Music, Art, Language and the Common Pushup


There is a line that is crossed from a craftsman to a real journeyman of any trade when you go from merely using tools to understanding and even creating them youself if necessary for what you need to do. This is when you surely understand what you are doing, the difference in music from just playing from the charts to real improvisation, the difference in the maritial arts between fighting an opponent and just flowing through and around him at will; a big and obvious difference, that just doesn't get written about much in the extreme fitness field. This, in the language of music again is the difference between chattering away on a simple pentatonic scale as opposed to being fluent in an Indian raga right down to the the subtle bends, tremelos and microtones.

Let's take a simple pushup as an example. Everyone knows what that is. Let's consider the modifications you can make to it:

1. Height-You can change the height of your hands or feet to make it easier or harder.

2. Leverage-You can move your hands in, out, up or down to change the leverage of the exercise

3. Rom-You can shorten or lengthen the range of motion to make it harder or easier or to work with #4

4. Speed or power-You can push fast with a full rom or shortened rom to work on power or speed.

5. Symmetry-simply by moving one hand or foot in any of three dimensions (up or down also) you can change the degree to which it is an upper body strength exercise or an upper body strength and whole body stability exercise.

6. Balance-Like #5 above. You can do your pushup with one hand, both hands or your feet on an unstable object or medium. This is generally highly overated but has its place sometimes.

7. Body motion-"Hindu" pushups fall into this category. You can also hop, step, or turn in all three dimensions,  to the side, up, or twist over if it is useful to you. No end of possibilities here.

8. Isometric/plyometric points-You can stop at different points to hold or you can drop from a stance or from having your hands up on blocks and try to stop yourself.

9. React-Drop or hop in from one point and try to bounce back up to another. This is an advanced version of #8

10. Grip-Who says pushups have to be done on the ground? You can use rings, loops, thick ropes and bars, wall surfaces, other people?

11. Compound any sequence of the above into a complex motion

In any of the above there is the perfect modification of the pushup for the goal you have in mind. However, the grander part of this is that there are blends and in-betweens of any that might be more precisely what you need, look at those, work with them, learn the meaning of each modification till you know it like a language and have the right, well-measured words for exactly what you want to do. If you learn this subtle art, you aren't just taking exercises from a book and sticking them onto your program like a decal, you know and can speak the language...eloquently and subtly as need be.

You can modify what you are doing to back of on a sore or tired joint, to modify it to help a weak point or deal with a problem in the motion, modify it to be more endurance or strength effective and do it all right on the fly on even a moment to moment basis if you so wish because now you are in control.

There are really just a few general exercise motions you can modify as much as you like with any of the above sigularly or in combination:

1. Upper body push away
2. Upper body pull in
3. Bend forward
4. Bend back
5. Lower body push away
6. Lower body pull in (not done often)
7. Twist
8. A concurrent or consecutive combo of the above

You have seven colors, a mixing pallette, and a canvas with two eyes staring you in the mirror, art starts at home, take the brush and go. Why just paint by numbers?

Bryce Lane Visalia Ca. May 31, 06