Push yourself beyond the limit

The classic push-up is one of the oldest exercises known to mankind. It was there long before gym machines were invented, and has endured to date as one of the most popular strength conditioning exercises amongst military forces and athletes worldwide... and that for one reason only: it is devastatingly effective.

I know of no other simple body movement that simultaneously strengthens the chest, deltoids, lower back and triceps as effectively as the humble push up, and all this with the aid of no equipment!

There are several things about the push-up that make it a remarkable exercise. For starters, because you use such a large cross-section of muscles during push-ups, the exercise falls under a category of regimes referred to as ‘compound exercises’.

By demanding the input of a large cross-section of the upper body and core muscles, the humble push-up forces us to go through three types of muscle-building resistance.

When you are lowering yourself to the floor, you go through what is called an ‘eccentric contraction’ of the muscles, which helps you establish balance between the main upper body muscle of the chest, upper back and shoulders.

Once you get to the floor, you briefly go through an ‘isometric contraction’ of the muscles, during which they are forced to work hard to maintain your form. This has a huge impact on key factors such as your posture, because your nervous system has to keep firing from all cylinders  to stabilise your body and keep  it from tipping over.

This mimics several daily activities of living such as just holding yourself upright in your chair at work the whole day, a minor thing that could have a huge impact on the health of your spine and the reduction (or, perhaps, even elimination) of lower back pain.

On your way up during the push-up, your muscles go though another phase of contraction known as a ‘concentric contraction’, where they produce enough force to overcome the load thrust onto them (in this case the weight of your body) in order to push you back up, and this is how you gradually develop great upper body muscle tone.

This movement also restores balance to all the muscles of the upper body by training them to work the way nature designed them to work — as a team. Push-ups also offer many other perks that you may be unaware of. If you are able to perform 12 to 15 push-ups, you will improve upper body strength and endurance, an area many women (especially) tend to neglect. 

Also, by getting your heart rate up, push-ups increase an exercise factor known as your VO2 max, which, in layman’s language, is the amount of oxygen your body demands when exercising — a higher VO2 max is commensurate to increased calorie expenditure and, therefore, weight loss.

And, by increasing your overall muscle mass, push-ups help you to burn fat (because muscle is a metabolically active tissue and it needs energy to sustain it, a feat your body will often achieve only by dipping into its fat reserves).