PUSH

What does lifting a heavy box onto a shelf above your head, moving living room furniture around, and a defensive lineman all have in common? They are all positions that you must push. Pushing movements are any movement that you do that involves moving something away from you. So, that box you are lifting overhead, yeah, that’s a pushing movement. Moving that heavy couch around while rearranging, that too. And defensive linemen push through dudes all day long. Pushing is an innate movement characteristic of being human. We push in so many different ways that it is hard to think of all the situations that we use our pushing muscles. It only makes sense that we should train this type of movement. Thankfully though, we don’t just have to stick to just bench press. There are plenty of other movements that we can do, and combine with other movements that will help us with the necessity to push things in life, no matter the obstacle. 
Generally speaking, the more you are pushing something directly away from you, the more you are using your chest muscles. The more you push something overhead means that you are using your shoulders more. Those are both really important muscles to keep strong for pushing purposes. An easy way to see how strong you are at pushing is to lie on the floor face down and try to push your body off the ground in one rigid movement. If it is relatively easy, that’s awesome, keep doing what you're doing! You have a decent amount of pushing strength. If you find that you lack the ability to do at least one (hopefully you can do a lot more than that!) push up, it’s easy to add pushing exercises into your daily routine. The easiest thing to start with is push ups. To know how you’re properly doing the push-up, start from the floor. This will actually feel a little bit more like a bench press than a push-up starting in the “up” position. Place your hands on the ground so that your fingers are underneath the edge of your shoulders. Your elbows should be pointing away from you diagonally, and your sternum pressing into the ground. Finally to begin the push-up, engage the core, squeeze your gluts, and slightly lift your hips off the ground. Doing so will properly load your body weight to the muscles that should be doing the work. You’ll know, because it will feel really difficult to do. Practice!!!!  Try doing 15 push ups every morning when you wake up. As push ups get easier, start adding more of them to your morning routine. You can also add different variations to change things up, and strengthen different muscles.