What's the ultimate push up?
There are a lot of variations and nearly all have the benefits
But one of them is clearly a class for itself
The One Arm Push Up
Now you might say the one arm push up is just a harder variation of the basic push-up.
Well, that's only half the truth
The one arm push-up can be used to make your push-ups harder.
that's right
If you are able to do a lot of basic push-ups
And you want to increase the intensity to work in a lower rep range you can use the one arm push up for that
But there are also other points that make this exercise so unique and important first of all it's a unilateral movement
This means you work with only one side
When you do a normal push-up, and one side pushes more than the other it's hard to recognize
But when it comes to unilateral training you will rather feel if one side is weaker than the other
This will allow you to find out your weaknesses and work on them
Another benefit is the core activation. You need a lot
And I mean a lot more core activation and stabilization in general even your quads and hip flexors have to work more
As you might know a push-up, isn't a push-up if your form is bad
Many people cheat on one arm push-ups and make the movement easier and less effective
To perform movement correctly you should hold your body under tension the whole time
Don't arch your back or bend your legs control the movements with your arms your core your legs and your shoulder blades
Do not decrease the range of motion for example by moving the free shoulder downwards or letting your hips fall down
In general don't rotate and twist your body during the movement
Keep your body horizontal on the longitudinal axis. It's much harder that way, but much more effective
The rotation happens because the body tries to find its' center of gravity and wants to stay in balance
All kinds of Rotation shorten the lever between one to the other shoulder
Which makes it easier for your core and stabilization in general
If you do this, you will lose a big benefit for your whole body
Another way of decreasing the intensity is to put one leg too far to the side and bend your body to the side
With that you will not only reduce the stabilization
But also the intensity for your arm because you also shorten the lever between your legs and your arm
which results in less load and intensity
to get the right balance and to wipe this rotation, you should straddle your legs and focus on your core stability
If the straddle is correct your diagonal leg will only slightly support the movement
Sometimes it could even happen that the diagonal leg will lift off the ground automatically
The one-Arm push-up is actually also some kind of balance plank
but what if you aren't able to do one push-up yet? You just work with an easier progression
The first exercise you should do is the archer push-up
When you do archer push-ups one arm is straight and the other one is bent you can't produce that much strength
with your straight arm and that's why your bend arm has to work more than in a regular push-up
But the straight arm still assists the movement
You can fade the intensity of the archer push-up by fading the mass of your body
Between the center and the outer point of one side if you can do Archer
but you still have problems to do a one-Arm push-up. Just use the negative part
let yourself down slowly and controlled, go up with both hands and repeat
Rest if you can't perform any clean negative reps
Start low, increase slow and be patient to just accept it if you're not strong enough yet
For further questions, you can leave a comment.
Thanks, Alex.