Pushups are recognized worldwide as a standard measure of upper body strength as well as endurance. They have appeared from high school gyms to military boot camps. In order to do more pushups, one of the best ways is to practice performing them regularly. However, there are some shortcuts that will lead you to the goals faster and make your efforts count. By learning as well as practicing correct technique while strengthening your support muscles, your strength will be significantly improved which results in the ability to perform more pushups. If you want to know how to do more pushups fast, please keep reading. In this article, you are going to discover tips and tricks on how to do more pushups as well as some common mistakes that bodybuilders usually make.

How To Do More Pushups For Bodybuilding – Proper Form, Common Mistakes & Tricks

1. The Proper Pushup Form

Many people tend to increase their speed and use only a part of their total range of motion while performing pushups. Having incorrect form does not bring you any good. Therefore, it is necessary to know how to perform the perfect pushup.

The first thing you need to know is that while you are lowering your body down, you need to take three seconds of contraction. Try to feel the muscles that are being worked and do the full range of motion. This means that you have to start all the way down from the ground and push all the way up.

Moreover, it is crucial that you pay some attention and concentration on your elbows’ alignment. It is the best if you maintain a 45 degree angle from both sides. By doing this, you will be able to work the chest muscles effectively as well as avoid injuries due to overextension. Below are some major keys that you need to keep in mind:

– Always maintain a straight line from head to toe when you perform a plank that helps building a strong core.

– Keep a 45 degree angle from both sides.

– Inhale as you are lowering your body.

– Always bring your body all the way down until you touch the ground with your sternum.

– Exhale as you are pushing yourself up.

2. Some Common Mistakes

In order to know how to do more pushups fast and effectively, it is necessary to know some common mistakes that bodybuilders usually make:

– Wrong arm angle: Let me put this short for you, the longer your arm’s lever is, the less leverage you will get, and the shorter your arm’s lever is, the more leverage you will have. When you apply this rule to your pushups workout in order to get the ability to generate more force as well as have more leverage while performing each rep, always remember to keep your elbows as close to your body as possible instead of flaring them out at a 90 degrees angle, which how many people perform pushups.

How to fix this: keep your elbows close to your sides and always maintain about 20 to 40 degree angle from your sides to your body.

– Wrong elbow positioning: If you perform this exercise properly, you will have the chance to make sure that your upper body is strengthen, including your shoulders, chest and triceps. Nevertheless, it is common that many people tend to let the elbows move either out to the side or behind the wrists. By doing this, you will be not only placing undue stress on your elbow joint, which causes increased risks of elbows injuries, but also reducing the effectiveness of your push up since the involvement of both shoulder and chest will be decreased. Therefore, the push up will become a triceps dominant movement.

How to fix this: During the entire movement, always place your elbows above your wrists. Make sure that there is a 90 degree angle between your elbows and the bottom position of the push up.

– Wrong hand positioning: Lots of people have the tendency of pointing their hands slightly inward, making their arms flare out away from their bodies. This results in the mistake number 1. Additionally, doing so will also make the elbows move out of the recommended range, beyond your wrists, which is the mistake number 2. Put simply, if you place your hands in a correct position, you will have better shoulder position as well as elbow alignment.

How to fix this: Slightly turn both of your hands outward with your fingers pointing outward and away from your body at about 45 degree. By placing your hands in this position, you will be able to keep your arms and elbows in a correct position in order to create more strength and reduce undue joint stress.

3. Tricks For Doing More Pushups

Here are some tips and tricks for those who want to know how to do more pushups for bodybuilding:

– Improve body positioning: During the workout session, you will have the chance to enhance the stability of your body so that you will be able to do more pushups, compared with poor stability. What you need to do is to locate your hands right beneath your shoulders. Spread your fingers wide and keep them slightly pointed inward. You should not put your hands behind or in front of your shoulders since it will make your performance become weaker and less effective. Therefore, always remember to bring your head back, engage your core muscles and keep your legs aligned during this exercise. While you are pushing the torso up, do not forget to push the outside edge as well as the heel of your both palms against the ground to generate greater force. Imagine like you are pushing the ground away from you.

– Move quickly: Always remember to move quickly while performing a set of pushups. During the movement, your muscles will be affected by gravity. Therefore, the longer you perform this exercise, the more stress you are placing on your body in each rep. That is the reason why you should go as fast as possible without compromising your form. It is a good idea to have a trainer or a friend to time you regularly. By doing so, you will be able to keep on track with your pace as well as eliminate your anxiety about being timed while performing this exercise.

– Strengthen supporting muscles: How strong your weakest muscle is decides the strength of your pushup. Therefore, independently strength training the muscles which are involved in this exercise will absolutely help you perform more pushups. Some good strength training workouts are dumbbell flies or chest presses. These exercises will target the pectoral muscles. Or you can also try later raises as well as military presses in order to target your shoulders, and do pull downs or triceps dips to work the triceps muscles. Anyway, always remember to give your arm sometimes to rest and recover between workouts.

– Practice pushup variations: It is necessary to try other pushup variations that bring more concentration on other muscle groups. If you want to focus on your chest muscles, remember to keep your hands wider than shoulder width apart and make sure that they are aligned with the shoulders. If you want to strengthen your triceps, bring your hands closer together and stick your elbows with your body while performing pushups. Less pressure will be placed on your shoulders if you do triceps pushups.

– Find out your baseline repetitions: In order to know how many repetitions should be performed in each set, you should do as many pushups as possible within 2 minutes then divide the result by three. The final result is your baseline repetition count. Generally, each workout session has 3 sets of this number.

– Start with the basic pushup workout: About three times a week, do a push up workout. You can create a warm up session by doing slow jog, jumping rope or cycling. After that, do 3 sets of basic pushup workout with 30 second break in between. Then add about 2 to 3 reps to your set every week. After a month, start to retest yourself then set a new baseline repetitions.

– Add resistance to your pushup: You can add more resistance by lifting your feet off the ground while performing pushups. However, your range of motion may be changed by doing so. Therefore, you can try other ways to increase resistance such as wearing a weighted vest or a backpack filled with heavy things, such as water bladders.

It’s time to end this article, hopefully this article will help you discover more tips and tricks on how to do more pushups for bodybuildingthat you can perform as well as strengthen your upper body and improve the quality of your workout routine.

If you find this article informative and useful, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment down the section below. Moreover, there are also other fitness & exercise related articles from the site vkool, please make sure that you pay them a visit. We are sure that you will find something useful and meaningful to apply to your daily physical routine.

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