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How to Make Your Best Better! Push ups and pull ups are often the bench mark or testing grounds for strength and fitness. How many push ups can you do? How many pull ups? I want to give you some strategies to improve both of these movements. If you can do these movements, give yourself a high five! You’re actually in the minority. According to stats from the US and Canadian Census Bureau, the average man (175lbs and 5'9 ½”) can do 27 push ups in one minute and only one pull up period! The average woman (140 lbs and 5’4”) can only do 4 push ups and can’t perform a single pull up. The world record for pull ups are 54 in one minute for men and 35 in one minute for women. (These are the latest stats from 2011.) So, you can see that these are huge challenge exercises. Your overall fitness can be improved by training to improve your personal best with these movements. I’m Shawna K and I’m the one that can take you from one push up to 100 or get you to your first pull up. I work with hundreds of clients in my boot camp and I have years of training experience and accomplishments under my belt. In addition to an education and kinesiology degree I’ve used my own body as a testing ground for a variety of training protocols. With over 25 years in the fitness industry, I can short cut your way to meeting your goals.

Tips for Improving Your Pull Up

The pull up is one of the most challenging exercises that there is. It’s most impressive to see anyone do multiple pull up reps.

The prime mover for the pull up is the latissimus dorsi.

The secondary movers and stabilizers for the pull up include the trapezius, rhomboids, biceps, serratus anterior, transverse abdominus and the obliques.

For anyone that’s looking to improve their maximum pull ups, the most effective way is to do negative repetitions. A negative rep is one in which you focus on elongating or lengthening the muscle under tension. This is the lowering phase of the movement.

I did an experiment with my super fit clients. I wanted to see if body weight negative reps would be more effective or weighted negative reps would be the best way to improve overall pull up max.

We started with an initial pull up test: how many pull ups could subjects do? We recorded this number.

For the sake of my experiment, in group A, clients did a maximum pull up set and then followed it with 50% of that number of reps in assisted pull ups. That is, they helped themselves up to the bar and then took their entire body weight on the eccentric or lowering portion of the set. They repeated this workout every second day for a week. In my experiment, group B did a similar protocol, but they added 5-10 lbs to their body weight to their negative reps.

Here are the results of my experiment:

1.6

1.65

1.7

1.75

1.8

1.85

1.9

Protocol A Protocol B

Training Protocol Fitness Improvement

Increase in no. of Pull Ups

As you can clearly see, there is literally no difference as to what protocol you engage in for improving your pull up max. You can choose to do negative reps in any form and you can increase your max pull ups by up to 2 reps in a week.

This, of course, is helpful for those that can ALREADY do a pull up. What about those of you that are striving to get your very first pull up?

I have three tips below to help you with that:

Beginner Pull Up Tip #1 An assisted pull up may be out of the question for a beginner. To lead up to an assisted pull up, just grab a bar and hang. You’ll be surprised at the stretch that you’ll get through the back and even the abdominals. Ensure that you can easily touch the ground without too much effort. Do this hang for up to 30 seconds and it will stretch and lengthen those muscles of the back, and it will also improve your grip strength. Many people find that they just can’t hold onto the bar and this exercise will get you accustomed to holding your own weight from a suspended bar. Beginner Pull Up Tip #2 You need to get your mind focused on the correct muscles to be able to do a pull up. Many people will try to lift with their arms, chest, shoulders, anything to get their body to move. This will get you NO WHERE FAST. A simple exercise that you’re going to do in order for you to FIND your back muscles is to build on the simple hang from a suspended bar that you just tried. As you hang, think about inwardly rotating your scapula, or squeezing your shoulder blades together. You should start to feel a slight elevation of your body, even if you can’t move your entire body up to the bar. This is called scapular retraction. Follow this with arching the back, looking upwards and slightly bending the arms, see if you can lift the body slightly. Your body cannot be too vertical. Imagine bringing your breast bone up to the bar. This isn’t possible if you’re hanging completely perpendicular. Every workout, you’ll do a scapular retraction set where by you‘ll try to engage the back muscles in order to do your first pull up. This is mimicking the same movement as done in the wall stick up so it’s important to do stick ups (as shown in the push up portion of this report) every day to help your mind switch on those back muscles.

Beginner Pull Up Tip #3 It’s necessary to strengthen the back muscles with a movement that a client can successfully do the concentric (pulling motion) and eccentric motion (lowering of the weight). One of the best ways to do this is to do heavy cable rows. When I say ‘heavy’, I’m looking for 8-10 quality reps with a flat back and avoiding the use of momentum.

