James Wilson: Hi! This is James Wilson with MTB Strength Training Systems. Today, I'm going to go over the pushup. The pushup is one of those stable exercises that, I mean pretty much always need to be in your program on some levels; such a basic exercise force that you -- one of thing that makes it so great is it's not only an upper body exercise, but it's also a great core exercise. In fact, for a lot of you, you can do a pushup, it's not really matter of upper body strength as much is it's a matter not having the core strength in order to stabilize the mid section to create a good strong platform to create move around.
And as the whole key, what we're trying to do in our training program is to trying to teach you body how to be strong and create a strong solid platform with that core, and then create movement around that core, as this going to really help you on your bike, increase your performance, increase low back pain and things like that, and so that's what why the one of the reason that it's such a great exercise, of course, to do.
One of the things that I get complaints about is people said, they get bored with pushup, and so I'm making this video here to give you guys a bunch of different variations to teach from. This is a no way bench and compass, all the different pushup variations out there, I'm sure that there is lot of more, but you know I'm going to go over a bunch right here just give you guys some different stuff to work on. So, I'll start out with a basic pushup and again just over on the same page with this.
Basic pushup is hands, underneath the shoulders, not underneath your face, under shoulder fix spot, but four to five feet in front of your, abs tight, gluteus tight. Imagine this position right here -- someone is going to come up and soccer kicking with the gut, you got, you know brace for that so brace hard, gluteus tight, come down, touch your chest and chin, and push yourself back up, down, push yourself back up. So, I want you to be able get that down, now you got to start to incorporate some other variations, but I want the easiest things to do is it's called the three point pushup; rise one foot off the ground that's just makes it a little bit harder and stabilize and just varying after reps, and then switch foot, split it, switch foot is up. So, that's a three point pushup, you can do like a narrow grip pushup, which is going to put little more empty is on the triceps, you can do by the hands up by the face, under the face. Once you've gotten that good form down and just put a little bit more stress on the core doing it like this. You can also stagger your hands, so you have one hand down and one hand up and doing your pushups like so.
Again, stretch half way through or switch each set, whichever you want to do, if you're real fancy and do like an explosive, switch like that, of course, that also you know can do explosive pushup although, I would like to save stuff like that and more from power work necessarily strength work. So, understand what you're trying to accomplish, you're working on power, you're working on strength, is that it help you decide whether it is explosive pushups, you get a good option for your not. So, a bunch of different variations there, you can also do a feet elevated pushup, so just get your box, a chair or something, put your feet on it, do pushup. Again, this just makes it little bit harder; the higher your feet arise, the harder it is do. So, as a regular one, you want to increase the core stability demand even more. Let's start the all stability ball, the Swiss ball, you can do your feet on the Swiss ball and just a little bit more of a core, training demand or can I actually do it opposite of that with your hands on the Swiss ball.
So, again you're not going to get the same range motion, but really good and you have to work to find a good risk position, so you know your wrist are getting bound up, and then again that's a really good one, it's really increase demand on shoulder stabilization. So, if you have shoulder problems or something like that and you're looking for a good pushup variation and kind of help with that, that's a good one there. So, feet up on that or hands on that, you can do a medicine ball pushup.
If you have access to medicine ball, you can get a couple of medicine balls, one hand on each one. Again, this is a really great pushup variation for those of you that have shoulder issues because again, it really increases the shoulder stabilization demand to create this movement, which is extremely important for, so you can use both medicine balls or you can stagger it, you only do one hand with one medicine ball, you know and switch one hand on to the floor. So, here are some medicine ball, pushup variation, you can also do a -- and it's known as a T pushup. So, down the ground, up, rotate around and do like a high side plank, up rotate around your high side plank. So, you can -- it'll make that more difficult by adding weight, grab a couple of dumbbells and execute that movement. So, down, up and back down, into the side plank.
As you can see, I'm doing it careful, first couple of reps we don't want the weight because it definitely got to stabilize a little bit more and kind of pull you out and just bounce, so you may find your first rep until you doing a deep pushup with weight in your hands it look pretty awkward. And so, we just take a couple of reps and kind of get the control and the bounce down on that, so there is your key pushup, if you're also doing a probably when my favorite variations is the Spiderman pushup and so in this one, you get your hands a little wider, you come down to one side, slide across, back up to the center. Down, slide across, up to the center. So, you have to draw the triangle with it, I see too many people doing it and something look like this like a come over, and then lower and it's almost like to drawing a square, you have to draw a triangle, this is the diagonal line, straight line, diagonal line, and straight back to the center.
So that's your Spider pushup right there, and also if you have to have an access to -- weight vest, then you can add lower in all of these variations here. So, getting strong on this movement is great, you know if you can find your weight vest that you can put 40, 50 pounds in and do your pushups. Awesome, you know another thing that you can do around how instructive here, but you know they have - you can get some chain and there are some handles and some spin chains down from a pull up bar and do you know a suspended pushup and stuff like that.
So, I mean I didn't know that how many variations I just went over on, I then want to try -- But basically, the point is there is no reason you should ever feel bored with pushups, there is some many variations out there, you know and you even get your one handed pushup, I mean for those of you it feel like you know pushups is too easy for you and see what's there, you know six one handed pushups or something like that. So, you know I can't so where I'll be going to be try and demonstrate and probably get one of them in a full myself trying; so it's always something to work on this, all that something that you can even try and improve on with your pushup.
Again, I hope you guys have got some good ideas always to keep the pushup fresh with continued challenge yourself, but again you want to pushup, it's such a core movement for us, you know again I don't like bench pressing, I'm even get important that I don't like dumbbell pressing and stuff like that. This is the pushup that is so much better for your shoulders, it gets that core strengthened to it, it's a such a great movement for us especially, for mount bikers because so much of riding comes down to knowing how to stabilize here in creating movement in key areas. For most of us, we have a problem in that, we're not very stable with the core and we compensate a lot with movement from here, which takes away from our performance and it increases our chance of low back pain and stuff like that, so as well the pushup is so great for us.
Again, hope guys have enjoyed. This been James Wilson with MTB Strength Training Systems. You guys can find more great tips like this at bikejames.com and so premier mount biking training website on the internet, you can find more information there, and then you want pretty much any book that you can buy. So be sure and go check it out. Hope you guys have enjoyed this demo and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.
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