7 Huge Benefits Of Push-Ups

Health Benefits Of Push-Ups

The thought of doing push-ups may bring up bad memories of old gym classes at school, but it remains one of the most effective exercises out there. A standard push-up activates almost every muscle in your body, helping you to become more toned.

If you?re still not convinced of adding push-ups to your workout, or you?re interested in fully understanding their power, then read on to find out the top 7 awesome benefits of doing push-ups.

1. Increased Functional Strength

As we mentioned earlier, push-ups force your body to engage almost every muscle. Major muscle groups such as biceps, triceps and deltoids are all called upon as you lower yourself to the floor. Otherwise known as a?compound exercise, push-ups train the most important muscles throughout the body.

2. Boosted Metabolism

Because you?re making everything in the body work, you?re pushing yourself to your physical limit. It may hurt a lot, but it?s making your heart work harder.

Your muscles need more oxygen to create energy and the only way it can get this is from the heart pumping blood faster. This, in turn, boosts your metabolic rate and allows you to burn more calories.

3. Increased Muscle Definition

Throughout the movement of a push-up, you?re engaging a wide array of primary and stabilizing muscles. The more muscle mass which is used in a strength exercise, the greater the production of something called HGH, otherwise known as human growth hormone.

In your youth, your body pumps out a large concentration of this hormone, but as you age this amount naturally declines, making it harder to build muscle. Keeping your body full of HGH will help muscle hypertrophy and muscle growth.

4. Stronger Shoulders

The standard push-up is one of the most effective ways to protect your shoulder joints from injury, especially if you?re at an older age. Push-ups strengthen the rotator cuff joint, making this area of the body more conditioned for dynamic movements.

By supporting these secondary shoulder muscles, you can decrease your chances of suffering debilitating injuries in later life.

5. Save Time

Many of us use the excuse of being ?too busy? to exercise. While the average working day does continue to become longer, you can get through a solid push-up workout in just five minutes.

If you get bored of doing the standard push-up, vary your hand and feet placement to target different muscles from different angles. This will encourage rapid strength and size development.

6. No Cost

There?s no need to join a world class gym or buy expensive equipment to obtain a thorough full body and effective workout. Push-ups can be done in the comfort of your own home and won?t cost you a penny.

In fact by doing push-ups, you effectively fatigue a number of muscle groups which provides the same health benefits as expensive gym equipment.

7. Better Posture

Office jobs are wrecking havoc with our postures and these bad habits can affect our health and comfort at a later age. One of the main causes of this is weak core muscles.

In order to properly hold your back, your entire core has to be strong enough to support its vertical position. Push-ups help strengthen core muscles and naturally lean your body toward proper posture.