Bri­an Chin Le­ung

The push-up is one of the best, time-test­ed ex­er­cis­es in ex­is­tence. It works, it has al­ways worked and it will con­tin­ue to work. Just take a few min­utes every day to per­form them and you are go­ing to see fan­tas­tic changes in your body shape.

If you want to see the val­ue of the push-up as an ex­er­cise, try this test. As­sume the push-up po­si­tion with your body kept straight and el­bows bent; now hold that po­si­tion four inch­es off of the floor for five min­utes.

Af­ter one minute, the next four min­utes will seem like eter­ni­ty; you are go­ing to sweat and your en­tire body is go­ing to shake as the var­i­ous mus­cle groups at­tempt to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty. Per­form­ing the push-up reg­u­lar­ly can give you a very trim, lean physique in­stead of that 1950s, sleeves rolled up, "ole time strong­man" look. It does not ex­clu­sive­ly be­long to a man's do­main. Women can be seen per­form­ing push-ups in aer­o­bic class­es and in some pub­lic parks.

Ben­e­fits of push-ups

�2 You can per­form them any­where, any­time

�2 You don't need tech­ni­cal equip­ment

�2 You don't need a gym mem­ber­ship; you can be a walk­ing gym

�2 It acts as a great warm-up move­ment be­fore be­gin­ning spe­cialised train­ing

�2 Be­cause of the many mus­cle groups re­cruit­ed dur­ing per­for­mance of the push-up, it builds a trim, healthy body with lean, hard mus­cle that is go­ing to help in­crease your me­tab­o­lism.

Body parts worked

Push-ups ef­fec­tive­ly work your fin­gers, hands, fore­arms, bi­ceps, tri­ceps, shoul­ders, chest, traps, up­per back, low­er back, abs, glutes, quadri­ceps, ham­strings, calves and feet. You can per­form them slow, fast or ex­plo­sive. They can be per­formed at dif­fer­ent an­gles and in a va­ri­ety of ways, such as: one-arm push-ups, two-fin­ger push-ups, clap­ping push-ups, med­i­cine ball push-ups, part­ner re­sis­tance push-ups, etc. In ad­di­tion to the above ben­e­fits, push-ups help to strength­en your heart and keep your bones hard.

Per­form­ing the push-up

To per­form the stan­dard push-up, fol­low these in­struc­tions:

�2 Lie face down on the floor with your hands, palms down at a po­si­tion just out­side your shoul­ders. n Keep your body straight, with your head, neck, spine and legs in line. Push your body up un­til your arms are in al­most full ex­ten­sion, but do not lock your el­bows.

�2 Low­er your­self back down un­til your chest is an inch off of the floor.

�2 Per­form at least ten rep­e­ti­tions un­til you are strong enough to do five sets of 40 push-ups.

It is in­ter­est­ing to note that mar­tial artists and mil­i­tary men usu­al­ly pos­sess good bod­ies and they al­so spend a great deal of time in their ex­er­cise rou­tines per­form­ing hun­dreds of push-ups, in ad­di­tion to car­dio-re­lat­ed ex­er­cis­es. While you might have no de­sire to be mil­i­tary trained, you still, as any good sol­dier, will have to do bat­tle against en­e­my forces. In this case your en­e­mies are mus­cle at­ro­phy, os­teo­poro­sis, high cho­les­terol, high blood pres­sure and stress. Push-ups are a great way to start wag­ing the war.

Keep train­ing.