At the end of last semester I realized that I had been doing pushups wrong for my entire life. It dawned on me that a person who could bench-press 110 pounds shouldn't have so much trouble with pushups, and I closed my eyes and tried to envision a pushup as an upside-down bench-press. It was a total aha moment as I zoomed up to the top of that rep.
It's the opposite of automatic. I have to think about it every single time I do a set of pushups: engage the pecs. Remember, I tell myself, it's a chest exercise more than an arm exercise. If you ignore your pecs and rely on your arms, you'll get needlessly tired out.
Something similar is true of pull-ups. When Joe first told me I needed to train my back to get a pull-up, I scoffed. But he was absolutely right: executing a pull-up is more about strong lats and traps than it is about strong arms. In the spring of 2020 I had no idea how to engage my lats, but these days I use my lats for all kinds of things.
I think this problem is probably widespread among women. People tell us early on to do knee pushups because they expect us to have trouble doing standard pushups. We absorb the idea that standard pushups are too hard for us instead of learning how to use the bigger muscles that are made for pushing heavier loads. I can't say for sure that the reason women (including me!) take a while to get a pull-up is that they have to learn to use their lats and traps more effectively, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
We live in a world where Kim Kardashian keeps erasing her traps instead of saying, "Hey, I worked hard for those and it's good to be strong," so I am not optimistic that this blog post will make much of a difference. But if you've always wanted to be able to be better at pushups and pull-ups, the trick is in your torso, not your arms.
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