Push-ups with cotton: technique, variations, useful tips

Share:

CrossFit uses several basic exercises aimed at working with your own weight. One of the most popular and effective is push-ups. The peculiarity of this exercise is that with its help you can develop not only the pectoral muscles, triceps, anterior deltoids, but also significantly improve the speed of arm movement.

In this article we will take a closer look at a more complicated version of the exercise - explosive push-ups. It is they, when performed correctly, that most effectively develop both muscle strength and speed of movement. Why does this happen? Read on.

What muscles work?

First, let's look at what muscles work when doing explosive push-ups. As in the simple version of the exercise, the chest muscles, anterior delta and abdominal muscles are involved here. However, when you make an additional movement with your legs, the muscles of the buttocks, quadriceps, iliopsoas and quadratus lumborum muscles are actively involved in the work. Essentially, you turn on the so-called “core muscles”, which are responsible for the correct position of the body in space and maintaining the correct geometry of the spinal column.

Exercise options

There are several options for performing explosive push-ups. We have selected the most effective ones for you and placed them in order of increasing complexity. In each case, the starting position is the same - lying down. Next come variations with the position of the arms, the use of the leg muscles, etc.:

With your hands off the floor

We place our hands slightly wider than our shoulders, lower our chests to the floor by bending our arms at the elbow joints. We push off from the floor with both hands, our hands come off the floor, but do not change their position - we push off from the floor - the “hands off” phase - we touch the floor with our palms.
Place your hands shoulder-width apart, lower your chest to the floor and push off powerfully from the floor. In the “flight” phase, we spread our arms wider than our shoulders and land in this position. Having landed, we perform push-ups from the floor with a wide grip, push off again and in the “flight” phase we change the position of the hands to the original one, that is, shoulder-width apart.
Before starting the exercise, place small bars 10-15 centimeters high on both sides of the hands. They can be placed both on the outside and on the inside of the hands, but at a short distance from the arms. We lower our chests to the floor, sharply straighten our arms at the elbow joints and tear them off the surface, moving our palms onto pre-prepared bars. We perform push-ups on the bars, push off again and return to the floor.
Starting position – hands shoulder-width apart. Next, we lower our chest to the floor, then sharply straighten our arms and throw them above our heads, as if we were trying to dive into water. At the end of the exercise, we land in the starting position.
Place your hands shoulder-width apart and do a push-up. Next, we push off the floor with our hands and, in the “flight” phase, make one clap in front of the chest, after which we lower ourselves onto our palms.

With the entire body lifted off the floor

This movement is similar to that described in paragraph 5 of the previous section. The difference is that in this version you need to push off with your hands, but at the same time lift not only your palms, but also your toes from the floor. You must land in the same position you were in initially.
© Mediteraneo — stock.adobe.com
We also start this exercise by placing our hands shoulder-width apart and lowering our chest to the floor. Next, we sharply push off the floor with our hands, enter the “flight” phase, while almost in the air we turn our whole body, changing the direction of the body by 90 degrees, and land on outstretched arms.
For the end we left the so-called “Aztec” push-ups. This is the most difficult variation of the exercise, so if you are a beginner athlete, you should not try to do it right away, as you may get injured. Take the starting position with your hands shoulder-width apart. Push off the floor with your hands, and also lift your socks off the surface. Having lifted off the floor, during the flight phase, sharply pull your pelvis up and, as it were, fold in half, touching your toes with your fingers. Immediately lower your pelvis down, returning your body to its starting position. Land in the starting position, that is, again taking a prone position. Ideally, you should not bend your knees in the “flight” phase, however, if you cannot do this exercise with the correct technique, pull your knees towards your chest - the range of motion of the pelvis will be smaller in this case, and the exercise will become easier to perform.

Preparing for the exercise

Without proper preparation, push-ups with cotton should not be performed, as this can lead to injury. The body must be prepared for such a load.

To prepare, you should follow a certain order:

First you need to master the classical technique perfectly. In this case, it is necessary to practice the exercise by placing your hands in different positions.
After mastering the classical technique, it is worth working on the speed and sharpness of movement. The pace must be increased gradually.
To begin with, during classic push-ups, you should quickly straighten your arms, making a powerful effort.
Then, when straightening your arms, you need to lift them off the floor. There is no need to do cotton at this stage yet.
When you can jump high enough, you can move on to clapping.

