Tag: push-ups
How to Get Better at Push-Ups
Push-ups, or press-ups as the Brits call them, should be at the top of every exerciser’s to-do list. Working your chest, shoulders, and triceps, push-ups are more joint-friendly than bench presses, require no equipment, so they’re the perfect excuse-free exercise and can be modified to suit all fitness and experience levels.
Being able to do push-ups is a sign that you are fit and healthy. In fact, in studies, people who could do an above-average number of reps had a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, and all-cause mortality (1).
Unfortunately, a lot of people are bad at push-ups. Either their form needs work, or they can’t do many reps. Needless to say, you can’t wish yourself to get better at push-ups – it takes time and effort!
However, that work will pay off. With dedication, perspiration, and time, you’ll soon be banging out push-ups like a pro.
We reveal the best strategies for becoming a certified push-up master!
How to Perform the Perfect Push-Up
Before we reveal the best methods for getting better at push-ups, it’s worth spending a moment to check that you know how to do this classic exercise correctly. Poor form wastes energy, making push-ups less effective, and could even lead to injury.
So, revise your push-up technique and make sure that each and every rep will make your inner drill instructor proud!
Kneel down and place your hands on the floor so your fingers point forward and are about shoulder-width apart.
Brace your core, pull your shoulders down and back, and rotate your elbows in towards your sides to engage your lats.
Contract your glutes and quadriceps to increase full-body rigidity.
Walk your feet out and back until your body and legs are perfectly straight. Lengthen your neck and tuck your chin in.
Keeping your body straight, bend your arms and lower your chest to within an inch of the floor. Pause for one second.
Drive your hands into the floor and push yourself back up to full arm extension.
Pause for a second and then descend into another rep.
Inhale as you bend your arms, and exhale as you straighten them.
Looking good, bro! Now you’ve got your technique dialed in, it’s time to look at the strategies and methods you can use to boost your push-up numbers.
How to Get Better at Push-Ups
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced expert, these methods will help reinforce your technique and improve your push-up numbers:
1. Grease the groove
To get better at push-ups, you need to practice doing push-ups. This is the heart of training specificity, one of the most important fitness principles. Grease the Groove (GTG) is a training method popularized by strength specialist and former Soviet special forces instructor Pavel Tsatsouline.
With the GTG method, you do multiple low-rep sets of your chosen exercise spread throughout the day. You avoid training to failure, which causes fatigue. Instead, each set is only about 50% of your maximum and ideally separated by an hour or more.
So, for example, if you can do a maximum of ten push-ups, to grease the groove you do multiple sets of 4-6 reps, focusing on making each push-up as technically perfect as possible. Remember, this is meant to be push-up practice and not a fatiguing workout.
Aim to clock up 6-10 GTG sets per day for the next 21-28 days. Then, when you retest your maximum, you should find that you can do more reps despite not having done any max-rep sets.
2. Train using a more challenging push-up variation
If you want to get better at bench presses or squats, you don’t just load up the bar with the same old weight and use that load for every workout. As every lifter knows, that’s a great way to go nowhere fast.
Instead, you gradually put more plates on the bar, forcing your muscles to adapt and get stronger. This is called progressive overload and another critical fitness principle.
While you could wear a weighted vest to make push-ups harder, it’s usually more convenient to overload your muscles with more demanding push-up variations. For example, putting your feet on a raised box shifts more weight onto your arms, and using push-up handles increases your range of motion. Both make your reps harder.
So, spend the next few weeks focusing almost entirely on a more demanding push-up variation. Then, when you return to standard push-ups, they’ll feel more manageable, and you’ll be able to crank out more reps.
Related: 15 Intense Push-up Variations for Bodybuilders
3. Train your push-ups like you mean it!
Wanting to get better at push-ups is not the same as training to get better at push-ups! So, if you want to become a push-up pro, you must make them the cornerstone of your workouts.
Ideally, you should do a push-up workout three times a week, working a little harder each time you train. So, for example, you could do 3-5 straight sets per workout, pushing each one to failure, or follow one of the push-up workouts in this article.
Either way, if you want to get better at push-ups, you must prioritize them.
