Advancing the simple

Nick | 02/25/2014 | 9

Very rarely would one use the phrase “highly technical movement” when describing the pushup, but for those of you with fairly decent mastery of it today will be a great time to start to advance your upper body pushing skills.  How do we do this?  Well, there are some obvious and then some less than obvious choices.  In CrossFit, we often default to ring dips and handstand pushups.  These can both be great, but for many of us, the barrier to entry is high.  So I offer you some other options (that may or may not be appropriate).  Ring push ups can be a great option to add an element of shoulder stability, but if we engage these it’s important to be able to achieve good shoulder position on the rings (we want our thumbs pointing out at the top of the pushup).  For those looking to challenge their core strength, starting and ending our pushup with a slight lean forward in a pseudo-planche position can greatly increase the challenge on our stability.  And for those looking to work towards handstand pushups, piked pushups (or pushups in a down-dog position) can help us build towards them, especially if we keep a super-tight midline.

With any of these variations (as with regular pushups) it will be more useful to us to do fewer reps of higher quality than more reps that get sloppy.  So talk to your coach to find out what will be a good choice for you today.  Remember, real progress happens through consistent effort and quality movement.  Not only do we want to be better tomorrow, but three years from now, we’ll want to have been walking on a path that allows continual long term progress.  Choose your path wisely.

STR:

Pushing Volume Training

EMOM 20

WOD:

15-12-9-6-3

burpees over box

*finish each round with a 50′ box push