DB rows – 3 sets of 10 reps per side.

DB Row • Rest the left hand and left knee on a flat bench, lean over and keep the back flat. • Hold the dumbbell in the right hand in full extension and slowly row it up to the

lower abdomen. • Keep the low back tensed in a neutral position and the elbow tight to the side. • Do NOT round your back. Then there are those of you that are looking to improve your max pull up set. As evidenced in my study, ANY training protocol that includes the use of negative training will be effective in adding up to 5 pull ups to your max in a very short time. Take a look at my tips for advanced people here: Advanced Pull Up Tip #1

The most effective way to improve the pull up is to perform ‘negative’ reps. This means that you can assist yourself on the concentric portion of the movement, or the ‘pull up’ part, but then during the eccentric or lowering portion of the movement, you will take your full body weight and lower to a count of four seconds. If you can’t lift ANY of your own body weight, make this a FULLY assisted pull up by stepping up to the bar from a chair and then take your full body weight on the descent.

Fully or Partially Assisted Pull-up • Grasp the bar with an overhand, wide grip. • Step up off a platform to bring yourself up until your chin is over the bar. • You will take some weight on your legs and hold some of your weight with your

upper body/arms. • Return to full hanging position with control.

Eccentric training is very difficult and taxing. It also will induce muscle soreness more readily that concentric training. You need to ensure that you are fully warmed up prior to doing any eccentric training and you need to listen to your body. If you are still sore from previous workout, it’s best to wait until that soreness subsides prior to doing more eccentric work to guard against muscle strain.

Advanced Pull Up Tip #2 A strong back is key to maxing out your pull ups. Don’t underestimate the use of strength moves such as a barbell deadlift to help with over all back strength development. Getting some solid weight on the bar is important, but more importantly, ensure that your form is correct. Bent Legged Deadlift

• Hold the bar at thigh level. • Lower the bar down the thighs towards the floor. • Keep the back flat, bend the legs, chest and chin up. • Set the shoulders down and back. • Return to the start by standing up, initiating the movement from the legs.

Position A – Bent Leg Dead Lift Position B – Bent Leg Dead Lift Advanced Pull Up Tip #3

Another way to significantly improve the pull up is to increase core strength and stability. The hanging leg raise is very helpful to this end. The serratus and obliques as well as the rectus abdominus are fully engaged in doing a successful pull up, so strengthening these muscles can only be beneficial in increasing your max.

Hanging Leg Raise • Hang from a chin-up bar using an overhand grip. Brace your abs. • With a slight bend in your knees, curl your hips back and raise your legs up in front

of you until they are parallel to the floor or higher. • Don’t use momentum. Go slow and controlled both ways.

Tips for Improving Your Push Up I want to show you three strange exercise tricks that will dramatically improve your push up strength in only a week. But first let me show you a little experiment that I did.

I work with hundreds of clients and was able to quantify their results in this test.

To begin, we did a pre-test: how many push ups could they do without stopping? We recorded this number.

Then every other day for one week, we did a short push up work out.

I broke the group into three exercise protocols:

Group A did three sets of maximum pushups with a one minute rest in between sets.

Group B did three sets of 50% of their maximum pushups with a one minute rest in between their sets.

Group C did three sets of 50% their maximum pushups followed by a maximum plank hold with a one minute rest in between their sets.

Take a look at the results:

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

Protocol A Protocol B Protocol C

Training Protocol Fitness Improvement

Increase in no. of Push-ups

As you can see, protocol C was the most effective method of improving pushups in a short time. Clients were able to increase their maximum push ups by 5 reps (4.8 to be exact) in only one week. The beauty of this method is that clients were able to avoid overtraining their shoulders by doing only 50% of their maximum pushups. This supports the necessity of developing core strength, particularly through the transverse abdominus.

Protocol B, doing 50% of maximum pushups, improved push ups by 2 reps in a week. This shows that there is strength and endurance improvement with sub-maximal effort, but progress is slower.

Protocol A yielded an increase in 4 push ups in a week which can be considered significant, however, doing a maximum effort continually opens you up to repetitive use strain and possible injury.

The prime movers for the push up include: the anterior and medial deltoid, the triceps and the pectorals.

The secondary movers for the push up, that is, those muscles that ‘help’ move and stabilize are: the rhomboids, erector spinae, rotator cuff, posterior deltoids, serratus anterior, rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus, gluteus maximus and the quadriceps.

So what does this mean to you? How can you improve your pushups?