Related: How to Train for 20 Consecutive Pull-ups and 50-Push-ups
4. Strengthen your core
While push-ups are undeniably a chest, shoulders, and triceps exercise, they also require plenty of core strength. If your core is weak, your midsection will sag and collapse, and some of the force generated by your arms will be lost.
Think about a sportscar spinning its wheels – all that smoke and rubber looks impressive, but until the car starts going forward, all that energy is wasted.
Plug your energy leaks by strengthening your core. That way, your whole body will move as one solid unit, and all of your efforts will go into pumping out push-ups.
The best core strengtheners for better push-ups mirror the demands of the exercise you’re training for. Planks are a great choice, as are Pallof presses, hollow body holds, body saws, pot stirrers, and ab wheel rollouts.
These are anti-core exercises, meaning they prevent rather than promote movement, so your core muscles work the same way they do during push-ups, i.e., as stabilizers.
5. Pump up the volume with some easier push-up variations
How do you train to do more push-ups when you can’t do very many push-ups yet? Short of moving to Mercury, where gravity is about two-thirds of Earth, the most obvious way is to regress your push-ups and perform a less demanding variation.
Making push-ups easier means you’ll be able to do more reps, developing your muscular endurance and work capacity simultaneously.
Ways to make push-ups easier include:
Three-quarter or kneeling push-ups
Incline push-ups (hands on a bench or similar)
Wall push-ups
Band-assisted push-ups
Do a few sets of regular push-ups, and then, as fatigue sets in, switch to a less challenging variation so you can do more sets. This extra volume will lead to greater and more rapid increases in push-up performance.
6. Strengthen your triceps
Lots of muscles are involved in push-ups, but the most common “weak link” is the triceps. This is hardly surprising, given the size of the triceps compared to the chest. As such, a lot of people find that their arms fail before their pecs, bringing their sets to a premature end.
Avoid this trap by working on triceps strength and training them separately. Good exercises for this purpose include:
Spending extra time on your triceps will turn what is usually a push-up weak link into a much stronger one.
7. Beef up your upper back
Believe it or not, your upper back plays a crucial role during push-ups. Muscles like your lats, traps, and rhomboids must work hard to stabilize your shoulders and prevent unwanted movement. A weak upper back can undermine your push-up performance, like doing chest presses on a wobbly bench.
So, for every set of push-ups you do, make sure you also perform at least one set of upper back training.
Good upper back exercises include:
In addition, complementing your push-up training with upper back exercises will prevent any muscle imbalances and keep your shoulders healthy.
8. Be consistent
Getting better at push-ups will take time. You must train hard and often to develop the muscles that drive your body up and away from the floor against the pull of gravity. Not only do these adaptations take time, but they’re also quickly lost if you fail to keep up your training.
In other words, consistency matters.
So, don’t expect any quick fixes; you’re not going to become a push-up stud overnight. However, if you keep pumping out the push-ups 3-4 times a week for the next few months, your performance will improve, and your hard work will pay off.
Set yourself some targets, e.g., doing 10, 30, or 50 perfect push-ups, to help keep you motivated and to remind yourself what you’re trying to achieve.
9. Eat for success
Good nutrition goes hand in hand with better push-up performance – or it should do! You are what you eat, and if your diet consists mainly of junk food, your muscles will probably perform like junk, too.
Eating healthily ensures your body gets all the nutrients it needs to power your muscles and recover from your workouts. Of course, food is also one of life’s pleasures, so you should enjoy what you eat, too.
This all means you need to adopt a balanced, mostly healthy diet, with a little wiggle room left for the occasional unhealthy snack. Make sure that you consume enough protein for muscle repair and growth, adequate carbohydrates for energy, and sufficient healthy fats. You’ll also need vitamins, minerals, and fiber, all of which are easily sourced from vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.
Finally, adjust your food intake based on your dietary goals, i.e., eat more for muscle growth and less for fat loss.
There is no need to adopt a strict diet. Rather, it’s best to create your own eating plan based on your grocery budget, likes and dislikes, and your cooking ability.
10. Have a plan
You now have all the information you need to become a fully qualified push-up ninja! However, it would be a mistake to try and use all these tips and strategies at once. That will probably cause a “system overload,” and you’ll end up making no progress at all.
Instead, you need a plan!