Exercise technique

Regardless of what type of explosive push-ups you decide to practice, there are a number of general technical points that are important to observe when performing the exercise:

The chest and triceps muscles need to be tensed sharply and simultaneously in order to create an impulse of the required strength. The more powerful the impulse, the longer the “flight” phase, and the more actions you will have time to do in this phase (we are mainly talking about push-ups with cotton).
Immediately after the push, you need to relax your hands - this is the only way you can quickly change their position relative to each other or perform some kind of movement.
The abdominal muscles must be tense to keep the pelvis in the correct position.
When you need to push off from the floor and tear off not only your arms, but also your legs, the correct solution would be to place your hands shoulder-width apart, below the level of the shoulder joints, and at the moment of the push, give yourself additional momentum with your toes.
If you are doing explosive push-ups to develop fighting skills, the most optimal mode of operation is to perform as many push-ups as possible for 10 seconds, followed by a 50-second rest. Such approaches need to be made from three to five. If your goal is endurance, then you don’t need to try to perform as many push-ups as possible in a certain period of time. Instead, concentrate on continuing to do the exercise for as long as possible.

Push-ups with wide arms

These push-ups are performed in the same way as classic ones, only the hands are placed not under the shoulders, but a little wider. By spreading your arms wider, you remove some of the load from the triceps and transfer it to the pectoral muscles.

If this is too easy for you, try spreading your arms as wide as you can and, keeping a slight bend in your elbows, do push-ups from that position. The wider you place your arms, the more load will be transferred to the pectoral muscles.

Perform 3-4 sets of 8-12 repetitions.

Development of hand speed qualities

The high-speed qualities of your hands, which, in addition to strength, help develop explosive push-ups, will be useful to you not only in strength and game sports, but also simply in life.

Neuromuscular synapse

The rate of muscle fiber contraction is strictly limited. The nerve that transmits impulses from the brain to the muscle cannot perform its function faster than a certain time interval. However, if we talk about the everyday concept of speed (and strength, by the way), then this quality does not depend on the time of impulse transmission along the nerve fiber, but on the ability to voluntarily put a large number of motor units into work at once.

One motor unit is a muscle fiber to which a nerve approaches, forming a neuromuscular junction. In order to perform a certain movement quickly and with maximum force, you need to engage many muscles at the same time. And this quality is developed not so much by training the muscles, but by training the nervous system. In this case, you need to perform the exercises as quickly as possible, and the movements should be sharp.

Reaction speed

One of the best exercises for this purpose is “explosive” push-ups. In most cases, in the “flight” phase, when you just push off, you need to have time to perform some additional movement with your hands, for example, clapping. In any case, you need to land on your palms - and you need to do this before you hit your face on the floor. That is, reaction speed and speed of hand movement are important. Therefore, explosive push-ups are most often used to train athletes in boxing, kickboxing, ARB, combat sambo, MMA martial arts, where a quick and powerful punch is needed. However, explosive push-ups have a number of modifications that will be useful for CrossFitters, so we advise you to include them in your training complexes.

Diamond push-ups

This exercise is the opposite of a wide-arm push-up. Here you place your hands close to each other, so that your fingers touch each other. During push-ups, your elbows should move close to your body.

If you can't do this exercise, first try placing your hands under your shoulders and doing classic push-ups, but make sure to keep your elbows moving close to your body. When you feel comfortable doing these push-ups, you can move on to diamond push-ups.

During diamond push-ups, more load is placed on the triceps. It's best to do them after wide-arm push-ups to give your stressed pectoral muscles a rest.

Benefits of exercise

The benefits of explosive push-ups are as follows:

they develop intermuscular coordination;
increase the speed of movements;
provide the explosive power needed in martial arts.

The only disadvantage of explosive push-ups is the risk of injury. For example, you may miscalculate your strength and hit your face on the floor. Therefore, it is better to start your training on something softer than a rubber or concrete floor - a wrestling mat, in this case, is an ideal option.