Hand-Release Pushups & Why

I'll share a secret with you.....

I am kind of a hard-ass when it comes to performing movements properly. This is a good thing...in my opinion. My athletes may feel differently. Just know that it all comes a place of love.  

Movements like the air squat and push-up are seemingly very simple and don't require a lot of thought or effort. ("Seemingly" being the keyword. Hopefully you caught that.)

These movements are intricate and demand your respect and full effort. So to help you develop these foundational pieces, let's discuss the Hand-Release Push-up.

WHAT & WHY

The HRPU is a movement that came about as a way to standardize the push-up so that it could be more easily judged in competition settings. This new standard worked well for it's intended purpose, but it also opened the door to a complete lack of body control. Athletes quickly discovered that as long as the ROM requirements were met, how it looked didn't matter. Watching athletes doing HRPUs looked more like a frat party where everyone was doing the worm. WTF?!?!

 Again, ease of judging was it's original purpose, but we can use this tool to eliminate one of the most neglected variables of push-ups: Full range of motion. In doing so, you must also reinforce the proper body position and activation(A) throughout the full ROM(B). See there? A & B, not A or B.

Listen. The push-up is not a push-up unless it's performed to the full standard of the push-up. This should be a very simple concept, but it seems as though people forget this fact when they claim that they can do absurd number of reps. Usually this mystery is solved when you see said super-stud perform his/her so-called push-ups. Again, reference the video above or the one below.

Ok. At this point we should all be on the same page and understand that we DO NOT want to be that guy or girl, right? I mean, who wants to be YouTube famous for shitty push-ups?!

THE EXPERIMENT

For the entire month of April, the athletes of TCS will be doing HRPUs exclusively. My hopes are that this complete eradication of sub-standard movement will result in one and only one way of doing push-ups. The right way. 

Not only will we be honing in on full ROM, but as we discussed above, we will also dial in on a locked-down mid-line throughout the entire ROM. Again, the right way!

I invite any of you out there to join us in our little experiment this month and send us you feedback. Feel free to add more push-up volume into your programming this month if you want, but the real focus will be on the highest quality movement when they appear in your daily workout. Simple.

STANDARDS - SET, HOLD, RAISE

I'm not going to lie....

I have very high expectations for the men and women in my program. I know that each and every coach here at TCS also expects a lot out of their athletes. We don't make unrealistic requests of you. We ask for just a little bit more than what you think you can muster....just so you can prove yourself wrong (in the best way possible). And in doing so, we expect you hold your standards - whatever your capabilities and fitness level may be. 

Standards are there for a very specific purpose: they indicate when you have developed a certain skill past a previously set standard and now need to raise that standard to a new level.....ultimately leading to mastery of that skill.

Wavering in your determination to maintain what is your standard at the time, means you have decided and allowed yourself to slide. You have given yourself a pass to perform at a lower level than you know your capable of. And that just will not do. Not here.

We ask a lot of you. We get that. But, again, we only ask these things of you so that you can push past limitations and find new standards. Scaling and subbing movements may not be fun, sexy or cool, but it is appropriate at times in order for you to build the capability to reach that next level. You can't get there unless you've met your current standards and are unwavering in your commitment to them.

Standards, holding your standards and raising your standards are all things that are not often seen in this time. Complacency is far more common, unfortunately. Apply this idea of standards consciously, and you will find tremendous value in it......In the gym and out.