Pushing the Push-Up Envelope

The lowly push-up, long regarded as simply an exercise for guys that just received a high-and-tight haircut and now have to call everyone “sir”, or a simple, P.T. type movement that doesn’t really do much. I want to revisit the push-up and hopefully give you some different looks at this old, dusty standby that will endear it to you again in your workout regimen.

Basic Training

Let’s start with the basics, grunts, and that would be what does a proper push-up look like? There are many iterations of this relic, but we need to start at the bottom before we go deeper. The standard push up should be started with hands shoulder width apart, back straight, and up on your toes. Your body should basically be in a straight line from your heels to the back of your head. Begin the motion by lowering the chest to within an inch of the floor, and then after the briefest pause, push downward at the floor until the arms are fully extended. That is the base from which we’ll build some variations and have fun with this old dog.
The main thing to remember about push-ups is that like most exercises, strict form is the key. You shouldn’t be wildly flailing up and down; momentum should be kept to a minimum to correctly tax the correct muscle groups. Speaking of which, we should probably get an idea just what muscles the standard push-up will work. First and foremost, the muscles of the chest take the brunt of the load. The chest is comprised of the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor, two fan-shaped muscles that connect the humerus (near the shoulder) to the breastbone. These muscles make a wide variety of pushing and pulling activities possible, as well as controlling the motion of the deltoids (shoulder muscles). Also involved to a great degree, as with most pushing moves, are the triceps (muscles on the back of the upper arms). The shoulder muscles also get in the game; mostly the front and side deltoids. Of course the abdominals are tightened, and the muscles of the back, the latissimus and trapezius, come into play as well. As we can see, most of the upper body and core are involved in your standard push-up – not too shabby for only one exercise, huh?

Variations

Now that we know the how and why, let’s look at some variations from the basic push-up that can really diversify the muscle groups focused on. Something as simple as varying the width of your hands can engage different portions of the chest muscles. Wider hands will stress the inner pectorals more and even draw in some biceps too. Hands closer together will stress the deltoids and triceps more. I actually like a variation where the hands are on top of one another to really get some triceps burn.

Elevating the feet is also a great way to make the standard push-up more difficult. Once you work your way up to knocking out 30-50 normal push-ups in a single set, you can try doing them with your feet elevated on a bench, chair, or couch. If you really want a challenge, try moving your hands closer to your waist. This will destabilize the body further and will cause new groups of muscles to fire in order to maintain balance and complete the work.

Use Your Imagination

If you really want to think outside the box, you can use some dumbbells or step boxes to the mix, placing them past shoulder width, doing a push-up with hands on the floor, then on the up motion, exploding up and placing your hands on the elevated platform, doing another rep and then pushing up explosively to place your hands back on the floor (remember plyometrics?). I like using some medium sized medicine balls under my hands sometimes to really bring in the ancillary muscle groups and work on balance.

As you can see, the variety of push-ups is only limited by your imagination. Try as many variations as you can – redundancy is the enemy of muscle and strength gains! Work your way into a high rep range as well. Start with as many as you can do with strict form, rest a few minutes, and then complete one or two more sets. Once you can get to doing fifty in a single set, start moving from the standard push-up to a different variety. The push-up can truly build a solid base of strength when applied properly, and the best part is that you don’t need specialized equipment or even a gym member ship to reap the rewards! Now drop and give me a hundred!

Stretching Redux

We’ve been having some good discussion on the forum about stretching, so I wanted to write a follow up article about some stretches you can incorporate into your on-court warm-up before the serious hitting starts. You can thank John in Real Life for this supplement, as he recommended I put up some pre and post tennis stretches for you. Here we go.

Warm Up – Please!!!

As I mentioned in the previous article, the importance of warming up cannot be overstated. You do not want to start pulling cold muscles into uncomfortable positions. Run in place, jump rope, do some laps around the court, whatever it takes to break a sweat and get some blood flowing to your muscles. A great way to warm up the core muscles (see blog post “The Core of the Matter”), is to do some crunches or other ab exercise. Seriously, warm up until you are WARM. This will go a long way towards getting you limbered up enough for the coming stretches and your tennis!

No Pain, No Gain?

Ok, I don’t want everyone taking this too much to heart, as stretching can be uncomfortable when done properly. There is no need to put yourself in agony when performing the following stretches, but they should be uncomfortable. Remember in my last post where we talked about the stretch reflex? This reflex actually causes the muscles under tension to try and contract back to their original state. This is a protective mechanism that the body uses, but it can be overcome and conditioned through disciplined stretching. Hold the stretches at a level of minimum discomfort for a few seconds, then go a LITTLE further. By gradually extending the stretch in this manner, and keeping the entire stretch interval from twenty to thirty seconds, you will condition your stretch reflex to allow more range of motion, increasing your ‘stretch threshold’. Stretching should be a little uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t put make you scream. We don’t want to sideline ourselves before we even get started!

Basic Stretches

Here are a few recommended stretches that should loosen you up and get more blood in those muscles and fluid in those joints. Go as far as you can without too much pain, but remember, if it’s too easy, you may not be pushing it far enough. Don’t fear a little discomfort.