Beginner Push Up Tip #1

It’s clear from my expeent, that core strength is one of the keys to improving your push up max. Planking is one of the most effective methods of building core strength. You can do a bent arm plank hold as shown below, or to engage the triceps, try a high plank where the arms are straight. Ensure that for both positions, the shoulders are directly over the elbows or hands and the body is in a straight line.

Stationary plank

Plank • Brace your abs. Put your elbows directly under your shoulders, palms up. • Keep your back flat, your body should form a straight line from your shoulders to

your ankles. • Hold the plank position for as long as possible. Beginner Push Up Tip #2 Upper back strength and shoulder stability are super important to be able to perform proper pushups. Doing this chest expanding and back mobilizing and strengthening exercise will undoubtedly help improve your push up max.

Stick ups – 2 sets of 5 slow reps

Stick-up

• Stand with your back against a wall. Your feet should be as close to the wall as possible and your butt, upper back, and head should all be in contact with the wall at all times.

• Stick your hands up overhead. Keep your shoulders, elbows, and wrists touching the wall. Slide your arms down the wall and tuck your elbows into your sides.

• This should bring your shoulder blades down and together, contracting the muscles between your shoulder blades as well as the shoulder muscles.

• From the bottom position, try to slowly slide your arms up until they are straight and in a "stick-em up" position. Try to improve your range of motion each week.

• The goal is to improve shoulder mobility and postural control.

Beginner Push Up Tip #3

Surprisingly, strengthening the torso, the core and spinal erectors will aid in push up strength since an amazing amount of strength is generated through the core. Hyperextensions are helpful;

Hyperextensions – 2 sets of 10 reps.

Hyperextensions • Hook your feet on the rollers • Bend at the waist and allow body to lower • Lift the body from the waist to just past 90 degrees • Squeeze the shoulder blades together by retracting the scapula • Hold and then lower to starting position

The prime movers for the push up include: the anterior and medial deltoid, the triceps and the pectorals.

The secondary movers for the push up, that is, those muscles that ‘help’ move and stabilize are: the rhomboids, erector spinae, rotator cuff, posterior deltoids, serratus anterior, rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus, gluteus maximus and the quadriceps.

Now if you’re at an advanced fitness level, here are some tips to help you:

Advanced Push Up Tip #1

As a way to improve YOUR push up maximum, first test out what your maximum is, then rather than continuing to max out your push ups set after set, just do 50% of your maximum push ups and follow it by a maximum plank hold. To increase intensity on the plank and reduce your plank hold time, try the plank hold on a stability ball as demonstrated below (make sure there is NO rest between the push ups and plank, that is, go directly to the plank after completing your last push up rep).

Stability ball plank

Stability Ball Plank • Brace your abs. Put your elbows on the ball and balance on your toes. • With your elbows under your shoulders and your back flat, your body should form a

straight line from your shoulders to your ankles. • Hold the plank position for as long as possible. Advanced Push Up Tip #2

While the push-up primarily targets the muscles of the chest, arms, and shoulders, support is required from other muscles. By strengthening those supporting muscles, you will naturally improve the quality and quantity of your pushups. Upper back strength is imperative for quality push ups. Try some DB rows to improve this:

DB rows – 3 sets of 10 reps per side.

DB Row • Rest the left hand and left knee on a flat bench, lean over and keep the back flat. • Hold the dumbbell in the right hand in full extension and slowly row it up to the

lower abdomen. • Keep the low back tensed in a neutral position and the elbow tight to the side. • Do NOT round your back. Advanced Push Up Tip #3 You can always improve your push up max by doing a variation of the push up movement. This alleviates boredom and spices up your workout regime. If you have access to dumb bells or bar bells, this is an ideal combination. First do a heavy set (8-10 reps) of a dumb bell or barbell chest press and then move directly to a 50% max set of push ups. Repeat this three times with one minute rest in between. DB Chest Press • Hold the dumbbells above your chest with your palms turned toward your feet. • Lower the dumbbells to chest level. • Pause briefly and press the dumbbells straight up above the chest. • Squeeze your chest muscles together as your press the dumbbells up.

Position A – DB Bench Press Position B – DB Bench Press

Surprisingly, your pushups can be dramatically improved by strengthening the upper back and core. By using these exercises and the planking trick you will see a big difference, but do yourself a favor though and test it out!

There you have it!

By doing these exercises that improve the strength of the stabilizing and supporting muscles, you will almost instantly improve the quality and quantity of the push ups and pull ups that you can perform. If you’re looking for an entire program to help you better your best, check out my pull up and upcoming push up program!