As a big fan of bodyweight exercises i thought it would be a must to explain the push ups benefits in detail so you can reap the rewards like so many others are by doing this fantastic exercise all over the world.

So let’s dive into why use push ups in your workout routine.

Push Ups Benefits – Why Use Them?

Well some people like to lift big heavy impressive weights, to show off how strong they are, but i have always gone down a different route.

Don’t get me wrong, i still lift weights but not heavy ones that will leave you with nothing but injuries over time.

On the other hand there is the beauty of being able to lift naturally your own body weight. This is why i love the push up exercises so much.

It just has a real full body connection about it that a gym machine just can’t give you.

I’ve seen guys be able to lift heavy weights but struggle so much with some basic body weight exercises like push ups.

Another good thing about this fantastic bodyweight exercise is that you can modify it for a complete beginner right up to advanced.

When you’re a beginner to the push up and do not have much upper body pushing power, you can simply just go down to a kneeling down variation which takes the weight off a little so you are not lifting to much weight on each push up.

Keeping good range of motion with the push up is a must.

You can do them at normal pace which would be a steady pushing motion, or you can step it up to rapid speedy push ups which i like, and one of my fav’s the slow mo push up where you are left in the burn for longer.

Easy To Carry Around

Yes the push up is easy to take around with you anywhere in the world. All you need is a little space and a bit of effort to get you going and your good to go.

I remember speaking to an ex army man who said when their leader of the group would say on a chilly day, ‘anyone a little cold today?’ and who every decided to raise their hands would soon find themselves warming up by pumping out 30 push ups.

The great thing is you don’t need to carry around any equipment at. What is there not to love about that? Personally that alone should give you no excuses to get off your butt and start practicing your push ups at home.

So the question some people might have is that when you reach a certain high fitness level should we bother with the push ups.

Well I’m sure you know what my answer would be but, i do recall once listening to a success fitness model speak about how his secret weapon to toning his upper body was adding 200 push ups a day to his routine.

Push Ups Benefits – Variations are key

In progressing through the push ups i think it’s a good idea to place a mixture of push ups so you keep things fresh plus your body doesn’t get to use to doing one style of push up.

I would strongly recommend you checking out my article i did a little while back on the judo pushups, this to me is a really good full body range of motion exercise.

Plus i have a pretty cool video demonstrating some old school Judo boys doing the push ups and you get to look at how hard they use to train back then.

I remember getting taught some real decent push up variations some years back now in my martial art classes. You would literally see these old guys who you would think couldn’t do to much just shuffling around, and then suddenly in the corner of your eye you would see them practicing some real tough push up variations, and even doing them on their fingers.

These teachers didn’t have big muscles at all but they did have one hell of a strong grip on them. If they grabbed you, it would be hard to get away for sure.

I used to question my father growing up in the martial art world, and wondering how these martial artists had no big muscles but were extremely strong.

In the end i found for myself as i grew older that a lot of it came down to good bodyweight exercises.

And just like in my Martial Abs Program helping to combat belly fat the exercises are what i have picked up over the years of training and developing.

Push Ups Benefits – A Challenge

A quick challenge is to see how many push ups you can do in 2 minutes. Now the real key is to be smart about it.

A person not thinking straight will just go straight into the push ups with full force seeing how many they can pump out without stopping. Basically straight to failure.

The main problem with this is when you go straight from the start to failure without having any breaks in between and you just end using all your energy.

So when you try to pump out some more afterwards you can’t because you are purely zapped of all upper body strength.

So my tip to you would be when facing this push up challenge to make sure you have breaks in between and also make sure you don’t go straight to failure.

Remember that you have a whole 2 minutes so use your time wisely. Within 2 minutes you should look to have at least a couple of breaks for rest periods depending on your fitness levels too.

Make sure you give this little challenge a go as you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Just find a little space at home with a timer and get going.

So i hope i have taught or reminded you about some good points on the push ups benefits and why they are a must to add into your workout routine.

All the best,

Richard Huntley