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Okay, it's finally a sunny day, a perfect day to do the video on push-ups, and we can see how double progression calisthenics applies to push-ups. Just to reiterate and remind you and refresh your mind, we're going to pick a relatively easy form of push-up, one that we can easily do. We're going to do it week by week and build up our repetitions until we can do more and more. After we hit a certain goal, we'll move on to a harder kind of push-up. In this course again, with all the exercises, it'll be broken down into three stages: therapy, fitness, and strength. So here we go. I don't have a camera person today, so I'm just going to move the camera around. I hope that's okay.
The first thing is wall push-ups. Scoot your camera a little bit so your audience can see you, like this. Your goal is three sets of 50. That is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, form of push-up, and that is the first step in the therapy stage. Moving on, ideally I'd like to find something that's chest high, since it's a little bit more of an easy transition, but I only had this railing here, so like this. I keep my feet together. If you want to spread them apart, it's all easier. These are called incline push-ups. Your goal is three sets of 40. It's obviously a little harder because you're carrying more of your weight on your arms.
Now, I could break things into threes, but really that concludes the therapy stage for push-ups, because the other ones get a little harder and don't apply as much to healing injury, even though they can. So moving on, the next one you can do, if you find something hip height. I'm using this chair. It's not ideal. If you find a table or something that's hip height, that would be best, so like this. These are also called incline push-ups, with their hips at that height. Your goal is two sets of 35. The sets are going to go down now. There are more sets in the beginning because I want everyone to get a feel for how the exercise works. Basically, it's extra practice. I'm moving on now. We take to the ground. These are called kneeling push-ups, or knee push-ups. I don't call them girl push-ups, because some girls are just very, very strong. So like this, nice and easy, like this. Your goal is two sets of 30. I should have mentioned in the previous stage that this is the second step in the fitness stage. The next step will be regular push-ups, the ones you see all the time. This is how I do them. I don't believe you need to touch your chin or your chest. If your chest is about the width of a fist away from the ground, that's plenty, or you can think of your arms being parallel to the ground. Your goal is two sets of 25. That concludes the fitness stage. I went through it very fast, in a few minutes, but for some people that can take months or years, so don't rush yourself, and always go at a speed at which you feel comfortable.
Now we're going to move on to the strength stage. The first step will be what's considered diamond push-ups, but I don't like making the diamond shape. That puts stress on my elbow, and in my opinion it's not in a good way. I do what you can call arrow-headed push-ups, and my fingers are like this. You see, that doesn't spread the elbows as much. They're like this. It's much more of a natural motion, so like this. Their goal is two sets of 25. We're going to stick with the 25. The next step is archer push-ups, also called flossers. With diamond push-ups, we took our chest a little bit out of the equation so we can work our bicep, sorry, our elbow strength, and also our triceps. But archer push-ups work more of the chest muscles, and they allow us to delve into things like the one-arm push-up and beyond. So here we go, like this. You want to keep your passive arm straight. I don't like going side to side. Do one side, rest, then the other side, rest. When you do that, it counts as just one set, so you do two sets per side, two sets of 20.
Okay, moving on, it gets a little harder, but we will persevere. Some people can go right into the one-arm push-up. For other people it's more difficult. If it is more difficult for you, I'm not a huge fan of partial repetitions, but they help some people really feel the movement. There are many kinds of one-arm push-ups, some very subtle. In my opinion, it's a very ugly exercise. It never looks smooth and beautiful, but it is what it is. If you go off more to the side, it is a lot easier, so something to keep in mind. You kind of want to push. I won't do it as much because I'll get splinters on this deck, but you want to push off with your toes into your arm. That makes the exercise more natural and a little easier. Okay, and remember, if you can't do them yet, you can do half one-arm push-ups, like that.
Now we could end there, but I know some of you are very strong and may want something to go beyond that. You can go quite a bit beyond the one-arm. I'll only cover one more. By the way, your goal for one-arm push-ups is two sets of nine. That should be plenty for you to get to the next stage. It's definitely a strength exercise, and you don't need to do as many, although you can if you want endurance and conditioning. The next one is something I call serpent push-ups, because you coil to the side. They're very rarely seen. I'm one of the only people I've seen do them. Basically, you bring your feet together, and if you go straight down from there, that is not something I've ever seen in person or online on YouTube anywhere. It is possible, and I'm working towards it, but it's very, very difficult. For our purposes, we are going to coil, and they'll be easier, because we can use more of our chest and our entire weight isn't dependent on our elbow. I'm having trouble with the elbow today, the elbow and triceps. Here's what they look like. It's not like this. You can't really see from here, but my fingers aren't facing straight forward. I'm turning them a little bit, because that's how my body will have to move, so like this. I keep my hand right here.
All right, that is the push-up series for the Hybrid Calisthenics workout program, fitness program, whatever. It took a little longer than I thought. It looks like we're clocking in at around then. We'll move on to other exercises. Thank you so much for watching. Your goal is to sit. This is a mess, I'm going to have to redo this, but your goal for the serpent push-ups is two sets of nine.