The band-assisted push-up is a great resistance band exercise to strengthen the chest, shoulders, arms, and the anterior core.
A resistance band and a fixed/stable overhead bar (squat rack/pull-up bar) should be used for this exercise.
Beginners might want to start with a thick, high-resistance band, and transition to a lower resistance band once they have developed the requisite levels of strength, stability, and proper form. If this is still too challenging, elevate your hands by placing them on a box or bench, and proceed to perform the push-ups with band assistance.
Intermediate lifters should start with a thinner, low-resistance band. If you are capable of performing some unassisted push-ups, you can do that, and then add the band assistance once your form breaks down. If you're doing a full-body workout, you can pair the band-assisted push-up with a lower body exercise as part of a superset, or with an upper body pulling exercise. If you are performing a pushing workout, you can do it after a heavier pushing exercise and really challenge your muscles that way. You can also make it part of a metabolic conditioning circuit. Intermediate lifters might perform 2-4 sets of 8-15 band-assisted push-ups.
Women who are comfortable with the band-assisted push-up may choose to perform unassisted push-ups, or you do a very challenging push-up workout performing unassisted push-ups until you burnout, and then performing drop sets by adding a low-resistance band and performing more reps. You can continue to do this with a progressively thicker band until you reach technical failure. This will really challenge your upper body and core. You can also make the exercise more challenging by performing negative reps and lowering slowly, taking 3-5 seconds, or by performing explosive clapping push-ups. These are just a few of many great push-up variations you can do.
The band-assisted push-up is a great push-up variation for people who might not be able to do any standard push-ups, or who can possibly do only a few reps reps before their form breaks down. This resistance band exercise allows lifters to get into regular push-up position, but provides a little additional assistance. How a woman chooses to use a band-assisted push-up is highly dependent on her overall technical ability and experience, how much assistance is being used, the set/rep scheme used, where it falls in the workout, what it’s paired with, and what the rest periods are. In general band-assisted push-ups can be used to do any or all of the following:
Video Transcription:
Band-assisted push-ups are a fantastic progress from doing regular push-ups and are great for people who can maybe do one or two but can’t knock out 5-10 solid push-ups. It gives them a little bit more practice. Incline push-ups are great too, but band-assisted are really cool because it puts you on the ground in the right position and just gives you a little bit of assistance where you need it the most.
So, you’re going to loop the band around the top of the squat rack, you’re going to get down, put it right at your hips, then you’re going to get into a great push-up position. So you’re here, hands are right under your shoulders, spine is nice and neutral, glutes are tight core is braced. Then you row yourself down to the ground, push yourself up. Keeping everything nice and neutral the whole time.
Now if you need more support you can simply get a thicker band and if you need less support you just get a thinner band.
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