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As a part of my P90X program, I found myself doing a lot of push ups.  At first I was simply using my dumbbells as push up bars to get the extra depth that you want to get a good chest workout.  However, since migrating to my adjustable dumbbells, this was no longer an option.  I had seen the commercials for the Perfect Pushup before and was curious to try them.

 

When I went to purchase this item, I searched around for the best deal and the best product.  The only real competitor to the Perfect Pushup is the Push Up Pro.  After some investigation I went with the Perfect Pushup product.  While it is a more expensive price point, it seemed to be significantly better manufactured.  The Push Up Pro has plastic components and seemed like it was much flimsier of a build.  The Perfect Pushup is the original unit that you've seen on the infomercials, it has solid metal components inside and gives a sturdier rotating mechanism. 

When I pulled these units out of the package, they felt good and strong, and had a smooth rotating mechanism.  They're not too stiff, but also not so loosly spinning as to give a feeling of instability.  There's a good rubber grip on the bottom so that they won't slide on you.  They have a good heft to them, heavy enough to provide a quality feeling too them without being a pain to move around.  As a matter of fact, you can grab these things and put them down just about anywhere to get a good workout.

They are intended to be used so that your palms are facing each other at the top of your push up, and then rotate so that they are facing your feet at the bottom of your push up.  This is supposedly the way that your joints are built to rotate during the push up motion.  I found that when performing push ups this way, it certainly gave me a different type of workout as opposed to standard, stationary push ups.  I don't know if it was because it was using different muscles than I was used to using during this exercise, or something inherent in the mechanics of it.  I will say for sure that if you are not used to using any kind of push up bars at all, you will feel extra work from the deeper extension past your shoulders.  Any kind of tower for your hands that allows you to drop your chest lower in relationship to them is going to increase your range of motion and provide a better workout.  However, I've been using push up bars for some time now, so that was not causing the change I felt.  Surely your rotator cuffs are being worked in a different capacity with the twisting motion that your arms are doing.

As far as being natural, I find that when I just let my arms do what they want to do, they tend to stay at about a 30% angle opened towards each other.  They do like having the rotation motion available to twist and move slightly during the motion, however they don't seem to want to perform the full twist.  I don't know if that's just because of poor training for many years, or a factor of how the body is actually built.  So I can't say for certain that this equipment is a lot more natural for my body, but I will say that it is a change to the way that I perform push ups and is activating new muscles in my arms and chest.  For that I suppose it is worth a look.  And if you aren't using any sort of elevation mechanism for your push ups today, then it's worth getting these for that reason alone.  They aren't much more expensive than a set of stationary push up bars and that added depth will make a big difference.

I will say that when performing extra wide push ups, they feel like they might not be holding up to the lateral pressure as well as the direct vertical pressure.  I don't get the feeling that they are going to break or roll on me, but they do feel like they're straining some.  That only happens under really wide stances however and it doesn't hinder my workout at all.

If you do lots of push ups as a part of your workout routine, I recommend getting the Perfect Pushup to take you to the next level.  There aren't many ways that you can supplement the push up, and this is a good and cheap way to change it up for yourself.  Change is good, and will trigger growth in and of itself. blog comments powered by Disqus