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Are regular push-ups too easy for you? 🤔🤔🤔

Well, it’s still not that easy if you’re following the proper form, but if you’re repping out 30+ push-ups without even breaking a sweat, it’s time to move to more advanced variations.

A common myth in the fitness world is that push-ups are just for beginners or only good for warm-ups if you’ve already mastered the basics. This myth is busted! 👎

Calisthenics can provide more difficult variations of the regular push-ups so that even if you’re an advanced athlete, you can further stimulate your pushing muscles and stabilizers for quite a long time. 

🎯Here are 5 Advanced push-up variations you can

train:

• 👊 One-arm assisted push-ups (Archer Push-ups)
• 👊 Tiger push-ups
• 👊 Deficit pike push-ups
• 👊 One-arm push-ups
• 👊 Planche push-ups

Don’t expect to easily perform these advanced push-ups. Respect the movement and ease your way into these exercises. You’ll be surprised how humbling these exercises are when done correctly.

These variations work the same muscle groups but have different focus and intensities for each. 

📌Remember that nothing great was easy. If you what to achieve a great level of strength and skill work, you must put in an equal amount of time, effort and research.

If you want more help to achieve your greatness, check out The Movement Athlete Academy

🤜One-arm Assisted push-ups

Popularly known as the archer push-ups, this exercise is a bridge to the one-arm push-ups. It is also a unilateral exercise so you can balance any muscle imbalances in your chest, triceps, and shoulders. 

Transitioning to a very straight assisting arm archer push-ups might be a huge jump from regular push-ups. At first, you can have your assisting arm bent then gradually extend and straighten it as you get stronger.

👍How to perform:

1. Place both hands two feet apart and elbows straight.
2. Keep the upper body rounded and abs tight.
3. Legs are straight and should be placed hip-width apart and toes resting on the floor.
4. Lower your body towards the floor, by bending one elbow fully and keeping other elbow straight.
5. The body should be straight and parallel to the floor . the body should be approximately 1 inch above the floor.
6. Come up to initial position by tensing the triceps, shoulders and chest muscles.
7. Go down again by bending the other elbow.
8. Perform the movement by bending each elbow alternately.
   

🤜Tiger Push-ups

This exercise is a challenging, unique upper body workout. It targets more specific body parts because of the transition pattern of the movement. It also hits the trapezius, rhomboids, and biceps.

It also requires a greater amount of lower body mobility if you’re looking to get more out of the exercise. The more you’re piked at the beginning of the exercise, the more you will load your upper body. We all know that great stimulation (THAT YOU CAN HANDLE) produces you the gains.

👍How to perform:

1. To begin with you need to come into pike position.
2. The hands are placed shoulder-width apart and the elbows must be straight.
3. The back should be kept straight and abs tensed.
4. The legs should be straight and close with the toes resting on the floor.
5. From this position dive towards the floor till the body is parallel and little above the floor.
6. Without stopping, bring the upper body up and erect with the arms straight.
7. At the same time, the hips and legs must be parallel and slightly above the floor with the feet resting on the floor. The movement imitates a tiger.
8. To come back to the initial pike position, lower the upper body parallel to the floor and lift your hips up till your arms and legs are straight. – Pike position.

🤜 Deficit Pike Push-ups

Building boulder-shoulders aren’t out of reach with deficit pike push-ups. The pike push-up is already a humbling exercise if you’re going to do it with proper form. Weightlifters who tried the pike push-ups found it very difficult to execute even if they were shoulder pressing heavy weights.

Now imagine increasing the range of motion of pike push-ups. As a result, the deficit pike is born. With the additional range, it loads much more on the shoulders that’s why only advanced athletes with strong shoulder strength and mobility foundation should try this exercise.

👍How to perform:

1. Start with hands on parallel bars, walk feet up onto box behind you.
2. In an elevated push-up position, bend elbows lowering chest down between bars.
3. Extend elbows pushing back up.
4. Repeat specified repetitions.

🤜One-arm Push-ups

If you’re like most people and took on the 1-arm push up challenge you probably noticed that

The 1-Arm Pushup is a beast of an exercise.

It works our pecs, front delts and triceps, it requires insane core and body stability and it requires pushing strenght. 

All this makes it the go to bodyweight exercise for increased arm size.

It’s also one of those which can quickly uncover your weaknesses and point you to what you should be working on.

The key to doing a one-arm push up, apart from the high unilateral strength level, is to generate tightness in the abs and learn to stabilise from the core to control the rotation and generate movement from the shoulder.

Seems like a lot of moving pieces…

For more chest, tricep, and shoulder-focused development similar to the regular push-ups, one-arm push-ups the best exercise you can transition into. With this push-up, you’ll work one side of your body at a time. This way, you’ll get to balance any weakness in your less dominant side. 

There are many ways you can cheat this exercise so please aim to execute it with only the proper form. There are also many ways you can progress into the exercise which you should be focusing on. One progression you can use is mentioned earlier, the archer push-up. Keep a steady pace in your training until you can do it in proper form.

👍How to perform:

1. Place one hand (elbow straight) on the floor with the other arm close to the body.
2. Keep the back slightly rounded and abs tight.
3. Keep the legs straight and shoulder-width apart with the toes resting on the floor.
4. Lower your body towards the floor till the elbow is bent more than 90 degrees. The chest is around 1-2 inches above the floor.
5. The lower body is twisted slightly to one side while going down.
6. Tense the triceps and chest to come up to initial position.
7. Repeat on each hand in turn.

🤜Planche Push-ups

If you’re looking into reaching high-level, crazy advanced level skill work, the planche push-up is definitely one of the kings of high-level pushing exercises. Not only it requires an obscene amount of pushing strength and upper body mobility, but it also requires a highly-specific training structure that’s geared towards achieving the skill.

Before attempting the move, you must first learn the static planche. The great thing about calisthenics is that you can progress from any level. You can first start with the tucked planche and do the tucked planche push-ups. You can move forward to more difficult progressions as you get stronger.

👍How to perform:

1. Starting from a proper regular push-up position, begin leaning forward.
2. When reached the maximum lean, lift your legs to achieve the planche.
3. From the planche, bend your arms to lower your body while maintaining the other planche cues.
4. Push back up to the starting position with completely locked out arms.
5. Repeat for a specified amount of repetitions.