Kick Your Training Up A Notch With These Push-Up Exercises

We’re heading for the home stretch on our year-end benchmark series. You measured your flexibility and your progress toward (or proficiency at) pull-ups. Now, let’s focus on push-ups.

We have a ton of advice for how to get better at push-ups and what to do if you can’t do full push-ups. But remember, these are benchmarks. While a benchmark session might take the place of part or all of your day’s workout (hey, it’s hard work!), this is really a test of strength and not a training plan. Same for the pull-up benchmarks we did last week: negatives and dumbbell rows didn’t make the list, because those are how you build strength, not necessarily how you test it.

So, on to the tests. The most common way to test your push-up proficiency is to see how many you can do, but I don’t love that. If you can only do one or two, it’s a test of strength. If you can do 15 or 20 or, say, 50, it’s more a test of endurance and ability to withstand boredom.

Instead, I suggest this: Find something from the list below that you can do 5 to 10 of, with excellent form. Take a video.

  • Wall push-ups (measure how far your feet are from the wall: two foot-lengths, perhaps.)

  • Stair push-ups (note which step)

  • Negative push-ups on the floor (keep a solid plank position, and reset each time)

  • Regular push-ups

  • Push-ups with feet elevated (note how high; you can use a staircase or something like a plyo box)

  • Handstand push-ups (note whether you’re kipping them or doing them strict)

  • Weighted or banded push-ups (note the weight, of course)

  • One-arm push-ups

Then, find another thing on the list that you can do only one of, or almost one. Attempt it, and video that, too. Maybe you try for a one-arm pushup and you can only get about halfway to the floor before your arm crumples beneath you. Perfect.

Next year, you’ll return to those benchmarks and try them again. Maybe you’ll find that instead of 8 regular push-ups, you can now bang out 15. And perhaps you can now do two one-arm push-ups instead of collapsing after half a rep. Or let’s say you’re doing stair push-ups; maybe this year you’re on the sixth step of your hallway stairs, and next year you’ll be doing the same number of reps on the floor. There’s always something to strive for.

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