A plan will help you focus on what’s important while ignoring what is not. It’ll provide you with a path to follow, taking you gradually closer toward your goal. Training without a plan is like going on a journey without a map; you might end up in the right place, but if you do, it’ll be more by accident than design.
So, grab a sheet of paper and start planning your future push-up workouts, starting with some goals. Then, decide on how many push-up workouts you will do per week and what training methods you will use.
Example goal – 50 straight push-ups
Monday – three max rep sets, two minutes rest between each one
Wednesday – 100 push-ups in as few sets as possible
Friday – 10 push-ups every minute, on the minute (EMOM)
Grease the groove push-up workouts twice a week (Tuesday and Saturday)
Don’t worry if your plan isn’t quite right – you can finetune it as you go. Just make sure it’s progressive, i.e., you do a few more reps each week.
Get Better at Push-Ups – FAQs
Do you have a question about getting better at push-ups or push-ups in general? No sweat because we’ve got the answers!
1. What muscles do push-ups work?
Push-ups are a compound exercise, meaning they involve multiple muscles and joints working together. As such, they use a comprehensive list of muscles.
Because you must work hard to keep your body straight and stable, push-ups work virtually every muscle on the front of your body, including your legs and abs. However, the load on these muscles is relatively small. Instead, the push-up mainly works your upper body pushing muscles.
These muscles are:
Pectoralis major – located on the front of your chest and known as your pecs for short, these muscles are the agonist or primary mover during push-ups. In other words, they’re the muscle doing most of the work.
Anterior deltoids – the deltoids are your shoulder muscles. There are three groups of fibers or heads: anterior (front), medial (middle), and posterior (rear). All three are involved in push-ups, but the anterior deltoids are the most active.
Triceps – located on the back of your upper arm, the triceps are responsible for extending your elbows during push-ups. The triceps are often the first muscle to fatigue when you do a high-rep set of push-ups.
Serratus anterior – so called because it looks a little like the edge of a serrated blade, the serratus anterior is located to the side of your chest and helps keep your scapulae or shoulder blades flat against your ribs. Well-developed serratus anterior muscles look super cool!
Rotator cuff – the rotator cuff is the collective name for the four small muscles that control and stabilize your shoulder joint. They are the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis. With no bench to support your shoulders, you’ll need to use these muscles to prevent unwanted shoulder joint movements.
Other push-up muscles include your rectus abdominis, hip flexors, quadriceps, and tibialis anterior.
2. Aren’t push-ups a beginner exercise?
While many exercisers do push-ups when starting out, they usually progress to bench presses as they get stronger and more experienced. This suggests that push-ups are only useful for novices.
This is not the case!
While you can bench press more weight, push-ups teach you to use your entire body, making them much more functional. With no bench to support you, you’ll need to stabilize yourself, just like in “real life” outside of the gym.
Plus, there are many ways to make push-ups more demanding and as effective as bench presses for increasing strength and muscle mass.
The bench press is arguably the most popular gym exercise. Still, in terms of bang for your buck, push-ups could be better and are the most widely performed exercise on the planet. Push-ups are definitely not a beginner’s exercise, and everyone who works out should do them.
3. I can’t do a single push-up – what can I do?
Plenty of people can’t do a single push-up. However, almost everyone can learn and train to do this awesome exercise.
Your first step is to regress the push-up until you find a variation you CAN do. For example, you can do kneeling push-ups, countertop push-ups, or wall push-ups. Work on mastering that variation and then progress to a more difficult one when you feel ready. Continue in this way until you can do regular push-ups.
You can also supplement your push-up training with strength exercises such as chest presses, bench presses, machine dips, and triceps pushdowns. All of these exercises can be scaled and progressed to match your current strength level.
The other thing to consider is your body weight. If you are very overweight, push-ups are bound to be challenging. Start trying to lose a few pounds, and you should find push-ups begin to feel easier.
4. Push-ups hurt my wrists – what can I do?
Many people suffer from tight forearms and wrists, especially those who spend a lot of time using a keyboard, performing repetitive manual tasks, or otherwise keeping their hands and fingers clenched.
Doing push-ups takes your wrists into extension, which means those tight muscles are strongly stretched, and can be uncomfortable or even painful.
Ideally, you should work on your forearm flexibility to alleviate this problem with targeted stretching. The prayer and kneeling forearms stretches are ideal for this purpose:
In the short term, using push-up handles allow you keep your wrists straight, which should take pressure off your joints so you can do push-ups without the pain.
