It is very important to maintain normal breathing patterns while performing a push up. Do not hold your breath during the exercise. This will raise blood pressure.
Variations
You can change the muscles involved and thus change the effort level of the press up by:
• Doing incline press ups: place your hands on a bench (or chair etc) and this will make the press up easier than doing them from the floor. This will also recruit the upper pectoral (chest) muscle more.
• Doing decline press ups: place your feet on a bench, or similar, and your hands on the ground. This will make the press up considerably harder and will work your lower pectoral (chest) muscle more.
• Changing the speed at which you perform the press up is another way to change the intensity level of this exercise.
You can play around with this and have different speeds of movement each week. For example, on week one you can keep a 1:1:1 tempo (speed of movement measured in seconds). This means you will go down to the 90 degrees at the elbow position at a moderate speed of 1 second; you will hold yourself in this position for 1 second; and then go back up to the prone plank position at a speed of 1 second. On week two you can change to a 4:1:1 tempo. For this example, you would take a slow 4 seconds to drop down to 90 degrees at your elbow joint.
For advanced options (only do this when you are strong at completing full press ups in the flat, incline and decline positions) you can complete narrow-grip press ups, for which you have your hands closer together and while keeping your elbows tucked in, complete the press up . You can also do wide-grip press ups, for which you place your hands out beyond shoulder width.
More benefits of the press up
An efficient and effective exercise to build upper-body lean muscle, build upper-body strength and expend calories.
A very good exercise to provide enhanced stability to the shoulder (the most unstable joint of the body).
Being a multi-joint exercise it works a number of muscles, such as the triceps (back of the upper arm), the anterior deltoids (front of the shoulder), pectorals (chest), forearms, and the core and glutes (as you pre-tension these throughout the exercise).
