Push Up – 5 Reasons You Should Do it Everyday​

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5 Reasons Why You Should Do Push Up Everyday

Push Up is the most popular compound movement when someone talks about body weight training. In fact, back to the school days when our sports teacher used to ask us to warm up before playing volleyball, performing push up was must at least for 10 reps. Moreover, this body weight workout must be included in our gym routine as well. Either before as warmup exercise or after the resistance training as superset. With this in mind, lets have a look at few of the many benefits of performing push ups daily.

To read the science based research about this body weight exercise – Click Here

1. Compound Movement which Targets Multiple Muscles

You must be knowing or heard already that Push Up is a very popular compound exercise. Not only because it focuses multiple body parts simultaneously but actually help achieve muscle hypertrophy.

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  • Chest – The primary muscles involved in push up is the chest muscle.  Although, merely the simple push up targets the overall chest muscle but different other variants also can be performed which will be discussed later in this post.
  • Triceps – One of the secondary muscles is triceps which plays important role in constituting the overall push movement.  Furthermore, push up primarily affects short head of the triceps if you are aware of the 3 heads of the triceps.
  • Shoulder – Another major muscle group highly targeted by Push Ups are the shoulders. In particular, the front delts are majorly focused.
Other muscles include your abdomen, glutes, serratus, quads and back muscles specially lower back. In order to effectively perform the push up and to get more power – make sure to squeeze your glutes, tighten your abs. As a result, lower back also can be balanced and hence lower back pain also can be avoided.
 

2. Push Ups Improve Joint Health

Although this is self explanatory, but you should definitely be aware that any compound movement may promote the joint health. As explained previously, since this is a multi joint movement, consequently it can help strengthening shoulder joints, elbow joints and knee joints to some extent. 

Sooner or later, you can experience that you will be able to more reps which is a result of joint strength.

3. Push Ups Improve Cardiovascular Health

Sounds surprising?? But it is true. Obviously Push Up is considered as a low to medium intensity workout. Believe me if you have not tried yet, just try to do it once till you feel out of breadth. When you feel so, try to do some more reps, then you will feel how the heart starts to pound.

In addition to this, if you want to make this a good cardio option, go for Burpee. I am sure you would know about burpee, if not Click Here.

4. Push Ups Provide Convenience To Be Fit

There are always more advantages compared to the  disadvantages of performing the bodyweight exercises. Having said that, Push Up is extremely convenient to perform whether you are living in a small room or staying in a hotel or even travelled to mountains.

Firstly, no stress of carrying the heavy dumbbells or even to find space to rack them. However, you can add more resistance by using a resistance band with this workout if you want to.

Secondly, you can do slight changes in the form and you can reap more benefits out of this wonderful exercise. Click Here to find out more.

5. Push Ups Improve Body Posture

You have become already aware buy now that performing the Push Up with perfect form brings so many muscles together. 

As a matter of fact, when you engage multiple muscle groups in each and every rep, it surprisingly improves the overall body posture. Not only this but a perfect form provides you more fire to push more which in turn results in to great muscle hypertrophy.

Having said that, one common posture problem starts to occur when the hips start to drop. Therefore avoid that to happen in the first place.

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Is there any right time to do this exercise??

In my opinion, there is nothing specific. Consider this as just similar to any other resistance workout. However, try not to do after having a meal, since the abdomen muscles are largely involved which can result in abdominal cramps.

As mentioned earlier, performing Push Ups, together with bench press can provide even more effective muscle fiber synthesis. Furthermore, you can perform the Push Up any time during the day, say 50 reps early in the morning, 50 reps in the evening and so on. This absolutely depends on personal preferences.

 

Some risks to consider when performing this workout

If I say there are no risks/injuries associated with bodyweight workouts unlike weight training, that would be absolutely false. Whereas there are so many benefits out there associated worth Push Ups, at the same time there are some risks as well.

Firstly, Do not get carried away. In other words, perform the Push Up until you are not feeling any resistance from other muscle groups. For example –

  • Pain in the elbow joints
  • Pain in the rotator cuffs
  • Lower back pain
  • Neck strain
  • Back Sprain, in some cases
I have listed above which I have faced many a times since I have started doing body weight training. I started with a mindset that more you push yourself more you grow. But on the negative side, I ignored the fact that I was getting sprain on back, my shoulders started to pain etc. I bet you, these ones are not gonna feel any better even if you convince yourself that you have only done couple of body weight Push Up reps.
 
It is important to realize that do not overdo it. If at any moment your form is compromised, just let it go and take 2-3 min rest. I have experienced many trainers who push the beginners in the gym for doing push ups in the initial days and then from next days onwards, there were no sign of those novices.

Be patient and give your body the time it needs to progress day by day.

 

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