Incline Push Ups

Lots of people do push ups, it's the first excercise we ever learn and it's perfectly effective in it's simplicity. You move your own body weight up and down. You don't even have to belong to a gym or health club. You can do them in the privacy and convenience of your own home. If you have no home you could choose to do them on the sidewalk. No man (or woman) has any excuse to have undeveloped or underdeveloped chests, triceps, or front deltoids. I could press the point and say abs and core too, but that may be beating a dead horse in the mouth. My real point is that with a little imagination and an open mind there are literally uncounted variations on this most basic excercise. I, myself, have 5 different ones in my current rotation of training excercises, know of many more, and could make one up on the spot at any given moment. I'm aware that that might have sounded smug, but I'll lay one on you now, and save some others for a later blog entry.

Incline Push Ups.
These are similar to the handstand push ups I've described before, only opposite. Start with your back to a wall. Place your hands 2 to 2 1/2 feet or so from the wall. I like to use the floor grip handles that are often used for extended push ups giving you an extra 3 inches or so of range of motion. If your gym doesn't have a pair of these just put your hands flat ont he floor. I also like to place the hands in an underhand position, this is to emulate a gymnastic technique that I aspire to in my faux handbalancing wannabe aerial artist on straps pursuits. Now, walk your feet up the wall until your straight body is at an angle of at least 135 degrees from your hands, a perfect handstand being 180 degrees. So if you count from your shoulders, it's at least 45 degrees up. You're upside down so you can't get out your protractor and slide to rule to calculate the exact angle-you'll have to rely on your best guess. Now try some push ups. If you flex your feet at the top, where your arms are straight and point them as you descend you should be able to attain a suitable range of motion. I also do this in deferrence to gym (and home) owners who might not want to mark up their paint jobs from shoes sliding up and down against the wall. This angle is comparable to an inclined bench press, so the target muscles are the upper pectorals and the front deltoids. Arms are bending and straightening, so your triceps get in on the action too. When I do sets of these I can only get about 6 reps in. then in an attempt to save face I hold the last one at the bottom for as close to 10 seconds as I can for your "fast twitch" tissue. Stay hollow and keep the body straight and you're involving your core. Give 'em a try.