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| Hi Friend,
Forget what you’ve heard in the weight room: the humble push-up is more than just a newbie exercise. When performed properly, this old-school strength test is more advanced and challenging than most folks might think.
It’s true. Perform push-ups in strict style, and even the toughest gym rat can struggle and go crying to their momma.
Why is that?
Well, it just so happens this exercise isn’t as easy as many imagine. Not only does the push-up require significant upper body strength, but it demands stability, core and postural control, kinaesthetic awareness and proprioception — which is just a funky term for the body's ability to sense movement enabling us to know where our limbs are in space without having to look. Phew.
Some quick math will help illustrate the push-up’s uncompromising toughness:
A perfectly performed push-up demands you press around 70% of your body-weight from the floor while simultaneously co-ordinating your joints and motor unit recruitment from your head to the tips of your tootsies. A true, total-body exercise, a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes many trainees simply aren’t aware of… indeed, get to where you’re banging out strict sets of 20, and you’ll start to question if that KFC Bucket Meal you scarfed for lunch was such a stellar idea.
It’s no exaggeration to say the push-up is one of the best upper body exercises you can do. Consider combining push-ups with pull-ups in superset fashion, and suddenly you have all bases covered to get your torso Wolverine strong.
So what’s a respectable number to shoot for?
A great place to start, is to target your weightlifting strength standards.
And what are they?
Weightlifting strength standards simply grade your one-rep max against other lifters.
Rating your strength in this manner is really useful, as it helps you assess where your strength levels might be lacking. Also, monitoring your strength standards encourages healthy competition to improve on where you currently are and where you want to be.
Curious to know where you rank?
If you want to learn more, I've attached a link to a weightlifting strength standards tool you can begin using right away. Simply test your press-up prowess and see how you measure up.
Here is your link...
http://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/push-ups
Until next time,
Squat for Glory!
Lee
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