I am weak. I am unfit. Here’s how I learned to do five proper push-ups with decent form:
- Grease the groove by doing inclined push-ups on a wall, bookshelf, chair. Do many.
- Clench your abs/core all throughout the push-up. Do this always.
- Start with your belly and chin on the ground, squeeze your back and only then put your palms on the ground and push up off the ground
It took me thirty years to learn how to do a proper push-up
I was a tiny skinny kid who grew up to a tall skinny kid. I never wanted to do a push-up.
When I was 13, I did my first push-up, and then nine more, as punishment. First Scouts, then the Army. Push-ups were punishment; Something I Was Made To Do. Nobody cared about form, there was no meaning: just punishment, 20 reps a time.
So I cheated. I sweated and groaned and went through the motions. My elbows bent, my back and head went down and up, and I counted loudly. I did hundreds of wide-arm, granny-style, nodding-donkey, faked-it push-ups. I like to think that was when I first discovered a taste for theatre. I faked it for close to twenty years.
After I got out of the army, I tore my wrist. That was good enough for me — I had An Excuse, my wrist was badly hurt, I never had to do push-ups again. Nobody could make me.
It took me thirty seconds to decide to learn to do a proper push-up
Some random prat on Twitter found himself on two-week quarantine. For fourteen days, every day, he’d tweet how many pushups he did, usually over 600. And I just thought to myself:
If he could do 500, surely I could do five?
It took me three weeks to teach myself to do a proper push-up
But I’m weak, my wrist is weak, I am Excused Push-Ups. I couldn’t just lie on the floor and do a perfect push-up like that.
I greased the groove. I started with inclined push-ups on my bookshelf. I read a bunch of guides and watched a lot of YouTube videos. Five a day, then ten, then sixty. I did ten push-ups the first week, and did sixty a day by the end. And then I found this video on Push-Up Cues:
And then one night I lay on my floor and did one single, proper push-up. And then four more. remember actually saying this out loud, in shock and delight:
Oh, I can do five push-ups. Yes, I can do five.
I do it all the time now. Five push-ups, to be precise. One day I even broke my record and managed six in one set, an incredible achievement. I’m doing twenty a day now, and I’m working up to 100 a day.
I never bothered trying to do push-ups until I decided I wanted to.
It took a stupid amount of time and energy over three weeks to figure out how to.
And then somehow, in three weeks I did what I couldn’t for thirty years.