The press up … variations on a theme

The press up is one of the simplest and most basic of all exercises. We’ve all done them. Some of us still do, but most either don’t do much of anything anymore, or if they do, they often think press ups are a bit limited to be of any real use in a proper training routine.

Think again! There’s an astonishing number of variations of the humble press up, and each of them presents its own unique shock to the body. You could almost literally never run out of options with this one exercise (using the word ‘one’ rather loosely!).

Like I said in an earlier post, you can do press ups even if you have to do them leaning on a table, or against a wall. Right there, you have a couple of variations, but they’ll help you out if you haven’t trained before, or if you’re out of shape. There are plenty more! And oh boy, I mean plenty …

Diamond press ups, one-arm press ups, forearm press ups, handstand press ups, dive bombers (aka Hindu press ups), the list goes on and on. But enough talk … if you want to see what one guy can do with just this ‘one’ exercise, take a look at this video. It’s amazing.