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Increasing reps
The best way to increase reps is by varying "push-up progressions," said Josh Henkin and Anthony C. Humpage, fitness and conditioning experts hired by the Army to help Special Forces students bulk up for training.
"Most tactical athletes make the mistake of only trying to progress by performing more repetitions," they write in a primer for soldiers on their way to the Special Forces Selection and Assessment Course. "While this philosophy has a place, used exclusively it can cause injury and stagnation. Other methods of progression … will improve results faster and minimize injury."
Among them:
Decrease rest intervals: Cutting breaks between sets increases endurance faster than trying to complete the same volume in one set.
Rest-pause: Power lifters break through plateaus by inserting five- to 15-second pauses between reps. You can do the same thing with push-ups.
Interval sets: Time the sets instead of counting reps so you can focus on form rather than numbers. The payoff is usually more reps.
Overhead lifting: It may seem odd that performing another lift would help your push-up training, but overhead lifting helps range of motion of the shoulder joints and also strengthens the trunk and hips.
You'd think that if the services could agree on anything, it would be on something as basic as the standard push-up. After all, much of the world calls it the "military push-up" for a reason.
But each service can get a little pushy when it comes to what makes for a perfect push-up. Drop a soldier, sailor, airman and Marine for 20 and you'll likely see four very different versions.
True, the essentials are the same: Legs, back and head straight; arms bending to at least a 90-degree angle; body moving up and down as a single unit. But that's about where the similarities end.
A Marine, for example, will always start his push-ups by lying flat on his stomach, pushing up into the starting position with a hearty shout of "Marine Corps." Soldiers, sailors and airmen, however, will drop straight into the "front-leaning rest" position, with the body up and arms fully extended.
Ever predisposed to making things more challenging, the Marines must also double dip, doing two push-ups for every one rep counted.
The Army and Air Force say feet can be up to 12 inches apart. Sailors, on the other hand, must keep them together.
Soldiers must wear shoes; sailors can take them off.
Soldiers can put their hands where they're comfortable. Marines must put them directly under the shoulders. Airmen must put them out slightly wider. Sailors can place their hands anywhere between the two.
If, during their fitness test, soldiers or airmen start to tire and bow their back or sag their waist during a rep, that rep simply isn't counted. Sailors, however, better not make that mistake. If a sailor's body breaks that perfect push-up plane during any part of his physical readiness test, he's done and the test is over. Airmen and soldiers may bow their backs only while resting in the up position.
Meanwhile, the Army's new regs for its PT test say soldiers can do push-ups on their fists (the other services can't), but soldiers are not allowed to wear glasses (the others don't say).
For the push-up to count, Marines must briefly touch their chests to the floor. Soldiers and airmen can if they want, but never to rest or bounce to build momentum. Again, the Navy is the strictest — a sailor's PRT is over if his chest touches the deck.
When it comes to testing upper-body strength, you could say sailors have it the toughest.
But Marines might disagree.
While they certainly love their push-ups, theirs is the only service not to use the exercise in its regular fitness assessments, relying instead on the pull-up.
But without any speed controls, some experts say all the services fall short of a perfect "military push-up."
"The ideal is to retard, not advance, the body's parts from finding bottom — nose, chest, belly, thighs, and pelvis are each in a race to see which can reach bottom last, not first," CrossFit founder Greg Glassman writes in the CrossFit Journal.
"By our standards, a drop of the middle (belly sagging) or lifting of the butt in the air terminates the set. So does stopping and resting at any point."
The Standard
The humble push-up is trickier than you may realize. Even if you can knock out 100 reps without blinking an eye, it's entirely possible you're doing them with terrible form. "Very few people have achieved mastery of the push-up, though many of you think you have," CrossFit founder Greg Glassman tells his disciples. "The standard for perfection, though simple, disqualifies nearly everyone," Glassman says. "A perfect push-up is slow and deep, with a body absolutely perfectly straight and taut." And for those of you still struggling to max — or even pass — the push-up part of your PT test, take heart. There are simple techniques that can help push you over the edge. Follow the circles for correct positions.
The movement
• Contract the thigh, gluteal and stomach muscles.
• Inhale on your way down, with your body moving as a single unit, maintaining a straight line from your ankles, through your waist, to your head.
• Form at least a 90-degree angle at the elbows.
• Exhale as you push up through your underarms, keeping even pressure on both hands as you return.
• When training, the movement should be slow. Count "one-two" up and "one-two" down.
• Only two things should be moving: Your arms, and the rest of your body
• Remember: Good form isn't optional. "As soon as the body sags, the exercise is over," says Pete McCall, an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise.
Common mistakes
Even with the basic push-up, a lot of things can go wrong. Some of the most common, according to the experts:
• Going too fast
• Dropping down too low
• Not raising up high enough
• Leading with the head
• Misplaced hands
• Flaring the elbows too far out from the body
• Dropping the hips
• Piking, or lifting the rear up
• Relaxing core muscles
FACT AND FICTION
Looking for a pick-me-up to improve your push-ups? There are plenty out there, but are they any good?
Supplements
YES: Whey protein and leucine. An eight-week 2009 Air Force study found push-up scores went up an average of 13 percent, adding more than five extra push-ups for most test takers who were given a regular regime of whey and leucine.
NO: Creatine. Don't look for a quick push-up boost from creatine, say Army docs. In a 2007 study, researchers at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, found that 20 grams of creatine per day for one week, while safe, did nothing to improve push-up scores in two-minute tests.
Speed
NO: In training. While speed training has its place for certain drills, most experts agree the best way to train for better push-ups is to take them slow. Go too fast and you skimp on the workout your muscles get while raising the potential for bad form.
YES: At test time. While most fitness experts agree a slower push-up is a correct push-up, that will work against you when you're shooting to max out your reps. That's according to researchers at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., who found that those who ripped out push-ups as fast as they could were able to do far more than those using a more metered cadence. More than twice as many, in many cases.
YES: When you need to get better fast. The Tennessee Army National Guard's fitness coordinator, Staff Sgt. Ken Weichert, is convinced anyone can make significant push-up gains in just a few weeks. He's a big fan of what he calls "push-up pulses," a kind of rapid half-push-up in which you only push up 4 to 6 inches in a quick burst of reps.
Devices (mental and physical)
YES: The Perfect Pushup trainer. Developed by former Navy SEAL Alden Mills, with its twisty-turny handles, the Perfect Pushup is marketed as the perfect device for building push-up prowess. In a study by the workout watchdogs at the American Council on Exercise, researchers found that it does a pretty good job.
"When subjects used the Perfect Pushup to perform standard and wide-position push-ups, the pectoralis major, anterior deltoid and triceps brachii were more highly activated than when conventional push-ups were performed," concluded the ACE researchers at the University of Wisconsin.
"Overall, the Perfect Pushup does appear to elicit more muscle activation in the chest, shoulders and triceps than performing pushups on the floor."
YES: Visualization. Ask the only American to earn a world record in push-ups about the mental device also used by many Olympic athletes.
"The body has a much greater wisdom and capacity than our thoughts limit us to. So by going outside of the box in picturing difficult movements or feats of endurance, we can picture ideals that the body can slowly accept as a new normal," says push-up master Andre Turan, who holds the record for most push-ups on the back of his hands while carrying a 40-pound pack (he did 40). "It's not complex. You just take time to sit and feel the movement in your mind's eye in between sets of training, sharpening the kinesthetic experience with each trial."
Even when you're exhausted, doing this for five minutes can make a tangible difference, Turan insists. "You have to make the achievement a must — as if your life depended on it."