Weights and Stuff: Student

Monday, May 2, 2016

6 Ways to Increase Your Push-Ups

Push-ups are a great upper body exercise. However, if you cannot perform many of them from the ground, they can be a self-defeating exercise. Here is a great push-up progression from easiest to hardest that will have you increasing the number of push-ups you can perform in no time.

Starting with the easiest, the incline barbell push up, performed on a squat rack. This one is easily adjustable by moving the bar lower on the rack, in order to slowly progress to the floor.

Progressing from the incline barbell push-up you have one of two options. If you have a band, you can perform a slingshot push-up, which is demonstrated bellow. If not, you can perform a push-up from your knees; this is also demonstrated bellow. The slingshot push-up is great because as you go towards the floor, the band will stretch. When pressing back up, the band will assist you from the hardest position of the push-up (the bottom). Using the push-up from the knees will make the movement easier by changing the leverages so they are more in your favor.

Next in the progression comes the conventional push-up, the gold standard in the push-up progression. Adding the extra length of your body will make the movement harder, as compared with doing the push-up from your knees.

If you want to take your push-up game to the next level, these next two are for you. Now that you’ve mastered regular push-ups, how do you make them harder? If this sounds like something you are interested in, banded and chain weighted push-ups are for you. Using a harder push-up variation will make regular push-ups feel easier and allow you to do more of them. You can make either of these harder by using a stronger band or adding more chains.

Where do you fall on the spectrum of this push-up progression? The aforementioned push-up variations are great ways to increase the number you can do, to work your way to actually doing regular push-ups, and to make regular push-ups even harder. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think or other push-up variations that have worked for you. I hope this helps you on your journey to performing more push-ups.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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Sunday, February 28, 2016

My Experience in a Neuro Outpatient Clinic

First off, I’d like to say that everyone at the clinic was amazing! I am truly grateful for the opportunity to have had this experience and to have met everyone there. Thank you for your mentorship and all that you did for me during my time there. This experience has taught me so many things, and has given me a whole new appreciation for the nervous system.

The nervous system is an unbelievable and resilient system. It literally drives everything we do, from the most basic movement functions to the highest levels of performance. It give us the ability to do amazing things. Many of these things we take for granted and never think twice about.

During my time at the clinic, I saw all sorts of movement patterns, neurologic pathologies, and improvements in patients’ abilities. Going into this experience I took for granted many things that I’ve never thought twice about, like the ability to go up and down stairs reciprocally. Even things like jumping and landing with two feet involve abilities I’ve never given any real thought to. Even if the nervous system is impaired, its ability to learn, adapt, and acquire skills is incredible.

These are things that many of us never consider if there is never a problem. Just a few of these basic movements include, among others:

Alternating and moving your limbs independently of each other (reciprocal gait pattern)
Skipping
Standing on one leg
Walking toe to heel (tandem walking)
Jumping and landing with two feet
Crawling
Rolling
Tall kneeling
Lunging

All of these movement patterns are things we should have developed as children, to build a foundation for higher levels of coordination and skill. This is not always the case. Especially when we are children, getting out and exploring our world, crawling, climbing, running, and jumping, are so important to the natural development of our motor skills. The acquisition of these skills gives us so much more variation in what we can do. More variation and ability to shift into different movement patterns makes us more resistant to injury.

When we do acquire all of these skills during childhood we need to continue to fine tune them throughout our lives. As children we build the foundation, and as we age we need to learn how to move more efficiently. This all takes time, effort, and concentration. Think about any skill physical skill you have ever tried to learn or improve upon. It builds off the foundation you have built as a child, and then refining the movement pattern over time makes you better and more efficient at the task.

It was a great experience these past 8 weeks and I’ve learned so much that I can now apply practically. Again, I am very grateful to have had this experience, and send thanks to everyone at the clinic.