An exercise performed to work the pectorals of the chest, the deltoids of the shoulders, and the triceps of the back of the upper arms.

The participant should place their hands on the floor palm down, fingers pointing North flat on the floor slightly wider then shoulder width apart.

Extend the legs out so the whole body is in a straight line, with your toes on the floor. Your feet can be close together or shoulder width apart, it all depends what your preference is and how stable you feel.

Bend at the elbows bringing your chest to the floor, and then extend back up, making sure not to lock out the elbows, doing this protects the elbow joints.

Perform the exercise smoothly and slowly, and nicely controlled.

Keep your face facing the floor, although if you're doing it by a mirror and want to look at your technique you can look up slightly, try to move your eyes instead of your head though.

Keep your body straight and aligned at all times, so you're not wobbling all over the place. After however many repetitions, your main stabliser muscles, i.e. your abdominals, hip flexors, quadriceps may start to tire before your arms and chest, and start shaking, just to let you know.

This is a great exercise, as an alternative to the bench press as you are shifting your own body weight around and bringing a lot more muscles into play, mainly as stabiliser muscles. It's very satisfying if you can do quite a few in a row, and even more satisfying when you can better your personal best every so often.

You can mix sets of these in with sets of pull-ups because each exercise works the opposite muscles to the other. So after doing say 20 press-ups, you'll still be able to do your pull-ups because you're working different muscle groups.

Have fun

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