how far apart does your arm have to be when u want to do a proper push up?

Question

how far apart does your arm have to be when u want to do a proper push up? if your doing crunches or like sit up, you dont lean your back on the ground right? and do u rest even though your muscle is not exhausted yet??

Answer 1

Keep your elbow tight against your rib cage. Just do it.

Answer 2

According to the Army, you can place your arms anywhere that's comfortable for you, you just have to go down far enough to have your upper arms parallel to the ground before you come back up.
Crunches can be done either way. You can stay up, or come back to the ground. But for sit-ups, if you didn't come back down, you'd be doing a crunch.
I've found that if I rest a little, just before I've reached exhaustion, I can do more at a time.

Answer 3

shoulder width apart.. as for the crunches or sit ups.. I do lay all the way back, i think it depends on the person, I just started Tae Kwon Doe and my instructor doesn't lay all the way back down but only for a second. I have found that if I lay all the way back down when you get up to 40 or so I have a harder time getting back up, but am assured that it will get better. go by how you feel, your body will tell you if you need a minute to rest

Answer 4

I always put my hands a little more than shoulder width apart. The further you move your hands out the easier the push up is.

Depending where your hands are, also changes the muscles that you are affecting. If you keep them shoulder width apart, you are working your chest and triceps. Move them further apart and you are working the outside chest muscle to simulate a butterfly press. The closer your hands are to the center of your chest, you would make the push-ups hard and put more stress on yoru inside chest muscles (next to sternum).

Hope this helps...

Answer 5

Shoulder width is the standard. Diamonds, which are hands together in a diamond shape isolate your chest. Wide grip pushups work your arms out more. Very easy stuff.

Answer 6

the closer your arms are together the more your triceps are doing the work...the farther apart they are the more your pectorials are doing the work. hi rep push ups work your slow twich muscles whereas doing low rep heavy bench press or weighted dips would be fast twitch work (aka white meat and red meat)

Answer 7

Place your hands wherever they are comfortable for you. Placing your hands closer together works out your triceps more and placing them farther apart works out your pecs.