wrist extension and that's avoiding the pain. Now obviously I'm using mini parallettes here and most people won't have them just lying around their house but one option that you might have is to use some dumbbells and especially if you're at the gym you'll definitely be able to grab yourself a pair and you should find that this will help you a lot. Additionally you can also do some wrist strengthening exercises using dumbbells and you'll also notice that as you get used to it and you build up strength over time this pain or discomfort will become less and less but also just make sure you're warming up your wrists too. All right guys I hope you've enjoyed that video and that you have learned something new. Now I just wanted to use a minute or two just to reiterate to you some of the stuff that we were talking about at the beginning of the video in regards to progress and expectations. When you're learning calisthenic skills or you're getting into body weight training the progress can be excruciatingly slow but this is normal so please don't feel disheartened if something feels really really hard or you find it hard to do a push-up against the wall. Again I know what it feels like because I've been in that position but I'm now on the other side of it telling you not to stress just keep chipping away at it, keep working at it, doing your progressions, trying to fit in your training as much as possible and it will eventually will pay off. Once you do finally get that first rep you'll often find that your form will tighten up a little bit and you'll be able to speed up your progress a little bit quicker as well so just keep going and slogging out until you get to that point and then you'll be able to reap the benefits. And one last thing is about comparison. It's so easy when you're working your butt off to be able to achieve something to compare yourself to someone that you see in the gym or somebody completely different to you or again obviously on social media or on YouTube for example. You will have heard this so many times but you're just seeing a snapshot of that person and you're not seeing all the hard work or the history behind what's going into it. Some people are naturally stronger and take to certain types of training or maybe they've been an athlete when they were younger so for them the progress might be quicker and then there's some people that have not been like that, that was like me, and the progress can be a lot slower because you're completely learning a new skill and putting your body under something that it's totally not used to. Like I mentioned it took me at nearly a year to be able to just do one push-up on the floor and it wasn't even that good but I can put up an Instagram reel for 15 or 30 seconds and show you a progression that's taken five years within that short time frame and it automatically makes you feel like maybe you should be making progress a lot quicker whereas realistically you can expect for it to take anywhere between 6 to 18 months to be able to do a push-up depending on where you're coming from and your consistency. The key thing is is that you track your own progress and that you believe in yourself so don't compare yourselves to other people, make sure that you're doing what you love and what you enjoy and being your own biggest cheerleader. All right guys I will leave it at that, I look forward to seeing your first push-ups when you do them and I will see you in the next video, have a great day!