Tag: chest

6 Dumbest Push-Up Mistakes Sabotaging Your Chest Growth! STOP DOING THESE!

theguy 0 Comments 28/05/2019 Cardio Get fit Health Healthy Food

What’s going on nation? Today we’re going to be going over the six dumbest push-up mistakes sabotaging your chest growth, if you missed my last dumbest mistakes video on dips I’ll link to that down in the info section below. Now the push-up should be an exercise that becomes a staple in your workout program from the very beginning. However, it’s not just an exercise for beginners It can be used in advanced training programs as well because the push-up is more than just simply going up and down you can master that technique and then use advanced versions of the push-ups to make your workouts at home more intense or to make it work out in the gym more intense by super setting the push-up with other exercises. There’s lots of stuff you can do, I also want to tell you guys real quick before we get started with this video that I’m going to be doing the push-up on these two boxes right here. And the main reason why I’m going to be doing it is just so I can get better filming angles for you guys as I explain what the mistakes are, so you’re ready for this video and you enjoy my dumbest mistake series, make sure you hit that thumbs up button and subscribe if you haven’t already, now let’s get started.

The first mistake guys is that most people don’t even really know what full range of motion on a push-up looks like, I’ll tell you what when I was a kid I used to get so irritated because when I would do wrestling we’d have practice and part of our routine obviously was doing things like push-ups and sit-ups and we’d have to do a lot and I would look around and I’m like the only guy, I was like eight or nine doing it all the way down, all the way up really pushing myself and then I would see all these other kids on my wrestling team doing these half-ass push-ups just trying to get away with half reps because obviously push-ups can get pretty hard.

But then what that kind of turns into overtime is you really don’t get a sense of what full range of motion is supposed to look like and if you want to build a big chest at home and really want to activate your triceps you have to know how far to go down and how far to go up, so let’s get over here real quick. I’m going to jump up and now full range of motion is going to look like this guys, you’re going to get your body perfectly straight, you’re going to keep your back nice and straight your head straight You’re going to keep your hips down And you’re going to bring your chest all the way to the floor and as soon as your chest touches the floor you’re going to push yourself back up but it doesn’t stop here, when you get to here you’re going to push up and through activating your Serratus anterior, and you know some people call this a push up plus this movement from here to here but in my opinion that’s how every single repetition should look when you do a push up you should always take advantage of full range of motion to get the most out of the movement and if you want to build a big upper body at home and you want to activate your chest and triceps properl, you have to go all the way down and all the way up on every single repetition.

Mistake number two guys is flaring your elbows out wide and I’ll show you what I mean as you guys just saw in the first mistake video when I showed you proper range of motion my elbows are tucked in and I was pushing through like this a lot of people especially beginners when they do a push-up and even even people who know how to do a push-up properly when they start to fatigue the first thing that’s going to usually go is the elbows and what I mean is you start to see a lot of this and then as you go down the elbows kind of come out to the side like that.

And what this does is, obviously it takes you away from being in the strongest position possible but it can also transfer a lot of the load to your shoulders and you’ll feel a huge difference when you go up and down like this you’ll feel it in your shoulders. Then when you tuck those elbows back in and go down like this and push up and through you feel all chest and triceps.

So the second worst mistake you can do is start to flare your elbows out and do this. That’s not what a push-up supposed to look like. The third mistake is not keeping a straight spine throughout the movement. Guys it should literally look like there’s a metal rod going up your butt and out the top of your head as you perform your repetitions. You should keep your body perfectly straight and then the reason why most people don’t keep their bodies perfectly straight is because as they’re performing the movement they’re not controlling their core, and as their core starts to deflate or if they’re not taking it and keeping this area nice and tight as they start to deflate this way or they start to sag that way it causes the body to do all sorts of things and I’ll show you what I mean.

