How to get stronger at pushups

Pushups are out and out my FAVE exercise.

You’ll see them everywhere in fitness circles, and generally they’re done very badly, which makes me sad. What also makes me sad is that many women don’t believe they’re strong enough to do pushups properly, let alone on their toes. Puh-leeeze. Everyone in my Boxing Bootcamp classes does pushups on their toes, and does them well. My Pilates classes as well have been working on strength drills and they too are crushing this full body movement.

Try this simple (not easy) drill to build strength and you’ll soon see exciting results.
Treat pushups first and foremost as a CORE exercise. Tight body, tucked hips and eyes looking forward. Please don’t drop the head – maintain a strong neutral spine.  Ideally your eyes should be looking about 60cm in front of your hands.

Your hands should be shoulder width apart, much wider than that and you're stressing the shoulders and need a lot more strength. You want to learn to walk before you run :) Ensure that elbows point slightly behind you, not out wide with elbows in line with shoulders - this really stresses the shoulders which is not a good thing and you'll end up putting too much load into your neck muscles - also not a good thing!

You’ll focus on the downward phase only. Don’t worry how ugly the getting up bit is – that’s not our worry for the moment. Practise lowering with good form for a slow count of 4 (slow count of 8 as you get stronger) and resist the face plant! Check your ego at the door and start on your knees and once your strength builds, come to your toes.

Practise this slow descent until you start to lose form and then come back and practise again another day. Perfect practise makes perfect so forget about hammering out multiple reps with shoddy technique.  Execute this movement properly and you'll strengthen and sculpt shapely shoulders, chest, arms and build a rock solid core.

Before you know it, your strength will have sky rocketed and you’ll be doing pushups like a champ.