Reply #84: Darn. I was gonna say that. And not just because there were 69 [View All]

[ForrestGump]

replies when I posted. :o

Congratulations, Ms Chick1981!!!! :headbang:

I hate pushups. I used to be good at them, when I was teaching martial arts in my youth (nothing like doing them with the students, whole counting them off at the front of the class, to inspire superhuman effort), but I really think there's something about my body structure that makes them more difficult for me than for others...I mean, I do have strong arms, but the linkage just seems to work against me. In fact, I'm wondering if this is why I am actually better at one-armed pushups than at the regular kind. Spreading my legs seems to help, too.

I had one kung fu teacher, for years, who came up with the most heinous variations on the humble pushup imaginable. I hated that part of the training. No, please, anything but pushups. Among his catalog were varieties of the not uncommon clap-as-you-push-up kind as well as doing pushups with toes on a chair (again, for some reason this makes it easier for me) or between chairs or concrete blocks with the body going beneath the plane of the chair or block's surface (this was decidely not easy) and then, somehow, back up. And, of course, all of the pushups that we did -- two-armed, one-armed and moving -- we did with the usual palms-down configuration as well as on our knuckles, on the backs of our wrists, and on our fingertips.

But he also had all sorts of drills like one that required us to leap, in push-up position, forward along a line of heavy bags on the floor while doing a one-armed pushup and smacking the other arm, bent, down on the bags in a powerful elbow strike. And then there were the ones with us doing the same kind of leapfrogging in pushup position, but this time with our bodies aligned between two rows of concrete blocks, the idea being that we had to propel ourselves from one set of blocks (feet and hands on top of the blocks at every step) without touching the floor, and for an added twist he'd sometimes make us clap our hands while we were in flight...much trembling ensued, of course, as we (by which I mean, especially me, being generally pushup-challenged) contemplated each leap. I lost a lot of blood on that one. And then, believe it or not, he'd have us do it backwards. By which I mean, jumping backwards in pushup position while blindly hoping to land atop the concrete blocks...even the best up-pushers in the school turned that into a cavalcade of tumbing bricks (oh, yeah, in all these drills the blocks were turned with their smaller side up, that made the targets smaller, our height off the ground that much greater, and the surface far less stable).

I remember at least once also doing pushups on top of one another -- palms to palms and feet to feet with the person doing the pushup supported in midair only by the person beneath them. And I have vague recollection of some weird manner in which we somehow linked linked legs and did a tandem pushup that was perhaps the most severe abdominal exercise ever conceived.

But the worst was yet to come: vertical pushups. Yeah, baby. Absolutely vertical, against a wall in handstand position. But that straight vertical one was not the worst...there were variations on that, and the one that I could just never get right was the one wherein we were supposed to push our feet against the wall while our torsos were aligned vertically (in other words, bent 90° at the waist with feet presed against the wall, legs parallel to the ground, and torso perpendicular to the ground with our arms in handstand position) and then do a push up such that out heads almost touched the ground...I just couldn't keep those feet on the wall. No way, man. They'd slip every time.

One-armed pushup on the fingertips, no problem...vertical pushup, big problem.

That's why I hate pushups so vehemently... :D

But we were well-trained, I'll give it that. There's no such thing as good martial arts training that is easy. Nope.

EDIT: forgot a few important variations

(1) palms, wrist, fists, or fingers held with hands together at the body's centerline, right about at solar-plexus level, and going down in a pushup on top of that narrow footing (what the hell?)

(2) Arms stretched out all the way in front of the head with hands again held together, and going down in a pushup from there (getting any strength on the return was even more of a challenge than usual)

(3) A kind of a compromise with hands held palm down more or less beneath where the head was going to be, thumbs touching to form a diamond shape similar to that used in a lot of chi kung exercises, and doing a pushup (sort of) from there with elbows bent (prallel to the floor) at about 90°

(4) Arms held almost as wide as you can get 'em, either with legs spread as wide or held tight together -- two different drills -- and doing the pushup from there (I was not bad at these ones)

(5) The opposite, with hands together in line with the centerline in one of the three ways mentioned above and legs spread all the way apart

(6) Every one of these with hands, feet, or both on concrete blocks or chairs

(7) Every pushup in the repertoire also done with feet extended so that the floor/block contact is on the instep, the top of the foot, ratehr than on the ball of the foot...makes it quite different