There are more than 80 different types of push-ups variations(1) and clearly, we don’t need that many but there are some that can help you intensify your workout and help build muscle. One of those push-ups variations is the ‘archer pushups’.
Push-ups have been always our go-to body-weight exercise and in this pandemic, it has helped a lot of people who wanted to get fit or stay fit but as you start doing push-ups every day over a period of time it starts to get easy, and yes, we can increase repetition but still doing the same exercise will give us monotonous feeling and with that, you will soon lose the interest to do exercise and we don’t want that.
Push-ups like pike push-ups, triceps push-ups, and more can help you a lot, and just like them one of the effective push-ups variations is archer pushups. Okay, it is effective and good but…
What are archer pushups?
Archer pushups help you take more of your body weight on just one arm and the other arm will give you a slight assist, making it a progression exercise for one-arm push-ups. Just imagine standing with an archer ready to shoot that will sum up your archer pushups posture. Archer push-ups are one of the ways for you to earn full-body control and if you like to do bodyweight exercises it’s essential. A major focus will require around the core to keep your body tight and in control so it’s good for your core too.
Archer push-ups difficulty level is hard and it will target your abs, biceps, chest, and upper back.
How to do archer pushups?
- Start with getting into push-ups position with your hand placed a bit wide from the shoulder.
- Your fingers will be pointed towards the sides.
- Now tighten your core and glutes, keep your body in straight.
- Start bending your right arm so you can bring your body down to the right side and straighten your left arm to the left side.
- Bring your body down till your chest gets close to the ground (2 to 4 inches off).
- Now come back up in the middle to return to the starting position.
- Lower the body to the left side by bending your left arm and straightening your right arm to the right side.
That’s it, now you have unlocked archer push-ups.
Point to keep in mind
- When performing archer pushups it’s important to perform slow and controlled eccentric all the way down but do not allow yourself to fall on the ground. You have to control your body to all the way to the ground until the shoulder (extended arm) and chest get close to the ground. If your body keeps falling on the ground you won’t be able to perform a full ranged archer push-ups.
- The angle of the bending arm is also important, this exercise targeted muscle will vary according to the angle you bend your arm. When the bending arm is close to the body making a 10 to 20-degree angle it will target the shoulder and triceps and if the bending arm is at an angle of 40 to 70 degrees it will target the chest. These angles are good but if your bending arm makes an angle of 80 – 90 degrees It can cause chronic injury to your joints and tissues(2). So you should keep your bending arm angle between 10 -70 degrees.
- The bending of the extended arm should not be done by bending the elbow of the extended arm you take more support from the extended arm and that defeats the purpose so keep your extended arm straight, just push from the other arm.
- Keep your range of motion in mind, people trying to do archer push-ups often make this mistake, they bring their body back in the middle before the shoulder and chest can get close to the ground. Always make a sincere effort to make sure your shoulder (extended arm) and chest get close enough to the ground (2 to 4 inches off).
- Keep your body in a straight line, The anterior pelvic tilt and the curving of the body make your movement incorrect. It is important that we do it with a tight core and a hollow body and protracted scapula that will make movement effective.
Progression for archer push-ups
Every hard/intermediate exercise requires progression exercise for you to build strength and reach that level. These are simple progression exercises. If you do them daily I’m sure you will be able to do archer pushups and many other hard push-ups variations. So progression exercises are… (Do keep core and glutes tight in all of these exercises).
- Basic push-ups with your elbow tucked into your ribs.
- Basic push-ups with hand positioned around lower chest line and elbow tucked.
- Assisted one arm pushups – Your extended arm on a elevated surface and bending arm on the ground. if you want you can bend extended arm elbow to make it easy.
- Negative archer push-ups.
- Incline archer push-ups.
Do these all exercises and in no time, you will be able to do archer pushups. If you don’t have enough time to just do these progression exercises, as you’re busy with weight training and archer push-ups is just a variation that you want to do then as you progress with weight training you will build the strength that’s required to do the archer push-ups.
This push ups variation can help you learn one-arm push-ups and as we all have seen one arm push-ups can be hard and for people who are able to do it, the form is sloppy so to do it without sloppy form is a challenge and archer pushups can help us with that. All these progression exercises can help but you also have to eat good, keep your weight in check or lose weight because all of your weight will fall on your arms so less the better.
Benefits of archer push-ups
How to do it? progression, mistake to avoid but now one of the important questions is what benefit will you have if you do archer pushups?. First of all, it’s and push-ups variation so you already get the benefits of push-ups but you also get some other benefits too like…
- Body control – When performing an archer push-ups you have to keep a lot of variables in mind and work accordingly like body alignment, tight glutes, tight core, and bending of your arm, and managing all these variables helps you develop body control.
- Help in strengthening – Doing archer push-ups will get you covered on developing strength in one arm as most of your body weight will fall on that, which in turn will help you get stronger so if you’re stuck on a particular exercise or skill that requires arm strength, archer pushups can help you a lot.
Conclusion
This sums up my knowledge about archer pushups, now you know all about the archer push-ups, and one more thing there are many different types of variations of archer push-ups too and here you thought that archer push-up itself is a variation. We talk about that in some other article.
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