Strength coach and Athlean-X founder Jeff Cavaliere C.S.C.S. makes a wide range of videos containing helpful tips on how to get in shape, consistently stick to your fitness goals, and sustainably build muscle. In his latest video, following on from his tips for doing more pullups, Cavaliere breaks down his tactics for improving pushup performance, regardless of where you’re at in terms of ability.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean churning out endless easy reps. Instead, Cavaliere suggests thinking about the difficulty of the move, rather than just numbers.
“If you can get to 30 of any variation of a pushup, it’s time to stop doing that pushup and instead focus on something more challenging,” he says. “Something that mechanically challenges the same muscles in a more difficult way, to provide the progressive overload you’re looking for.”
For beginners, Cavaliere recommends the knee pushup, which takes some of the weight off the upper body and allows you to focus on getting correct technique first and foremost. Once you can perform this with good form for up to 30 reps, move on to the standard pushup and work on perfecting that, including full extension of the elbows at the upper end of each rep. “People always cut off the last two inches, which is the most productive part of the exercise,” he says.
If you’re already doing classic pushups with ease, then progress to the hand release pushup, where you lift your hands up from the ground at the bottom of every rep. This removes momentum from the equation and slows the tempo of the exercise right down. “Any time you slow down tempo on a pushup, it becomes more difficult,” says Cavaliere.
Next up is the pause pushup, which uses the same principle, stopping the rep for three seconds at the bottom of each movement. Once you’ve mastered this, try the one-and-a-half pushup, which is exactly how it sounds, and adds an extra half rep onto each movement, testing your body control and ability to lift yourself halfway up from the bottom and then lower yourself again between full reps.
The slow-motion brings the tempo down even more, and requires a full five seconds to move up and then another five seconds to move down, creating more opportunity for eccentric overload in the lower half of the rep.
“At this point, the best thing you can do is decrease the number of points of contact you have with the ground,” says Cavaliere, demonstrating three-point dynamic variations which remove one of those contact points, placing greater pressure on the remaining three, such as the prowler, Spider-man, step-through, and cross-knee pushups.
Another way to increase difficulty is to put more stress on the chest and less on the triceps by adopting a wide-armed form. “The wider the hands go, the less elbow extension we’re getting to perform the pushup, the less tricep contribution to the exercise,” Cavaliare explains. You can then take this same wide-grip approach and introduce a dynamic element with the archer pushup, which shifts the load of your body’s weight from left to right, making it more difficult.
Finally, the plyometric pushup adds explosive movement to lift the body off the ground for maximum difficulty.
Philip Ellis
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues.
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