3 Common Push Up Mistakes & How to Correct Them

The push up movement is one that I see many of our members struggle with. It isn’t because they are not capable of doing them.

I think most of the time they struggle because they are not aware of what a proper push up should look like.

We are here to direct you on the right path to doing a shoulder friendly and strong abdominal push up.

Let’s dive into 3 common mistakes that we see our members make when they are trying their push ups.

Mistake #1 – Hands too far forward:

With this mistake, people tend to not use their abs or core correctly. This can cause unwanted stress on other muscles and joints.

Make sure your hands are directly under your shoulders when starting and finishing your push up. Refer to image (5).

Refer to image (4). Don’t allow your hands to be placed in front of your shoulders.

Mistake #2 – Hips too low:

It is vital to keep your hips level with your shoulders throughout the entire movement including the start and the finish of a push up. Refer to image (5).

If we allow our hips to drop lower than our shoulders as demonstrated in images (3 & 6) we will produce extension in our low back and not using our abdominals to stabilize our body.

Mistake #3 – Elbows pointed out:

One of the most popular flaws is letting the elbows point to the side as can be seen in image (1). As you can see with this poor technique, when one’s elbows point out to the side their head meets their hands at the bottom position.

This is not good. This can present shoulder pain and is a compensation of poor core control during the lowering and raising portion of the push up movement.

We should shoot to have our elbows angle back towards our waist and our shoulders meeting our hands at the bottom position (2).

Along with being mindful of these three flaws, a good way to improve your push up ability is to put your hands on a bench or chair.

Once you perform a push up properly on a bench then you can go ahead and move to the floor.

A good repetition range to shoot for is 3 set of 8-15 repetitions. Pictures above is an example of a good push up with proper form.