The Push-Up, From the Wall or the Floor, Your Call
new module. we've spent seven lessons on squats and hinges, so your legs and your lower back have been doing most of the work. this week we're moving to pushing, starting with the push-up.
i want to say something up front because i think it gets skipped over in most beginner classes: the wall push-up is not a lesser version of the floor push-up. it's the same movement at a different angle, and the angle is what changes the difficulty. standing at a wall, most of your body weight is still on your feet. down on the floor, a lot more of it is on your arms and chest. same exercise, different amount of you to move. pick the version that lets you do it with good form, and don't feel like you need to earn your way onto the floor. that's not how this works.
the wall version
stand a couple feet from a wall, a bit more than arm's length. place your hands on the wall about shoulder-width apart, roughly at shoulder height. step back until your arms are straight and your body is at a slight lean.
keeping your body in a straight line from head to heels — no sagging at the hips, no head poking forward — bend your elbows and lower your chest toward the wall. go until your nose is close to it, then push back to the start.
that's one rep. do it slow. this isn't the exercise where speed helps you.
the floor version
if you're doing this from the floor, start on your hands and knees, hands a little wider than your shoulders, fingers pointed forward. walk your knees back or straighten your legs out behind you, whichever you're ready for, until you're in a straight line from head to heel — or head to knee, if you're doing the knee version, which is completely fine and not a consolation prize.
lower your chest toward the floor by bending your elbows. i'd rather you go two-thirds of the way down with a flat back than all the way down with your hips sagging or your butt in the air. those are the two things that go wrong most often, and they go wrong in opposite directions, which tells you the fix is the same either way: keep the line straight, from the top of your head down through your heels, the whole time.
push back up. that's one rep.
the plan for this week
pick whichever version — wall, knee, or full floor — lets you do it with a straight body line for most of the reps. do two sets of six to ten. if you can't tell which one is right for you, go easier than you think you need to. you can always make it harder next week. you can't un-hurt a shoulder you pushed too hard on.
one real caution here: don't let your elbows flare straight out to the sides like airplane wings. keep them at something closer to a 45-degree angle from your body. flared elbows put a lot of stress on the shoulder joint, and it's an easy thing to fix once you know to look for it.
on soreness
if your chest and arms are sore tomorrow, that's normal for a new movement. but i'll say what i always say: soreness isn't the scoreboard. if you're wrecked for four days, you did too much too fast, not too little. the goal this week is finding the version and the number of reps where you finish the set thinking "i could maybe do a couple more," not collapsing on the last one.
it reminds me — not exactly the same thing, but related — of a saturday a while back when the weather turned and i couldn't get up the canyon like i'd planned. i was annoyed about it for about ten minutes, then just did a full workout inside instead. and the thing that surprised me was i wasn't actually disappointed about missing the hike. that was the moment i realized this had turned into something i did, not something i was trying to talk myself into. i think push-ups are a good place for that same shift to happen for some of you — they feel awkward and a little embarrassing at first, and then one day they're just part of the routine and you stop thinking about it.
for what it's worth, i still do mine from an elevated surface sometimes, hands on a countertop instead of the floor. no version is the "real" one. there's just the version that's right for you today.
before next time: try both the wall and floor version once this week if you can, even just a couple reps of each, so you have a feel for where you actually are right now.