Push Up | Illustrated Exercise Guide

Primary muscles: Chest
Secondary muscles: Shoulders, abs, arms
Equipment: No equipment
Exercise for the opposite muscles: Dumbbell bent over row

Push Up Instructions

1. With your legs extended back, place the hands below the shoulders, slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
2. Start bending your elbows and lower your chest until it’s just above the floor.
3. Push back to the starting position. A 1-second push, 1-second pause, 2-second down count is ideal.
4. Repeat.

Proper Form And Breathing Pattern

While doing the push-up exercise focus on keeping your head in line with your torso, and your torso in line with your hips. Engage your core muscles, maintain your body in a straight line, and exhale as you push back. Take the pressure off the wrists and place it on the outside of your hands.

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Exercise Benefits

Adding push-ups to your workout routine helps to shape and tone your shoulders, triceps and glutes, strengthens the chest, and helps to tone and tighten your core.

Push Up Demonstration

Sets And Reps

With the push up the key is to start slowly and focus on keeping perfect form. Doing a push up correctly is more important than the number of push-ups you can do. As you gain strength and stamina you should be able to complete 3 sets of 15 to 20 repetitions. If regular push-ups are too challenging for you, start with knee push ups.

Calories Burned

To calculate the number of calories burned doing push ups, enter your weight and the duration of the exercise:

Related Upper Body Exercises

Try these other upper body exercises to tone, tighten and sculpt your triceps, biceps, chest, upper back and shoulders:
Arm circles
Bent over lateral raise
Dumbbell bent over row
Dumbbell front raise

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