Quickie Abs and Arms: Moving Plank Pushups

Make this a stand-alone Quickie or add it to your next strength circuit. Lots of core involved. As for the pushups, if it’s not your strong point right now, the only way to get better is to do your pushups often — at least several times per week. If you don’t give up you WILL see progress. You ready for this Quickie?

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WORKOUT BREAKDOWN

Start in plank position with hands close together, then shift both arms to the right (hands wide) and complete one pushup. Feet should stay planted.Move both arms back to center (hands close together).Shift both arms to the left (hands wide), then complete one pushup.Complete 10-20 alternating reps.

INSTRUCTIONS, PROPER FORM & MODIFICATIONS

The side-to-side movement of your upper body resembles a pendulum-pattern.Be mindful to keep your body in a straight plank. Don’t drop your hips.If you’re doing modified pushups (on your knees), the rest of the movement remains the same. It can be done.Alternatively, do as many full body reps as you can, then finish the remaining plank-pushups on your knees.Never give up.

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Kick Your Own Ass Quickie: Plank Walk Into Push-Ups Pyramid

So here we go! My first workout video. But there’s no fancy video-shoot techniques involved. I don’t know how to do fancy yet.

Depending on how many reps you choose, this Quickie should take you approximately 5-12 minutes to complete. It’s designed to challenge your core strength and improve your push-ups game. Watch the video for instructions and demonstration.

Modify It: Walk into the plank and then onto your knees for “girlie” push-ups. Reach the top of the pyramid after 3 push-ups instead of 5 push-ups.

Challenge Yourself: Reach the top of pyramid after 10 push-ups instead of 5 push-ups.

Be sure to warm up and stretch after the workout. Keep your core engaged while walking into and out of your planks, and also engage the core while doing the push ups.

Happy ass kicking!

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Bikini Monday! How To Become A Push-Ups Powerhouse

This is NOT a challenge. Why? Because a challenge comes and goes, and then it’s over. Push-ups is an exercise I recommend you incorporate into your weekly training, over and over again. Ya know?

I do push ups 3-4 times per week. You have to get your ENTIRE body involved for push ups, but it primarily targets your chest (aka, your pecs) and front of the shoulders. Depending on how you position your arms, the triceps will get a CRAZY intense workout as well. Your core will also be challenged, but you have to focus on engaging your core for maximum results.

In these pics I’m in my couch-azzing clothes (now you know what I wear when I’m lazy). You don’t have to dress up fitness-pretty to do push ups, because you can drop and do them anytime. If you’ve been following my updates on Facebook and Twitter, you already know I’ve been knocking on 100 push-ups per training session. I typically do 10-20 reps in between each plyometric cardio-burst until I’ve reach 100 total push ups.

I chat with lots of awesome peeps about push-ups, but it bums me out when this is what they say stuff like this:

I wish I could do those.I can’t do push ups. They’re too hard.I can only do 3 push ups.

Well, okay. I felt the same why when I started out, but the not-so-secret trick to becoming a push-ups powerhouse is to do them consistently. Do them often. Start in the “girlie” modified position and work your way up to full body. You CAN do this!

If you commit to your push-ups, you WILL see strength gains fairly quickly. You will be a bad ass, m’kay? Just start out as demonstrated in the pics below.

Even if you can only bust out 1 or 2 for now, keep at it! Don’t try some today and then not do them again for an entire week. That’s a no-no.

No booty-poking-out, please. Keep that straight body line. Breath in as you lower down and breath out as you push up. Proper breathing delivers adequate oxygen to your muscles to perform the move. (Yeah, I’m getting scientific on your azz!)

If it’s needed, rest in “child’s pose” for 2-3 seconds and then start pushing again. That very short rest goes a long way towards enabling you to knock out a few extra reps.

Just as with most stuff in life, it takes time, practice and patience to improve and grow. If today you can’t do 2 or 10 push-ups, it does NOT mean you are stuck there, so no more talking about what you can’t do. Let’s get crackin’ on what you’re working towards consistently!

Are you a push-ups powerhouse or working on getting there? I wanna hear about your training.

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