New Years Resolution - I want to be able to do a push-up

[beecurse]

Hello, guys!

Alongside my general goal of exercising more this year, I have set a specific goal: being able to do push-ups. My arms are currently (and have always been..?) very weak, so I want to embark on a journey to strengthen them. Do you have any tips, workouts, or exercises that could help me achieve this? I’d appreciate suggestions with different difficulty levels so I can start at my current fitness level and track my progress as I tackle more challenging exercises.

For context, right now I cannot do even a single push-ups (or knee push-up), and last on planks for just a couple seconds. I do not have any health problems that make my arms weaker.

 

[Princess Sarena Rose]

I've been doing the wall pushups challenge to be able to work towards being able to do full pushups. It might be a useful progression to start with?

 

[Fremen]

Push-Ups Guide

DAREBEE, darebee, fitness, workouts, visual workouts, fitness challenges, fitness motivation, exercise tips, fitness guides, fitness community

darebee.com

The most interesting part of the guide is this image:

The trick is to start with something you can do and patiently practice.
The good news is that you can do it

 

[TopNotch]

Incline push-ups can also start higher, say bench-top height, and then go down. It may sound daunting, but you can also do one-armed wall push-ups, incline push-ups, etc, which give an enormous sense of achievement, as well as further strengthening the arms. Be careful never to hunch your shoulders, regardless of which type of push-up you do, because that will end up hurting you.
But while we tend to think of the push-up solely as an arm exercise, it's far more than that.
To perform a good push-up, you also need to focus on your core strength. You cannot sag while doing any pushup. You say you last only a couple of seconds doing a plank. When you look at a push-up, you see that it is really a moving plank. That mid-section is solid; you're doing a plank but bending and straightening your arms at the same time. So you can do all the arm exercises you like (and please, do) but without sufficient core strength, you're unlikely to see your goal. This and this are two addon programmes focusing on the core - though I'd suggest starting with the second one.
And be prepared for it to take far longer than you think it will.

 

[Saffity]

Years ago, when I had a personal trainer, they way they started me off with push ups was to “peel” myself off the ground (so push up my shoulders, chest, then tummy, then hips off the ground) then slowly lower myself down. I was then really only doing the second half of the push-up, but in a few months, without realizing it, I was holding the plank for up as well.

 

[beecurse]

Thank you everyone @princess_sarena @Fremen @TopNotch @Saffity for the replies! I'll take all of it in consideration while I build my monthly work-out plans according to my progress. Some of your insights really opened my eyes to some things that I wasn't thinking about at all.