The Plow

1) Lie flat on the floor
2) Place your arms at your side
3) Slowly raise your legs over you head
4) Continue to raise your legs until your toes touch the floor behind your head
5) Hold the position for 15 seconds
6) Repeat 3 times

The Cobra

1) Lie flat on your stomach
2) Push up with both arms bending backwards
3) Continue until your arms are straight
4) Hold the position for 15 seconds
5) Repeat 3 times

The Hammy

1) Sit on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you
2) Reach forward toward your toes
3) Continue until a gentle stretch is felt behind your knees
4) Hold the position for 15 seconds
5) Repeat 3 times

(Credit to http://physicaltherapy.about.com/od/flexibilityexercises/tp/3morningstretches.htm for these)

These are good to get the lower body and core up to speed, but what about the shoulders? Below are some really good stretches to loosen up the chest, shoulder girdle,and arms.  Tip: use a tennis racquet instead of the towel pictured below.

Make sure that you do these for each side of the body – we don’t want to be unbalanced.

This should get you thoroughly limbered up from head to toe and will have you ready for any athletic endeavor. That’s a lot of stretches and will take a long time, you say? Well, yes, it might cost yo a few minutes playing time, so  show up early! The time you invest in properly getting your body ready for serious play will more than make up for any time you would spend down with an injury! I stretch before each workout or tennis event, and I’ve had exactly one sports injury in the last eighteen or so years – I attribute that to good warm up and stretching. I play as hard as anyone, and I want to be able to keep playing for many years to come!

Cool it Down, Mon!

John also wanted to know about post tennis stretching. WHen I’m in the gym, I will often stretch between sets and after my routine, and this is equally important after we play tennis. The back takes an unbelievable amount of punishment on the tennis court. From vertebrae compression to the twisting of the spine,  the constant running and swinging of the racquet can really create some wear and tear on the core, upper back, and shoulders. I would recommend incorporating some combination of the above stretches into a five minute post tennis cool down. You obviously don’t need to hold these for as long as you do in the warm up because the muscles are already fatigued, pulled, and amply worked. Holding a few of these just enough to realign the muscle fibers is adequate and can prevent some of the muscle soreness you might feel the next day. Remember, muscles hurt because they’ve been stressed and microtears of the fibers have occurred. Anything we can do to help the body’s natural healing process will go a long way toward keeping us injury free and allow us more play time, and that’s what it’s really all about!

Stretch for Success

How important is stretching to you? Probably ranks right up there with going to the dentist or cleaning out your gutters, right? I have to admit that the idea of stretching, putting my body into uncomfortable positions and producing pain for myself is not my idea of fun. Now, how important is flexibility and preventing injury? When we think about these goals, especially as tennis players, they probably rank a little higher on the priority list – and if not, they should. I’d like to look at how important flexibility is, how to incorporate stretching into our exercise regimens, and what benefits it has to overall body fitness.

Stretching Physiology

Let’s look at what stretching actually does first. Muscles are composed of long, elastic fibers called fascicles, and like any elastic material, they work better when warm and flexible, Proper stretching takes the muscle into it’s full, extended state, aligning the individual muscle cells (called sarcomeres) and can serve to realign any cells that have become disorganized. The more fibers that are stretched, the longer the muscle becomes. The longer you hold a stretch, the more the proprioceptors (nerves that convey information to the central nervous system) allow the muscle to ‘remember’ the stretched length and become accustomed to the new length – we’ll refer to this as the ‘stretch reflex’ going forward.

Static Stretching

Our muscles have two types of intrafusal muscle fibers. The first are ‘chain’ fibers which are long and thin. When the muscle is stretched slowly, the stretch reflex nerves increase their signal rate to the nervous system, telling it to contract as the muscle nears it’s preset limit. Holding of static stretches (no movement) overcomes the stretch reflex to a point and reprograms the stretch reflex threshold, increasing the range of motion that the stimulated muscle fibers can lengthen in.

Dynamic Stretching

The second type of fibers are the ‘bag’ fibers. These fibers fire rapidly when a quick muscle stretch is initiated, sending a strong contraction signal in order to protect the fibers from tearing. This stretch reflex protects our muscles from injury caused by sudden movements. This signal decreases as the rate of change in the muscle length decreases.

Because of the differing reaction of the two ‘stretch fibers’ above, both static and dynamic stretching are important to incorporate into any stretching routine, and are beneficial in increasing the length of the muscle through bot fast and slow ranges of motion.

Warm Up First

Many times, we erringly think of stretching as our warm up before physical activity. Consider this – would you take long piece of taffy out of the freezer and attempt to pull it? It would probably break due to the inflexibility of the fibers in the taffy, right? The same is true in muscles. When we attempt to stretch a ‘cold’ muscle, we are placing demands on that group of fibers that they are not prepared to handle yet. A simple increase of a few degrees and some increased blood flow will go a long way to maximizing the stretch potential and decrease the likelihood of an injury. Running in place for a few minutes, jumping rope, or riding a bike at low exertion will accomplish the needed ‘loosening up’ of the muscle fibers that will adequately prepare them for the stress of the stretching to come.

Stretching Benefits

So, what do we hope to gain by stretching properly? Stretching can do a number of things, it increases flexibility as we just learned. It improves the range of motion of our joints by stimulating the nerve receptors located near the end of the muscle fibers. It improves circulation, increasing the flow of blood into the muscles, which increases performance and can speed recovery. Stretching can also decrease stress by causing the surrounding muscles to lengthen and then relax in a uniform manner.

We didn’t discuss any particular stretches in detail because there are a multitude of resources out there and if we keep in mind what our body actually does when it stretches, we can use some common sense to find the right ones for us. We all know how important flexibility is as a tennis player, and hopefully you’ll give it some more thought now that you know what it’s all about.