Titans!

There are a number of ways we can use push-ups to increase our chest and arm strength (as well as develop core strength), ranging from easy, lightweight push-ups on our knees to the more difficult straight-legged, psuedo-planche push-ups, and all variations in between.

If your push-up game is strong and you’re looking to increase intensity with this exercise, the simple key to unlocking the push-up’s full potential involves the proper use of a wall and a tape measure. It’s all about measuring our wrists’ distance from our belt lines: the closer our wrists are to our hips, the harder the push-up becomes. Here’s how it works:

Pressing our feet flat against a wall prevents us from cheating by not allowing us to increase the distance between wrists and belt lines. And the tape measure—when drawn out from the wall—gives us precisely-measured locations for our wrists, affording us a much more effective means for progressing through the push-up exercises, since now we can accurately reproduce our technique each and every time. (One important note: for many people, wrist mobility is limited, meaning that as our wrists get closer to our hips, many of us will have to begin pointing our fingers outward (left and right) rather than forward in order to alleviate any hyperextension issues that would otherwise arise. This is a perfectly acceptable modification.)

Of course, there are other ways to increase the difficulty of push-ups, too, like getting into a decline position, or altering the distance between your hands (wide placement versus narrow placement), or adjusting the tempo (speed) of each rep, or any combination of these concepts. But for me, closing the gap between my wrists and belt line increased the difficulty of push-ups exponentially more so than any other variation, and commensurately increased my strength and size. (Never mind the fact that this regimen brings us ever closer to the elusive planche skill!)

Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Well, with push-ups, now you can!