5. How many push-ups should I be able to do?
The number of push-ups you can do will depend on your age, gender, weight, fitness, and experience level. That said, there are norm tables that indicate how many push-ups the average person should be able to do.
For example, men in their 30s should be able to do 41 push-ups, while women should be able to do 19.
Check out this article to see how many push-ups YOU should be able to do.
Closing Thoughts
Push-ups are a fantastic exercise! You can do them anywhere and anytime, and you don’t need any equipment, so they won’t cost you a dime. Regular push-up workouts will develop a stronger, more muscular upper body, pumping up your pecs, delts, and triceps. They’re even good for your health, and people who can do a lot of push-ups generally live longer (1) and suffer fewer cardiovascular events.
There are lots of different push-up variations to try, from beginner to ultra-advanced. There are also several ways to organize your push-up workouts, from straight sets to ladders to pyramids.
Push-ups need never be boring!
That said, you CAN have too much of a good thing, and it’s probably a bad idea to do push-ups every day. In fact, you should be good results from 3-4 push-up workouts per week.
Use the strategies and tips in this article to master the push-up and become a certified push-up master. Your efforts will be rewarded!
References:
Yang J, Christophi CA, Farioli A, et al. Association Between Push-up Exercise Capacity and Future Cardiovascular Events Among Active Adult Men. JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(2):e188341. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.8341 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30768197/
5 Simple Exercises – A Routine for Daily Calisthenics Training
There are several variables you need to consider when writing a workout plan. Once you’ve determined your training goal, you must choose a split, pick your exercises, put those exercises in the correct order, select a set and rep scheme, and allocate appropriate loads and interset rest times.
Invariably, your first draft won’t be perfect, so you’ll need to make changes on the fly, finetuning your workout until you’re 100% happy with it.
It’s no wonder some fitness professionals charge so much to design programs!
However, even the most well-designed workout routine is not worth the paper it’s written on if you don’t actually do it.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it?
You’ve got your gym membership, new workout, training shoes, lifting belt, knee sleeves, chalk, and all that other stuff you drag around in your gym bag. But, if you can’t get your butt in the gym and work out, you’ll never build muscle, get fit, or lose weight.
So, while variables like your training split, set and rep scheme, and exercise sequence ARE undeniably important, the most critical consideration for effective training is consistency, and consistency is KING!
In this article, we share an excuse-free calisthenic workout you can do at home. It’s designed to create an unbreakable exercise habit and make skipped workouts a thing of the past.
Use this workout when you are too busy to hit the gym or as an alternative to complicated, time-consuming gym-based programs.
Calisthenics for Excuse-Free Workouts
While there is nothing wrong with dumbbells, barbells, and machine-based strength training, you’ll need access to all this stuff if you want to use it. Of course, that usually means joining a gym.
Unfortunately, gym memberships can be expensive, and just getting to and from a gym can be time-consuming. When time is short, your workout will probably be the first casualty. After all, exercise is a leisure activity, and things like your job and family commitments will always take precedence.
While you could buy some equipment and build a home gym, this is not always practical; you’ll need enough space for your training equipment and the money to buy it.
The good news is that you can get a GREAT workout using just your body weight. In fact, the only equipment you really need is a pull-up/chin-up bar, which can be purchased very cheaply.
Calisthenics, or bodyweight training, has a long and storied history. The word calisthenics has its roots in ancient Greek and comes from the words for beauty and strength. Bodyweight workouts are the ultimate in fitness convenience, as you can do them almost anywhere and anytime.
And because you won’t have to travel to train, you should have no problem squeezing your workouts into even the busiest of schedules. With fewer barriers, sticking to your exercise routine should be a breeze.
But you’ll need to do more than a few push-ups a day to get fit, lose weight, or build muscle. Instead, you’ll need an effective but straightforward routine. And that’s where we come in.
In the next section, we share a simple yet powerful bodyweight workout program that always delivers excellent results!
The 5 Simple Exercises Routine – Overview
As its name implies, the 5 Simple Exercises Routine revolves around five basic calisthenic movements performed five days per week. You get weekends off for rest and recuperation.
