Pushups: The training system

As mentioned by Hercules, the only thing better than climbing is training for climbing. One of the best ways of training for climbing in our opinion is the humble push up. As with many other training methods, it has the slight disadvantages of not helping your technique and leaving you prone to overuse injuries. However it will:

• Give you big guns
• Let you show off
• Can be done with your top off
  

and, as we all know, this is what training for climbing is all about. After all who wants to look and climb like this guy

When you could be standing around looking like this

Obviously you know what a push up is, I am sure you can already knock off a couple of thousand of them, but you, like most people, are unlikely to be maximising the return of this valuable training tool, this article sets out to help you.


Set up

First write the numbers 1-9 clearly on a piece of paper and place this on the floor. This will be important for the more advanced techniques. Hands 22cm apart, palms down, directly underneath your shoulders, with the paper a readable distance in front of you. Start with straight arms and a straight back. Some people choose to be resting on their toes, body straight, I prefer resting on my knees to further engage my core see here for more info..

Bend elbows bringing your head to the floor, straighten, as you reach the top, count 'one' or the relevant number loudly, this is your base push up on which all the exercises will be based.


Laddering

Where you will have been going wrong is that you initially will have been counting your push ups in increments of one, ie 1-2-3, then rest. While this is fine for a basic workout/warm up, for full intensity you need to increase your increment size, this is where the numbers on the paper will help you work out your increments. A good next step would be 1-3-4, then rest. This may seem simple but you will find the effort of not always counting in units of one will stress you and your body in ways you cannot comprehend.

You can experiment with several different increment combinations, such as 1-3-5-7-9 or 1-4-7 and so on. With laddering it is important to use several different sequences. This will help train a wider range of movement in the arms. Generally, to make this exercise more difficult you can use less hand movements to make it to the top, two current benchmarks seam to be 1-4-7 or if you are unbelievably strong 1-5-9, on no account attempt to count past 9, this is simply too difficult and has led the otherwise strong trainer Dan Osman to a painful death. It is, however, acceptable to add large numbers infront if in the presence of others, ie count 1001 - 1003 - 1005.

Touchés

Incorrectly referred to as touches by campus boarders in which they match on a rung, instead this simply means to call out 'Touché' after you complete your final push up of each set, similar to calling a hit in fencing. These technique gives you a greater feeling of satisfaction and, done loudly enough, lets others know how great you are.


Advanced Techniques

If you find you are mastering these techniques, the next step is to vary hand positions by curling one or more fingers of each hand into the palm whilst still maintaining full contact between the palm and curled fingers and the floor. By building this up gradually over the months you will reach the stage where you are able to perform mono and finally nono push ups! Mono is one finger visible on each hand, nono is no visible fingers (looks similar but distinct to a fist).

Concluding points


Remember to follow these instructions, warm and oil up, increment your routine gradually, warm down and have plenty of protein shakes and you will have beasted up in no time. If in doubt, or you are struggling with the increment of four, remember the mantra;

"TOPS OFF FOR POWER"