Hello, Angie Krueger! The certified personal trainer is serving up a series of strength moves for runners to help power every stride. Angie’s back story: Aside from having run 27 marathons in 27 different states, Angie was recently featured on AMR’s podcast (episode 194, where she explained, among other things, what “cough muscles” are and how to activate them for better results. Intrigued, aren’t you?). Recently she shared the DOs and DON’Ts of a plank, the power squat, the super-effective lunge, and here, she shares the push up. Put the four moves together for an effective strength circuit, and come back every other Tuesday for a follow-up move to help you #findyourstrong.
Side view of proper form (note the plank stance)
This week’s move is a push up. Often done wrong, we are empowering women to do a full range of motion, whether they are on their toes or their knees.
1. Start in the plank position with hands outside of the shoulders, but at shoulder height. You want to pinch all of those plank muscles tightly, starting with a slight pinch of the shoulder blade, belly button pulled away from the waistband, and slight squeeze of the butt and thighs tight.
Come down to fist height from the ground
2. Lower your chest a fist distance from the ground, without breaking that plank position. If you can’t manage to hold plank position with full range of motion, drop to your knees. Or one knee on the ground and one leg straight with the toe on the ground.
3. Return to the top of the movement. Goal is 3 sets of 15 but good form, wherever you are on your fitness journey. No backs arching and no hips dropping.
Look out for the arched back!
Tell us: What’s the one strength move you struggle with?
I struggle quite a bit with push-ups. (And bench press and over-head press, for that matter. At least I can do rows!)
I really wanted to comment that I have been far more successful progressing my push-ups through incline push-ups rather than dropping a knee. I think it makes a big difference to me that the movement is the esssentially same as I progressively lower the incline.