The exercises are:
Push-ups
Air squats
Pull-ups
Reverse lunges
Hanging knee raises
However, rather than do the same number of sets and reps each day, you’ll do one set of four of the exercises and five sets of the other. This adds up to nine high-quality sets per week, which is more than enough to produce good results (1).
This is a form of daily undulating periodization, where the volume/intensity of your workouts varies from day to day. However, the exercises are sequenced in such a way that you do each one back-to-back, which makes for a very time-efficient workout. In fact, even if you take it easy, you should be finished in 15-20 minutes.
Here are your workout plans:
Monday
Focus exercise: Push-ups
#
Exercise
1
Push-ups
2
Air squats
3
Push-ups
4
Pull-ups
5
Push-ups
6
Reverse lunges
7
Push-ups
8
Hanging knee raises
9
Push-ups
Tuesday
Focus exercise: Air squats
#
Exercise
1
Air squats
2
Pull-ups
3
Air squats
4
Reverse lunges
5
Air squats
6
Hanging leg raises
7
Air squats
8
Push-ups
9
Air squats
Wednesday
Focus exercise: Pull-ups
#
Exercise
1
Pull-ups
2
Reverse lunges
3
Pull-ups
4
Hanging leg raises
5
Pull-ups
6
Push-ups
7
Pull-ups
8
Air squat
9
Pull-ups
Thursday
Focus exercise: Reverse lunges
#
Exercise
1
Reverse lunges
2
Hanging leg raises
3
Reverse lunges
4
Push-ups
5
Reverse lunges
6
Air squats
7
Reverse lunges
8
Pull-ups
9
Reverse lunges
Friday
Focus exercise: Hanging leg raises
#
Exercise
1
Hanging leg raises
2
Push-ups
3
Hanging leg raises
4
Air squats
5
Hanging leg raises
6
Pull-ups
7
Hanging leg raises
8
Reverse lunges
9
Hanging leg raises
How many reps?
The number of reps you perform depends on your current abilities and how you feel on any given day. So, for single sets, you do as many reps as possible (AMRAP), and for the five sets of your focus exercise, you do about 50-60% of your last AMRAP score.
For example, if you can do 25 push-ups in a single set, do five sets of 12 to 15 reps on your push-up focus day.
It’ll probably take you a week to get used to this program and zero in on the correct number of reps. That’s okay and no different from finetuning your weights for a gym-based workout. So long as you a) take your sets to within 1-3 reps of failure and b) strive to do more reps week by week, you WILL make progress!
As for rest periods, these, too, are based on how you feel. Move as quickly as you can between exercises but don’t feel you need to rush. Rest long enough that you can perform at your best, but don’t dawdle, either. You may need to rest longer between some exercises than others, e.g., after a leg exercise that leaves you feeling out of breath.
As you get fitter and more accustomed to the routine, you should find you can move more quickly between exercises and complete each program a little faster.
Related: Sets vs. Reps: Everything You Need to Know
The 5 Simple Exercises Routine – Exercise Instructions
One of the best ways to maximize the effectiveness of any workout is to perform each exercise with perfect form. This keeps the tension on the muscles you want to work and stress off your joints. So, not only will your workout be more productive, but it’ll also be safer.
While you may be familiar with the simple exercises in this program, review the instructions below to ensure you are performing them correctly.
1. Push-ups
Push-ups are the most widely performed exercise in the world, yet many people fail to do them properly. That’s a shame because a well-performed push-up is a thing of beauty! So make sure your push-ups are perfect – make your inner drill instructor proud!
Steps:
Place your hands on the floor roughly shoulder-width apart and your fingers pointing forward.
Walk your feet out and back until your legs and body are straight. Brace your core, rotate your elbows in toward your sides to engage your lats, and pull your shoulders down and back.
Bend your arms and lower your chest to within an inch of the floor.
Push yourself back up and repeat.
Do not allow your hips to lift or drop out of alignment at any time.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Pectoralis major, deltoids, triceps.
Secondary: Core.
Benefits:
One of the best upper body exercises – period!
Teaches you how to use your whole body in a coordinated, synergistic way.
Can be modified and adapted for all levels of exerciser.
Tips:
Use push-up handles to increase your range of motion and take stress off your wrists.
Bend your legs and rest on your knees to make this exercise easier.
