Chances are you’ve been doing pushups since the Presidential Physical Fitness Test challenged your mettle back in elementary school. But have you been butchering them? Do you know how to effectively increase your max reps? It turns out there’s a lot about the simple pushup that most people miss. These few simple tips will show you how to crush pushups.
Your body position is key. Pushups should be moving planks. Do not shamefully sag your hips. Do not thrust your buttocks skyward. Keep your spine in a straight line.
Set your arms at a 45-degree angle. Your body should be an “arrow” in the bottom position, not a “T” or an “I” and parallel to the ground.
Your hands should be slightly behind your shoulders, not directly under them. Doing this positions your upper body so that your shoulder blades move as they’re supposed to, which improves pushup efficiency while maintaining shoulder health.
Once you’re set up, “pull” yourself to the bottom position and then “drive” yourself back to the top position, like so:
Building Skill and Endurance: The First 4 Weeks
Efficiency and endurance are the keys to pushup performance. Efficiency is earned through skill-building, and you build skill by doing a lot of reps in a low stress, low fatigue environment. That’s also one way to build endurance. The other is to subject your upper body muscles to tension over several periods of medium to long duration. This is called “volume accumulation.”
One or two days a week, do multiple sets of 5 to 10 pushups throughout the day. Keep each rep snappy and stop before fatigue sets in. Space out your sets so that you’re fresh for each one. As the day goes on, you will accumulate some fatigue, but as long as your reps are snappy, you’re good. Don’t let your ego win. If your form gets sloppy or your reps lose their snap, call it for the day or back down the number of reps you’re doing per set.
While you’re doing pushup volume accumulation, most of your other upper body training should be focused on muscles that pull like the back and biceps, plus overhead pressing variations in low volume. This will help avoid overuse issues.
In this same four-week period, do pushup position planks. The pushup position plank is the “up” pushup position. Hanging out in this position subjects your upper body to isometric muscular tension that can be maintained for a duration longer than that of a max set of pushups. You build strength and endurance in your pushup muscles without creating the bad habits that accompany constant attempts to max out.
You’ll hold these suckers for sets of 30 to 120 seconds during your core training or at the end of an upper-body strength training workout.
Ramping Intensity: The Second 4 Weeks
After improving skill and enhancing endurance for four weeks, add intensity in the second four weeks. That means adding weight and trying to do more work in less time.
There are two ways to approach this: load pushups with a weight vest or do dumbbell bench presses instead of pushups. Adding weight at this phase increases your relative strength. More relative strength means that each rep taxes your muscles less, improving your endurance by default.
Do loaded pushups or bench presses one day per week in the 5 to 10 rep range.
For increased density, do EMOMs (Every Minute on the Minute). They are great for increasing the amount of work you do in a given amount of time while increasing your training density and giving you more strength and endurance. The EMOM format also allows you to practice maxing out without over-stressing your body and creating bad habits.
Do pushup EMOMs once or twice a week. Putting all this together will have you ready to crush pushups in no time. When all of that is added to a workout calendar, it looks like this:
Month 1: Skill and Endurance
| Exercise | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 |
| Pushup Volume accumulation (Done once or twice per week on lower body lifting days or conditioning days) | 100 – 150 reps | 150 – 200 reps | 100 reps | 200 – 300 reps |
| Pushup Position Planks (Do during your core routine at the beginning of a workout or to finish an upper body workout.) | 3-4 reps, 30 seconds | 3-4 reps, 45 seconds | 1-2 reps, 1 minute | 4 reps, 1 minute |
Month 2: Intensity
| Exercise | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 |
| Dumbbell Bench Press OR Weighted Pushups | DB Bench: 3-4 sets, 6 reps; Pushups: 3-4 sets, 10 reps | DB Bench: 3-4 sets, 6 reps; Pushups: 3-4 sets, 10 reps | DB Bench: 2-3 sets, 5 reps; Pushups: 3-4 sets, 8 reps | DB Bench: 4-5 sets, 4 reps; Pushups: 4-5 sets, 6 reps |
| Pushup EMOM | 10 minutes total 10-12 reps at the top of every minute | 10 minutes total 10-12 reps at the top of every minute | 8 minutes total 10-12 reps at the top of every minute | 15 minutes total 10-12 reps at the top of every minute |
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