All posts tagged quadriceps

Push-ups: The Perfect Exercise

Too lazy to get to the gym? Is it raining outside? Only have 10-15 minutes of spare time?

Here’s the perfect exercise: push-ups. Any time, any place.

They don’t require any equipment, it doesn’t matter if you are wearing restrictive clothing, and you don’t need very much room.

Push ups are just about the most complete exercise you can choose if you have no time and no equipment. They are also an incredible gauge of fitness and interconnected strength.

Starting from your toes, up through your quadriceps–your legs must remain contacted and rigid to hold a good position. You core and hips activate to keep your middle from sagging. Your back, especially your low back, will also feel the demand. The muscles around your spine, when held in a neutral position, will strengthen. And we haven’t even gotten to the upper body yet!

Your chest (pectorals), shoulders, biceps, triceps are the obvious upper body muscles being worked. Push-ups can be as creative as you want. A wider hand position will target the chest; narrower, the triceps. If your hands are slightly in front of your shoulders, rather than directly below, you’ll feel it in your deltoids . If you elevate your hands on a weight, curb, rock, or other prop, you can really work the chest and area around shoulder blades. Elevate your legs, and the weight will shift to the upper chest, shoulders, and traps.

You can do one-legged push-ups, for extra demand on the core. Hold one leg out to the side to target the obliques. Scorpion push-ups (lift you leg, and tap it’s toe to the ground on the side of your other leg), Hindu push-ups (swooping out of downward dog into up-dog), clapping push-ups, one-arm push-ups, shoulder-tap push-ups (tap a shoulder with one hand before doing the next rep), crawling push-ups, power push-ups (catch some air!), are only a few of the dozens of push-up variations…

Can’t do any push-ups? Try them from your knees (girl push-ups), or do them against the wall, or on a park bench. You can modify the difficulty of push-ups with extreme ease. Push-ups are for everybody!

Wrists hurt? Do them while holding a dumbbell in each hand, or from your fists (for a deeper range of motion, as well). This will keep your wrists in a neutral position.

Back hurts? Your core is probably your weak link. Focus you attention on keeping your legs rigid, and your core tight. Do just a few high-quality reps, rest, and start over, or immediately drop your knees to the ground and keep burning that upper body.

Start now! Every morning, get out of bed and do as many as possible. The more push-ups you do, the easier they get, to more varieties you can try, the more experimental and the more fit you will become.

Squatting Tips: lifting something from the floor

When you hear the word “squat,” you probably get an image of some kind of world-championship-winning power-lifter. No? Okay, then at the very least, you think of those guys–many of them meat heads, and a few lost high school boys–loading plates on the bars and squatting in cages.

Squat = bar loaded over your shoulders, right?

Yes, in part, but the squat is so much more.

The squatting motion, lowering one’s body toward the ground by bending the legs, is a most effective functional exercise (functional means “applicable in your life”). We squat down to lower ourselves onto chairs; we pick up boxes, bags, children. Ideally people would squat properly when doing so, but since modern living has “weakened” us, most people reach for things by bending their backs.

Here are a few principles to remember when squatting to pick something up:

1) If the weight or object is not between you feet, it is probably a bad squat. If that weight it in front of your toes, you are more likely to reach for it with the back.

2) Your torso should remain parallel with your shins. Once you break that parallel line, you have probably gone beyond the range of your flexibility.

3) Your heels should be on the ground. Don’t lift up onto your toes.

That’s it. Pretty simple. But what about your feet? Where should your toes point? How far apart should they be? Don’t worry about that. Go with what is comfortable at first. The hips, knees, and ankles are very versatile joints, capable of tracking in numerous ways, and how comfortable you feel squatting will depend on a number of factors: history of injury; flexibility through the low back, outsides and insides of your legs, and calves; and most importantly, muscular imbalances.

When at home, or in the gym, don’t forget to train this motion. Place a dumbbell on the floor between your feet and pick it up (sumo squat), or hold a dumbbell at chest height (front squat), and tap your butt down to a bench. Hold a set of dumbbells on your shoulders and squat up and down. Or ditch the weights, and just squat your bodyweight, touching the ground with your fingertips each rep. Throw a jump in, at the top. Oh, and don’t forget the squat thruster.

There are a dozen great ways to train your functional squat, and you can do them anywhere. Even better, squats train your butt, quads, and hips–three huge muscle grounds. The bigger the muscles, the easier it is to get your heart rate going, and the more calories you will burn.

Maria Mae Stevens

All posts tagged quadriceps

Push-ups: The Perfect Exercise

Squatting Tips: lifting something from the floor

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