So usually there’s two things that happen, the most common thing is the hip step to go up really high like this to compensate for the weak core not being able to hold this position. Which is basically a plank position. So you start to see this happening with the push up which obviously starts to place a bit more emphasis on your shoulders as you do the movement so if the goal is to target your chest and utilize your triceps as much as possible you want to stay as straight as you can now the other thing that you see happen is kind of like a sag push-up where they sag real deep in the core like this and keep their chest up and it’s like as soon as your hips touch the ground here you go back up and as you guys can see there’s clearly a difference in the range of motion and that you’re actually working your chest if you’re doing a push up like that versus the correct way which is all the way down and all the way up, so when you guys are doing push ups make sure you are always keeping that spine straight and utilizing that full range of motion.

The fourth mistake guys is going way too fast on your repetitions you’ll see people in the gym do this when it’s time to do push-ups and what happens as soon as you start going too fast usually the first thing that happens is your full range of motion goes out the window. You don’t go all the way to the ground And you don’t do the plus at the top to activate the Serratus interior it usually just goes from about halfway down to about here, maybe even a slight bend in the elbows and you just see this, just because you’re going faster and doing more reps in less time doesn’t mean you’re working your chest as high as you possibly can guys full range of motion is always going to give you the most amount of work for muscle breakdown and regrowth now you can still go fast when you do your push ups.

Just make sure you go all the way down and all the way up on every single repetition. Mistake number five guys is improper breathing. The push-up even advanced versions of it isn’t like doing a heavy squat or heavy deadlift or even a heavy bench where you have to take in a lot of air to help keep your core as tight as possible to lift a maximum load. For the most part this is a bodyweight exercise and when doing your repetitions it’s okay to take a breath on every single rep but with that being said you are trying to keep your core as tight as possible so it does matter when you take the breath in and when you let it out. So for example what you’re going to do is you’re going to take in a breath as you go down, and when you take in a breath guys take it in through your nose, so take it in through your nose. Then once you get to the bottom as you’re pushing up let it out in a nice steady stream.

Just like this, take it in and one of the things I like best about bodyweight exercises is I actually use my breathing to help me keep a nice rhythm to do as many reps as I possibly can especially if I’m doing a timed workout. So any bodyweight exercise you do apply breathing just as you would like I just showed you to the push-up where you’re breathing out as you exert the force.

And the sixth and final mistake people make when it comes to push-ups guys is not progressing with the movement obviously as you start to get bigger and stronger and especially when you start going to the gym you start using heavy dumbbells and barbells on your chest exercises bodyweight push-ups are going to be tough anymore and for those of you who can’t do bodyweight push-ups yet I don’t want you going and basically trying to do one or two at a time and then stopping because you can’t handle a set of ten for those of you just starting out the best thing for you to do is to do push-ups on your knees.

What this is going to do is displace basically half of your body weight and allow you to do full range of motion and get all your repetitions in however I will say one thing you’ll notice that when I’m doing my push-ups on my knees. I’m not bending at the waist all right you still want to keep everything that’s moving as straight as possible so when you’re on your knees make sure you’re not putting your butt into the air. As soon as you master the knees push-ups then you’re going to go over into the regular push-ups and obviously, we just went over proper form for those and then once you get really good doing regular push-ups then you can start to go towards more advanced versions of the movement one of those advanced versions being weighted push-ups and you can do this several different ways obviously you can put on a weighted vest or you can have somebody just put a bunch of heavy plates on your back and do push-ups that way and once those start to get pretty easy then you can start moving into like plyo push-ups.

You can do a version of plyo push-ups where you’re pushing only your upper body off the ground. If you want to have fun with it, you can do a clap in between repetitions. As soon as you get really good at those try doing a plyo push up where you push your whole body into the air. Those are a lot of fun I actually use those a lot in my routines that I do with you guys, my full real-time workout routines.

And then if you guys want to get really crazy with your push-ups the last variation you can try is a single arm pushup, and that’s really great for working out at home because obviously if you’re at home and you have limited equipment you want to make push ups as hard as possible to try and grow your chest you can utilize something like a single line push-up to place a much heavier load on the chest on every single repetition. So that’s my six biggest mistakes when it comes to push-up guys I hope you enjoyed the video I love doing the dumbest mistake series, so if you guys have suggestions for future exercises you want me to cover please leave them down in the comment section below and if you haven’t already hit that thumbs up button, if you enjoyed the content and be sure to turn on video notifications, so you never miss a new video upload and as always guys more good stuff coming soon. See ya .