6 Common Push Up Mistakes

Building your push up strength can be frustrating at times, especially when you’re a beginner. To help you do your push ups more efficiently and effectively, I’ve put together the six most common mistakes I see people making. Try filming yourself to identify if you’re making any of these.

1.Hand position

Hands tend to be either too wide, too far forwards (will affect your shoulders and could lead to injury), or too close together so you don’t have the strength to push yourself back from. 

Focus on having your hands a fist away from your body and in line with your chest. This will ensure that you can push through your chest and triceps, which are the primary muscle groups for this exercise alongside your arms and shoulders.

2. Arms are too horizontal 

This is a common position for people who haven’t been taught properly. Here you’ll putting the focus on your shoulders - not what we want, as you’ll never be able to get depth in the position using your pecs and triceps. The key to mastering a traditional push up (there are multiple variations but we won’t go into that yet) is to focus on bringing your arms into a 45 degree position. I like to describe it as an arrow.

3. Tuck your pelvis under 

Have you ever felt your hips sink and touch the floor leaving your upper body up in the air? Or your butt is up in the air? You can change that with a couple of tweaks: focus on tucking your pelvis under and squeeze your glutes as hard as you can.

Try to have awareness of your body, and correct yourself during the movement or in the next set of reps. If you’re new to this you will likely find it difficult to focus on more than one thing at a time whilst you master other areas. I always recommend going back to incline push ups as it takes the pressure off pushing from the ground - and practice squeezing that tuche.

4. Lack of full body tension

Push ups are focused on building strength and muscle for your upper body, but in order to perform them best you should use your whole body. As you get stronger you will see huge differences in control, tension, positioning, and the power you can develop by utilising your mind and body connection.

Imagine someone is going to punch you in the stomach - you will automatically create ‘tension’ in your core. Now imagine you have a cheque for $1 million in between your butt cheeks, and someone was trying to take it from you - how hard would you squeeze them then? Try it out and you’ll see the difference in your push ups when you create that tension.

5. Foot position too wide

Having your feet too wide won’t allow you to create that full body tension, especially in your glutes, and it will open up more room for you to collapse down. To advance your push ups, focus on practicing with your feet together, thighs touching, making sure your pelvis is tucked under.

6. Lack of driving force

There can sometimes be little power in a push up from the bottom position, especially amongst beginners. This is ok and is something that you can work on over time. Keep going and repeating the basics for around three months and you will see progress. You can also create more force from the ground using the Band Assisted Push Up variation to help you propel upwards. 

To understand this more watch this video below on how it looks and compare your technique to know what you need to improve on as you progress with your push up.

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