The Press-up … More to it Than You Might Imagine

The press up is one of the simplest and most basic of all exercises. We’ve all done them. Some of us still do, but most either don’t do much of anything anymore, or if they do, press ups are often seen as a bit limited to be of any real use in a ‘proper’ training routine.

Time to take another look! There’s an astonishing number of variations of the humble press up, and each of them presents its own unique challenge to the body. You could almost literally never run out of options with this ‘one’ exercise.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, you can do press ups even if you have to do them leaning on a table, or against a wall. Right there, you have a couple of easy variations, and they’ll help you out if you haven’t trained before or if you’re out of shape. But beyond those there are countless more variations!

For example: diamond press-ups, handstand press-ups, dive bombers (aka Hindu press-ups), press-ups with feet elevated, etc, etc. There’s a lot more than you might imagine to press-ups, and if you take a look at this video I think you’ll see what I mean. It features a true press-up master at work.