Lately I’ve been increasing the intensity of my workouts, and noticing some strength gains. I’ve even gotten some comments from other people who’ve noticed that I’m looking bigger. But I’m no way near being able to do a one arm pushup with the other hand held behind the lower back. In terms of percentage of bodyweight, how much do I need to be able to lift in a dumbbell bench press, to be strong enough to do a one-arm pushup?
And why is a one-arm pushup so difficult? I read once that a standard pushup is like benchpressing half your body weight. I can benchpress my bodyweight, so shouldn’t I be able to perform a pushup with one arm?
I learned to do regular pushups by first working on an incline. I couldn’t even do one with halfway decent form. I’m pretty weak in my upper body, so I started on a really high incline (hands on top of my dresser to be exact). From that angle, I could do a full set and could get a feel for proper form. I moved lower and lower as I got stronger. My desk, the end table, my coffee table, my step bench. I can now do a full set of pushups (although my form still suffers for the last couple - but I’m getting better).
As far as how much you need to bench press to do one - I’ve got no idea. However, I’m not so sure that’s relevant, either. I could never bench press anywhere near half my body weight, but I can do pushups.
You need to be a bit creative with your push ups. Build up a few different muscles. Try these.
Regular push ups with your hands a long way apart
Regular push ups with your hands well in front of your head.
Regular push ups with your hands rotated at different orientations.
Regular push ups with your hands by your waist
Knee push ups with hands into fists at your hips
Knee push ups with your hands really really far apart
Incline push ups with your feet raised on a chair or desk
Handstand against a wall type push ups
One arm push ups with assistance from the other hand holding your wrist
One arm pushups on an incline with hand on a desk or chair
One arm knee pushups
You should be able to sequence some of these to build your way up to one arm push ups.
As for one arm chin ups – these are way hard. And they use quite different muscles from push ups.
I am 51 years old and can still do them. You have to keep your balance by spreading your feet further apart than for normal pushups. You also have to place your hand more in the center, rather than off to the side where your arms normally would be. The easiest (for me) way to work up to it was to keep trying (and failing) until I got tha hang of it. I used to win beer money bets in the bars doing it - nobody thought the skinny guy could do it. It is more about balance than strength. By the way, my bench press was alway crap. I could never build up decent pecs.
I can also do the leg extension hold and one leg squats too. The benefits of being skinny are, there is less weight to lift and hold up, and it is distributed differently. Again, I became able to do those by just trying and failing until I got it. Repetition. Balance.
There was a time when i was strong enough to do one-armed push-ups, back in my early 20s when i was working out quite a bit. For me, the biggest hurdle then was working out the balance issues so i didn’t fall flat on my face. I managed to finally do some without tipping over, but once i had done it a couple of times i didn’t bother any more, because i realised that there was no benefit to be derived from doing them that couldn’t be derived from similar, more balanced exercises. As far as i could tell, the only reason to do them was to show off.
The leg extension hold is shown at the site http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/alissa2.htm
The other one I could never do, where she places her hands in the center, between the legs. I could never drag my feet off the floor for that one.
SteveG’s advice details exactly what I was going to say. One of few times when you can say “spread your legs” and not have it taken the wrong way:D
You do not have to have a big chest to do this (the inner half of my chest is concave in one place). Oh, it helps tons, but you can get by with strong wrists, strong triceps, strong legs and strong abs. Concentrate on your form and your breathing, because otherwise the odds of concentrating so hard on your form that you don’t breathe … not low enough. As you become more adept at doing it, the mental focus needed drops dramatically to the point where you can do one-armed pushups alternating arms and going upwards of a foot in the air. At that point, though, you’re really just showing off:D
[sub]Streaming video of that performance is not available. Anyone who wants to get me a webcam for broadcast of same performance is welcome.[/sub]
impuhna has hit upon it, but I want to stress the point: one-armed push ups are far more about abs/back, than triceps/chest. When you do your benchpress, you are focusing ONLY on your chest and triceps. But one-armed push ups require much more from the rest of your body - primarily your abs, but your legs also get into the picture - to keep your body rigid. So one arm push ups have more to do with these other areas and balance, than just your chest and triceps.
j_sum1’s recommendations will help you build up those parts that you have not been working while just doing bench press.
Come to think of it, this plays more of a role than I had previously considered. While my leg strength has never been the limiting agent, there have been times when same legs have really been quite worked from doing several of the hand-switch variety of one-armers.
One-armed pushups also have the advantage that, while their two-armed brethren can be done with a fair amount of cheating and slacking, it is pretty damn difficult, short of doing them with your legs spread - well, not ass-wide, which is literally fairly narrow - but really damn wide apart, to cheat on them. If I felt like it, I could do 50 craptacular pushups with precious little increase in heart strain, but 25 one-armers would do a number on me.
