Question about pushups.

[Adonaijah]

My girlfriend recently joined me on my workout days, and she's been doing fantastic with everything except pushups. She can do half of one on an incline, but she has a hard time with her form. She does her best, and I've been encouraging, but push ups are her least favorite workout.

Is there a way to help her either A) do a better push up without feeling useless

or

An exercise she can do in place of a push up to help her work up to it?

I can't think of anything more basic than pushups, and I have that extensive list of exercises 1fever posted, but I don't always know what I'm looking at and thought I'd ask some of our more experienced fitness people.

In the mean time I'm just congratulating her on managing 10 half push ups and reminding her that things will improve as her body improves, so long as she continues to forge ahead with the exercise.

Thanks for the help, ladies and gents. My girlfriend and I appreciate it.

[1fever]

I'd say have her do "girl push-ups" aka push-ups with her knees on the floor. But also keep trying to knock out a real one, past that it just take time. Also take into account men can put on muscle at a very accelerated rate over women due to natural physiology so what takes you a month to master may take her 2. Unfortunately, pushups work a range of muscles that no individual exercise can mimmick accurately. Not even bench. Push ups are technically a total body work out. Chest, tri's, shoulders, upper back, and abs all play into the movement. Any weakness in those and it make the pushup much tougher. In the Army we say "if you wanna get better at push-ups, you just gotta do more push-ups"

[Knightwatch]

Hmm. What do you mean by them being on an incline? How much an incline? Is she doing them standing, against a wall? That's a pretty good place to start. She could even do kneeling wall pushups, if standing is too hard.

Good luck!

[spezzy]

girls can do pushups just as well as guys, don't let her think any different.

here's an awesome video with a pushup progression:

[MMyers]

I would recommend full Push-Up Negatives, but that really depends on the Incline she's using. If she can do ten halves on an incline, she might just be uncomfortable lowering herself. Then again, it might be too much of an incline to start. Kind of like seeing guys at the gym putting on a good amount of weight on the Bench bar or in the Power Rack and only using six inches of ROM. Then again, if it's inflexibility, a higher incline would work better to work out the kinks in her form.

Have her try a Push-Up Negative on her knees and put a cushion or rolled up towel beneath her head to see if it's a mental thing. I know when I started I would go down halfway for a full Push-Up and get nervous, and just go to my knees to do the workout. If it is just nervousness, the first time she lowers herself fully she'll get over that mental block. If it's inflexibility, I'd have her do them on a little bit higher of an incline.

[Nion]

I suck at pushups too, i'm using that exact progression video spezzy posted too

[Junglizer]

Would something like that work for the close-hand variation? I suck so badly at those...