The Perfect PUSH-UP Workout (3 LEVELS)

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com. So, today we continue our perfect workout series,this time with what I call the perfect pushup workout. And no, we’re not going to be using anyof those twisting pushup devices to do it. As a matter of fact, you’re not even going to findany rep counts here. Why? Because as soon as I see a pushup driven workout that has reps as the goal,The end goal of the workout.

I know immediately that the person who prescribed that doesn’t really understand the main benefitof pushups.The fact that there is so much variability in our abilities to do different kinds ofpushups that assigning a rep count is not going to cut it.You need to train these exercises to failure.

Beyond that, we also have to understand that pushups, by their own biomechanics, are somewhatlimited in terms of the activation on the chest.No adduction.Unless, of course, you know how to select the right versions of pushups that will allowus to do that.

that in this workout.Beyond that, there’s no limitation here to the effectiveness of your chest training justbecause you’re using pushups.You can target the different areas of the chest, once again, if you use the right kindsof pushups.

You can hit the upper chest here if you change the direction of your arm in relation to yourbody when you do your pushups.You can hit the sternal portion of the chest here if you know the right alignment of yourarms when you do your pushups.You can hit the lower, or the abdominal head here of the pec if, once again, you know how

to vary the angle of your arms in relation to your body when you perform your pushups.As I said in the beginning here, not all of us are at the same level when it comes toperforming pushups, but it doesn’t mean we can’t get the most out of it.I’m going to break down for you a step-by-step workout here, including all the things I thinkare missing from common pushup workouts for three levels of ability.

Beginners, intermediate, and advanced.So, if you’re ready to get going here, I’m ready to start breaking it down here, guys,for you.The perfect pushup workout.So, as we kick off this workout, remember, just because your selection of exercise is

is minimized to pushups and pushup variations, it doesn’t mean that we have to throw all chesttraining science out the window with it. We can still hit the different areas of the chest as wewould with a full chest workout as long as we understand the positioning of the arms as weperform our exercises. And we start here with a targeting of the upper chest, the clavicularfibers of the chest that move and run downward and outward, which we should understand right

away if you’re following this channel for any length of time, that if we want to follow thosefibers, we need to move our arms in a position, or in a direction, from low to high. Followingthe direction of these fibers that run this way, we want to make sure that our body moves in thatsame way. And we can actually do that here with the first one here from beginners, this knee pushaway. And with the knee push away, guys, again, look at the relationship of the body to the arms.

You can see that as I push back, those arms are actually traveling in a relative low to highposition, even though they’re fixed on the ground. And this will allow us to more effectively hitthis upper chest area.If we’re going to be more at an intermediate level we do this, the Prowler Pushup.Of course, being off of the knees makes the exercise more difficult right off the bat,

but the commonality is that the position of our arms is the same and we’re still hittingthat area of the chest more effectively.If we’re at the advanced level here we’d back ourselves up to a wall, put our feet up there,and now again with much more difficulty still obtain the same goal here, and that is toeffectively target the upper chest.

Now the idea is, you want to target the upper chest first because these exercises tend tobe the ones that we’re weakest at.So while we’re the most fresh, and while we have the most energy, this is when we wantto hit them.Now what do you do?

You take every single one of these exercises to failure.Again, if I were to prescribe a certain rep count to any of them for you, I’d likely bedoing either one of two things.Either giving you too many that you can’t do, or too few that you could have done moreof.

Either way, you’re undercutting your abilities here on this workout.I want to make sure you get the most out of this.So what you do is you perform the repetitions to failure, and instead of resting, what dowe do?In this perfect pushup workout here, we’re actually mixing a little bit of abs, and for

good reason.You see, we’re in position here, as you can see on the knee pushaway, to just roll overand assume an ab position here.Fill the gap of your rest period with something else.It’s a good idea to work in some extra ab work when you can.

This is a great opportunity.This V-sit hold allows us to do that.Likewise, if we’re at the intermediate level, we move from this Prowler Pushup right intothe V-sit hold once again, but this time with some scissors.Just make it a little bit more challenging.

You just do this ab exercise until you’re ready to go back and perform the next exercisein the Pushup workout.For the more advanced here, we transition from that Declined Pushup right into somethingthat’s a little bit more dynamic, and it’s the Scissor V-up.Now you perform this again for your rest period, and you move on to phase two of the workout

here.target that middle or sternal portion of the chest. So, we have three options once again.If you’re at the beginner level, you’re going to perform standard pushups from your knees.You can see here, guys, again, the idea is to really get lock out the arms fully,get a good full pushup – we talked about that in previous videos, too – and just rep them out

until failure. Make sure you’re not leaving your butt stuck up in the air, but you’ve got to dropdown, your hips are down, and again, you perform good, solid, full range pushups.If you’re at the intermediate level, you perform standard pushups from your toes. Once again,same concept here, take it all the way to failure. If you’re doing the advanced version here,you’d perform this exercise, and this is the Archer. Now, obviously, this is more difficult,

but with all of these guys, what is the common theme again? The position of the arms is nowaligned pretty much at this horizontal, allowing us to more effectively hit the fibers of the chestthat run in this direction laterally from the sternum out to the arm. So, you want to performeach of these. And then once again, we fill the rest period with the same exercises we did in thebeginning. The ab exercises, the V-sit hold for the beginners, the V-sit hold and scissors for

the intermediate, and then the scissor V-up for the more advanced. At this point now, we want totarget the lower chest, the abdominal head of the chest, the lower portion here where the fibers runin this direction. So, if the fibers are running from here to here, we know we need to move ourarms from a direction of high to low, just like we would with a dip performed in a full equipmentworkout for the chest. Well, we have options. When we perform the easy version here for the

lower chest, we have the incline pushup. And it’s a little bit backwards. People think theincline pushup can’t be working the lower chest. But if you look at the position of the arms,you realize just how it does. Our arms are going to be in relation to our body down lower from thehorizontal.So, we perform this exercise to failure.

At the intermediate level we perform this exercise.This is called the pseudo planche.It’s a little bit more difficult.You will feel some of this in the front delt as well, but because the arms are relativelypositioned lower from horizontal than it would be in a standard pushup, you’re going to definitely

feel this targeti