Learn How to Do Push-ups and Use the Modifications for Greater Gains

Push-ups can boost your chest and arms growth tremendously very quickly, if done right. The beauty of push-ups is that you can do them anywhere, without any extra weights. At the same time, with a few modifications of push-ups, you can also target more than just one muscle group in your chest. With proper push-up form and routine, you can easily increase your bench press by over 25lbs. So let's get started. Also check out the video for this demonstration in the AC video section for greater clarity on push-ups and other modifications.

We'll go through this in steps for you to get a proper understanding of how to performs push-ups correctly:

Stand in attention position, as in the military.

Now squat down, and drop your arms so that your palms are firmly planted on the floor by your sides.

Now straighten your legs backwards and shift the weight onto your hands and toes, but don't move your hands.

Make sure that your back doesn't sag, or stick up. Your body should in one straight line, with your weight on your hands and toes.

You are now in the basic push-up position. If the weight is too much for you to balance, you can bring your knees to the floor and place your weight on the knees instead of your toes. This also cuts back on the amount of weight you lift during the push-ups and makes it easier. This is the modified push-up position. Use this if you have back-pains, or just can't life the amount of weight to begin with. 

Onto the actual movement:

Lower your body to the floor until your upper arms are parallel to the ground.

Make sure that you're slowly lowering your body – don't bend your back.

Now hold this position for a second to confirm that you're okay. Now raise yourself back up and contract your chest muscles and triceps as you come back up.

Lower yourself again and continue till you reach muscle fatigue and can't continue anymore.

Note that your elbows go away from your body as you lower yourself.

In the next modification, we'll target the upper chest more. This is very simple modicfication:

As you lower yourself, instead of moving your elbows outwards, move them backwards, towards you hips, almost prallel to your body.