 Hello everyone, Lance Goike here today. We're talking about the push-up and we're talking about a mistake that you might make. This one is probably the most common, your hips sag at the bottom. So it looks something like this. And sometimes they don't come up at the top and they just stay sagging. So it usually looks something like this. Now, how do I know I'm doing that wrong? Well, most quantitatively I can see it in the camera. Also I can feel it. I can feel the pressure in my low back. I don't feel my abs turning on. The push-up should be an ab exercise. So I should feel those abs throughout the exercise so that I know that I'm supporting myself with my musculature rather than my joints and ligaments. So what do we do with this? Usually I use a cue that I stole from my old co-worker Jay Chung who I'll see in a couple of weeks. I'm very excited about that. This was, it doesn't really work anymore because Ebola is no longer a worry in politics. But when the Ebola scare happened, he would say this right here, this is a poison Ebola needle. I don't want you to hit me or I don't want you to let me hit you with it. So you'd put it right here on your tummy. And so what that does is if you're hanging down here, it gives you a target to kind of push away from. And once you get to a good position, I just say, oh yeah, that's good. Okay, now hang on to that. Okay, so if I'm sagging, I wanna think bring my stomach away from the ground. Sagging, bring my stomach away from the ground. Now there's one thing that might happen. Sometimes that can kind of cue things away. If you're really driving from the stomach, then you encourage this low back rounding and it puts you in a good position. But if you don't know how to do that low back rounding, if maybe you have hyperactive hip flexors, then you're not going to be able to reverse that position. You're not going to find the abs. You might take some pressure off your back but not a whole lot. What does that look like? So if I'm sagging here and I say bring your hips up and you don't round your low back, look something like this. Now this is okay. It does take some torque off your back but you'll notice my hips are really high and when I do my push ups, I'm kind of like dipping straight down. Not inherently a bad thing necessarily. It's kind of like a more of a shoulder exercise rather than a chest exercise at that point. It's a good transition from a push up into a feet elevated push up or a handstand push up. But if you're in the early stages and you're just trying to learn how to do it correctly, that's not the end goal. Okay, so how did we get here? Hips are sagging. I said bring them up. You just brought your hips up but you didn't round your low back like this. Brought your hips up like this. So in that case, I need to teach you how to round your low back. So if you're still struggling with this, there's a couple different things I will try to cue it first. I like, pretend like you have a tail and I want you to tuck your tail between your legs. You could say something like, or think something like, I want you to be more like a scared dog. Dogs when they get scared, they release pheromones from their butts and so they put their tail over their beehull so that they hide the scent. Fun fact for you. And so it looks like this. Not a bad idea. I will tell you, most people are too flabbergasted by that cue and it doesn't really work that often. I just like to say it. It's more for me. How else can I teach you how to do this rounding? Well, sometimes I need to get you out of this position because it doesn't even work. So if you're here and you can't find it, first thing we do is we shorten the lever, bring your knees down. Now I just want you to show me this cat camel thing. Is that what it is? Cow camel? I don't really know. I want you to learn how to round your back here. And if you can do it here, I say, oh, that's good. Okay, do you feel your abs? And they'll say no, usually. And I'll say, okay, give me a big breath out. Okay, yeah, now I do feel my abs. And then I want you to hold on to this while you straighten your legs. Good, good, good. Now do a push-up. Hold on to it. Oh yeah, wow, that's way harder. Yeah, isn't that cool? It's way harder. So that's generally the progression that we see through these things. If this knee thing doesn't even work out and I've had some people just struggle to get that position, the next thing I'm doing is I'm flipping you over. I'll put your feet on the wall. Can you see my wall? That's perfect, awesome. I didn't even plan this. And then we're gonna learn just how to push your low back into the ground and bring your hips up. These people are going to try to, if I say, so generally just to walk you through it, I say, put your feet on the wall or on a bench. I want you to pick your tailbone up. And they do this. And I say, good, but not that good. What I'd rather see is just your tailbone come up and your back stays down. Okay, and then what they try to do is like this and they just do it a little bit less. But if you look really closely, you can see that my low back is off the ground and my tailbone is off the ground. That is not what we're looking for. What we're looking for is the low back to reverse and to push into the ground and the tailbone comes up from there. I know this is an intricate one, but this is a very important fix. This is a very common fix and sometimes it's very frustrating to fix it. So to recap, hips are sagging in the pushup like this. I want you to try to bring your belly up. If you don't round your back and you just stick your butt out like this while you're doing your pushups, then we got to find a way for you to round your back. Try to cue it first. And if it doesn't work, come down your knees and then from there, try to cue it. And if that doesn't work, lay on your back. I'm giving you a different view. You can put your feet on the ground too. Try to round your back into the ground while picking your tailbone up. So that's everything. This one's complicated. If you can't get it right away, that's okay. A lot of my clients can't get it right away. Even with my help, you have to practice though. You have to learn first how to, like I would try not to spend too much time using your efforts on pushups. I would use more of your efforts on finding that spine position and creating that motion. And once you can find that motion, then you start training it. Then you need to reinforce it. So as soon as you get it, then you move back to the pushup and you try to, you know, maybe before you're ready, but that's how you learn, right? Okay, this one's long-winded. That's it.