Conditioning yourself to perform a healthy push-up without loading neutral spine alignment is a key physical wellness milestone for returning back to sport and recreational activities.  It provides you with all the scapular, shoulder and neck stability to perform functional overhead lifting without faulty loading patterns.  A plank can be the bridge to fitness or a catalyst for setbacks or injury.  It all depends on whether you do it properly with healthy loading or improperly and reinforce faulty loading.

Let’s break this exercise down into all its key parts.

1. Dowel Stick

A dowels stick placed down the back of your shift and tucked into your workout pants provides valuable tactile feedback regarding where your skull is in relationship to the rib cage.  It helps ensure you do not fall into forward head posture during your plank.

1. Hand Placement

From quadruped position (all 4’s), walk your hand forward just past your head.  This will in most cases provide sufficient space for you to get into a perfect plank.

1. Transferring into Plank

As you transition from quadruped (all 4’s) into plank you must rotate your pelvis posteriorly (Pelvic Curl) as you move forward.  When you cannot rotate your pelvis underneath you anymore (posteriorly), start stacking the upper back by sliding the shoulder blades down the rib cage until your head is pressed against the stick and your chest is up.  Then rock the skull posteriorly (Head Nod) to get it as high on the stick as possible.   You should be looking at the floor in front of your hands when you ae in a perfect plank.  Transition from knees to toes without losing neutral spine alignment.

1. The Descent

Maintaining neutral spine alignment, bend your elbows back toward your feet only to the degree you can keep your head high on the dowel stick.  As with all functional movements, it should take 3 seconds to complete this phase of the push-up.

1. The Push

Extend your elbow until they lock out into a perfect plank.  It should take 3 seconds to complete this phase of the push-up.

You know you’re performing this exercise properly when you keep your head against the stick throughout and you feel your triceps and abdominals working during the plank hold.

Summary:

A push-up is a very important functional fitness exercise for those wanting to return to sport and recreational activities that involve upper body strength and conditioning.  The key to a healthy push-up is starting from a perfect plank position and performing each part of the movement with control.

Safe Progressions:

When you can perform 8 perfect push-ups off knees progress to 4 push-ups off toes.  A great prerequisite for safe push-up off knees is alternating leg lifts from plank on toes.  We suggest purchasing a Functional Fitness 4-pack and scheduling an online coaching session to learn how to safely condition yourself to perform push-ups for specific fitness or sport conditioning.  Or you can upgrade your DIY maintenance subscription to a Functional Fitness subscription which provides 2 online coaching sessions a month.

Don’t forget to use the SafeProgress feature within the PostureIQ dashboard to let us confirm you are doing your exercises properly.