Ok, so last week I went on a mini-rant about how using push ups and pull ups as a litmus test for fitness is a bad idea - especially for women.

And I was reminded of this yesterday when, while taking a boxing class for the first time, a fellow female classmate looked terrified when we were asked, as a class, to mix push ups in with our heavy bag hits and squats.

“Um….” She looked terrified. “I can’t even do a push up.”

I waved her over to a stack of giant tires.

“Not many females can - let’s use the tire.”

I took a minute after the class to give her what has become my soap box talk on push ups - the one I gave all of you last week. Click here if you missed it.

Push ups are an incredible exercise and even better than that - make for the perfect performance goal. Remember that setting a performance goal can be a helpful way of guiding your training. (In other words, you want to lose 20 pounds, but if you focus on working your way up to a push up, there's a good chance you'll see some weight loss as a by-product of training your strength.)

If you want to work your way up to a push up, here are a few strategies you can work in to your routine.

1. Elevated push ups

Doing what used to be known as "girl push ups" or push ups from your knees, actually only makes you better at doing one thing - push ups from your knees. Core strength is a crucial component to performing push ups, and if you want to work your way to doing this exercise correctly, you'll need to keep your core involved.

2. Negative push ups (with a positive attitude :-)

Also known as eccentric push ups (no, not push ups with flair), this style of exercise means that you are going to spend more time under tension - blah, blah, blah science. I can just tell you that this style of training will do two things - get you to your goal quickly, and make you sore as hell the next day.

Start in a high plank position and lower yourself down as slowly as possible - when you can't hold yourself up any longer, drop to your knees. Use your knees to raise back up to the high plank position (remember, this movement is only about going down) and repeat.

Technique tips:

Don't let your core sag - you want to keep your body in a straight line, and there is a tendency to keep the shoulders away from the floor while your hips and lower back sag. If possible, balance a PVC pipe on your back or record yourself for form. I used to do five sets of five in my office back when I had an office job.

With the door locked...

Slow is the name of the game here.

3. Push ups to a stack of cones

Similar to the elevated push ups, training yourself to a stack of cones can be a helpful way to gauge your progress once you've been training for a month or two. In the video below, I've got a stack of 13 cones. Once I can hit 10 reps, I take off a cone and train until I can hit 10 reps to the cone. My goal is to get down to one cone. 

On an almost weekly basis, I hear clients or strangers at dinner parties make the following statement:

I mean I can’t even do a push up. Or a pull up!

They’re often surprised at my response.

It took me a year to work my way up to a push up from the floor, and I can’t do a pull up….yet. (Keep that mind open.)

Yesterday I put up a social media post about push ups - and one of the comments I received was perhaps the most telling:

"I hate push ups....they make me feel so defeated."

I’m not exactly sure why so many people, women in particular, use those two exercises as the gold standard of fitness, but I’m going to blame it on Dwight Eisenhower, and his implementation of the holy terror that was known as the President’s Physical Fitness test.

My memories of this torturous misery largely revolve around trying to run a mile in jeans when I was eight years old. (Chaffing. So. Much. Chaffing.)

There was also the goal of climbing a rope without using your legs.

As an athletic kid, I learned two important lessons from this challenge - running was God’s punishment for not listening to my mother and I didn’t know much about Ronald Reagan, but hated him for making me do distinctly not fun things in gym class.

While doing push ups wasn’t part of the President’s challenge, it was still a measure of fitness prescribed to many of us by well-intended coaches and gym teachers. I remember my college lacrosse coach telling us to do 25 push ups at the end of many sprints - and there I’d be trying my damndest to do some measure of push ups from my knees and wishing that we could just switch to the 50 sit ups already.

Between these coaches and the media’s portrayal of the push ups in many sports movies (Remember Rocky doing one armed push ups??) we are mostly made to feel that an inability to perform a push up from the floor means that we’re weak.

When really it means that we are just human.

That's because, according to MRI's, females have 40% less upper body mass than men. So yeah, not many females are going to just drop to the floor and bang out 25 push ups, despite our experiences with gym class and even some sport preparation.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you are looking for a performance goal to strive for - the push up is an incredible place to start. The exericse requires core strength and can help improve muscular endurance with the upper body. But what nobody tells us, is that being able to perform a push up with proper depth and proper form takes time and hard work. And a lot of both.

So how can you train your way to a proper push ups?

Check back for part II and I’ll give you a couple of exercises to help you build towards that goal.

Do you want a nicer butt?

No, not like a friendlier butt, but..let’s say…a stronger butt?

Sure you do, even if you don’t know it.

Aesthetic qualities aside, strong glutes and hamstrings can help improve posture, alleviate lower back, hip and knee pain, and, perhaps most importantly, can take your Pickle Ball game to the next level.

Boom.

And if I had to choose one exercise that almost everyone can benefit, it would be the single leg Romanian deadlift - or - in technical terms, the Drinky Bird.

This guy does a single leg deadlift flawlessly.

First of all, the Drinky Bird is a unilateral exercise (one leg at a time), and there is a ton of benefit for including single leg work in your workouts.

Walking, running, and taking the stairs all require single leg movements, so aside from training your posterior chain (back of your body), single leg work is also very functional. Training one leg at a time can also help us address movement and muscle imbalances, which can sometimes lead to poor compensation patterns.

The trouble for many clients though, is that single leg work can often be irritating on the knee. While split squats, lunges, and step ups might aggravate an already grumpy knee, the Drinky Bird requires only a slight softening of the knee, so even people with chronic knee pain or discomfort can perform some variation of the movement.

This exercise also gives you a lot of bang for your buck, as it is a full body movement that makes your obliques (part of the core) work very hard as well. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t benefit from more core work, especially core stabilization (think plank versus sit up).

And lastly, though I could go on and on, the Drinky Bird forces you to work on balance. When you try this exercise for the first time, you’ll want to hold on to a bench or a squat rack - and don’t be surprised to find that one leg feels more stable than the other. That’s part of the imbalance that you’re working on with this exercise.

Ready to give it a shot? Ok - here is a variation to get you going - it’s called a braced SLDL.

In this variation, here are a few cues to get you started:

• Squeeze your armpits hard enough to hold a piece of paper in them - this will keep you from rounding your shoulders.

• Maintain a flat back - you don’t want to round through your lower spine.

• Engage the core. Suck that belly button towards your spine and keep it there.

• Allow soft knees. While this exercise is a hip hinge (movement initiated through the hips), it’s okay to bend the knees a bit.

• Press the knuckle of your big toe into the floor to help use the muscles in your feet - which will help you maintain balance.

• You may want to perform this exercise in a minimalist shoe or even barefoot. If you are working out in a thick soled running shoe, you might find yourself struggling against the shoe as you try to maintain balance.

In many cases, clients find it a struggle to maintain a straight lower back and straight leg throughout the movement. If you want to be sure that you are performing the exercise correctly, adding a foam roller can help keep your form in check:

And finally, if the above two versions are too easy for you, check out this variation that I picked up from my co-worker Trent last week.

The pause at the bottom really forced my hamstrings to work harder, and I found that I was able to keep both hips square to the ground. And the next day, but but and my hamstrings were fried, but you know, in a good way.

Cheers.