Raise your feet to put more weight on your arms and make push-ups more challenging.
2. Air squats
The bodyweight or air squat is a CrossFit staple. Working all your major lower body muscles, air squats are also great for hip and knee mobility and health. A high-rep set of air squats is very cardiovascularly demanding, so it’ll help improve your fitness and burn lots of calories, too.
Steps:
Stand with your feet roughly shoulder width apart, toes turned slightly outward.
Brace your core and pull your shoulders back and down. Look straight ahead.
Bend your legs and squat down until your thighs are roughly parallel to the floor. Do not round your lower back. Extend your arms in front of you for balance if required.
Stand back up and repeat.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus maximus.
Secondary: Core, abductors, adductors.
Benefits:
The undisputed king of lower body exercises.
Highly functional.
Great for improving knee and hip health and mobility.
Tips:
Raise your heels on a one-inch block for a more quads-centric workout.
Use a wider stance to increase inner and outer thigh and hip engagement.
Pause for 2-3 seconds at the bottom of each rep to make this exercise more challenging.
3. Pull-ups
Pull-ups are probably the most challenging exercise in this workout routine. However, by doing one to five sets of pull-ups five days per week, it’s an exercise you’ll soon master. If you can’t do pull-ups, you can do inverted rows instead, which work the same muscles but involve lifting less of your body weight.
Steps:
Hang from your pull-up bar with an overhand, slightly wider than shoulder-width grip.
Pull your shoulders back and down and brace your core. Bend your legs if necessary, so your feet are clear of the floor.
Leading with your elbows, bend your arms and pull your chest up toward the bar.
Extend your arms and lower yourself back down under control.
That’s one rep – keep going!
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Latissimus dorsi, biceps, forearms.
Secondary: Core.
Benefits:
An excellent back and biceps builder.
A good indicator of body weight.
An effective way to stretch and decompress your spine.
Tips:
Start each rep from a dead hand – no swinging or kicking your legs.
You can also do underhand grip chin-ups if you prefer.
Use a resistance band for assistance if required, like this:
4. Reverse lunges
Working your posterior chain with simple bodyweight exercises is not always easy. Most effective movements for this region involve weights, e.g., deadlifts, kettlebell swings, reverse hypers, etc. Reverse lunges are more glute and hamstring-centric than forward lunges and are a great complementary exercise to air squats, which are more quads-dominant.
Steps:
Stand with your feet together and arms by your sides. Brace your core and look straight ahead.
Take a step back, bend your legs, and lower your rearmost knee down to within an inch of the floor.
Push off your back foot and bring your legs back together.
Switch legs and repeat on the opposite side.
Alternate legs for the duration of your set.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Gluteus maximus, hamstrings, quadriceps.
Secondary: Abductors, adductors.
Benefits:
Good for identifying and fixing left-to-right strength imbalances.
An excellent mobility and balance exercise.
Provides an effective indirect cardiovascular workout.
Tips:
Lean forward slightly as you step back to increase glute and hamstring engagement.
Start each rep standing on a two to four-inch platform to increase your range of motion and the difficulty of this exercise.
Do this exercise next to a wall or handrail for balance if required.
5. Hanging knee raises
With so many bodyweight core exercises to choose from, it can be hard to decide which one to do. However, most are too easy to deliver much of a core strengthening effect. Hanging leg raises are much more challenging and effective, which is how they made it into this workout program.
Steps:
Hang from your pull-up bar with your arms, legs, and body straight.
Brace your core, bend your legs, and pull your knees up to at least level with your hips. Tilt the bottom of your pelvis forward to maximize abs engagement.
Lower your legs and repeat.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus, hip flexors.
Secondary: Obliques, forearms.
Benefits:
A challenging and effective core exercise.
An excellent way to strengthen your grip.
Provides a useful way to stretch and decompress your spine.
Tips:
Use chalk or lifting straps to reinforce your grip.
Progress to straight legs if your abs are strong enough.
You can also do this exercise sat on the end of a bench for a similar but easier workout:
Simple Exercises Routine – FAQs
Do you have a question about this workout routine or any of the exercises in it? No worries because we’ve got the answers!
1. Is it safe to do the same exercises every day? What about recovery?
While it’s generally accepted that muscles take 48-72 hours to recover from a workout, that’s only true when you do intense bodybuilding-style workouts consisting of several exercises and multiple sets per muscle group
Simple bodyweight exercises are much less taxing, and providing you keep the volume relatively low, you should have no problem recovering from one workout to the next. In fact, you are only doing one hard training session per exercise per week, and the workouts themselves are very short.
So, rather than being dangerous or difficult to recover from, you should find that daily workouts lead to quicker improvements in your fitness and strength, plus you’ll master the exercises and become more proficient at doing them.
2. Can I change the exercises?
You can, and we actually encourage you to do so! Doing the same exercises daily could become boring, so use variations to keep your workouts fresh and interesting. For example, you could rotate between push-ups, decline push-ups, deficit push-ups, paused push-ups, and diamond push-ups.
While so much variation will make it a little harder to manage your rep count, provided you take each set to within 1-3 reps of failure, it will have the desired results.
3. How can I work some cardio into this routine?
The best cardio options for home exercisers are those you can either do at home or start and finish at home. This avoids having to travel for your workout, e.g., driving to the gym to ride an exercise bike, which is a colossal waste of time.
So, good cardio options that complement this workout routine include:
Try to accumulate a minimum of 10,000 steps (or the equivalent) per day for your fitness and health.
4. Are push-ups and pull-ups enough to build bigger arms?
While push-ups are predominately a chest exercise and pull-ups mainly work your upper back, both also involve your arms. Push-ups hit your triceps, while pull-ups also work your biceps.
In fact, your arms will probably fail before your bigger chest and back muscles when you do these exercises.
As such, push-ups and pull-ups have the potential to help, you build bigger arms.
That said, if more muscular arms are one of your training goals, you may want to finish your workouts with a couple of sets for your biceps and triceps. For example, you could do a biceps and triceps workout 2-3 times per week or train your biceps one day and your triceps the next.
However, avoid the temptation to do lots of direct arm training. Too much could lead to overtraining and interfere with your pull-up and push-up performance. That would be unfortunate given how productive these exercises are.
5. What is the best way to warm up for this workout
One of the great things about bodyweight exercises is how joint-friendly they tend to be. As such, you won’t need a long, in-depth warm-up before your workouts. However, you should still spend 5-10 minutes preparing your muscles and joints for what you’re about to do. This will not only reduce your risk of injury but also improve your performance, leading to a better workout.
Start with five minutes of easy cardio followed by dynamic mobility and flexibility exercises for your main muscles and joints. Finish your warm-up with one sub-maximal set (e.g., 50% of your normal reps) of each exercise. After that, you should be good to go!
6. Is 20-30 minutes of exercise per day enough for weight loss and fat burning?
Weight loss and fat burning have more to do with your diet than your workout plan. It’s much easier to eat less than it is to exercise more. Providing you have a sufficient caloric deficit, your body will have no choice but to burn fat for fuel. Adding exercise into the mix merely increases your energy expenditure and raises that deficit.
If you aren’t losing weight with 20-30 minutes of exercise per day, the chances are that you are still consuming too many calories. Adjust your diet to create a large calorie deficit. More exercise is not always the best way to lose weight, as it’s seldom sustainable.
Closing Thoughts
The 5 Simple Exercises Routine probably sounds too easy to be effective. After all, most workouts are much longer and harder, right? However, those workouts are also much more difficult to do consistently, and sticking to them requires cast-iron willpower, motivation, and lots and lots of time.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?
For any workout to be effective, you actually have to do it. Not just for a week or a month, but for as long as it takes to get and stay in shape.
In other words, forever!
And that’s where following a simple, convenient workout comes up trumps. With fewer barriers to participation, you’ll start completing more workouts than you miss, and that’s what will give you the results you want.
Simple, frequent workouts will always produce better progress than complicated workouts you hardly ever do.
So, if you are fed up with starting workout programs you can’t stick to, try doing something so straightforward that it’s excuse-proof. Don’t let the power of simplicity fool you. It WILL deliver results.
References:
Baz-Valle E, Fontes-Villalba M, Santos-Concejero J. Total Number of Sets as a Training Volume Quantification Method for Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review. J Strength Cond Res. 2021 Mar 1;35(3):870-878. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000002776. PMID: 30063555. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30063555/
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