Slow Push-Ups

Strange creatures, us humans – it’s not only efficiency we are after, it’s oversimplification too. Let me give you a training related example: people are not just content with getting the best possible results with the least possible effort (which makes sense, if you ask me); they also want to practice as few things as possible!

The dominant mentality could be described as such: “Can you find me one single exercise that builds muscle and strength, burns fat and gives me the heart of a Marathon runner?” This is what people want and the almighty market rushes to provide it with every possible opportunity. Thus, every now and then, we end up not just with the 'perfect training program' but also with exercises being attributed with miraculous properties..

Physical preparation training is not prescribing and performing a (long or short) series of exercises, but the fine-tuning of a series of parameters through various training protocols, in order to perform the specific movements of a particular activity, more effectively and efficiently. In this sense, there are no good exercises or bad exercises and there are definitely no perfect exercises or ‘all-you-need exercises’.

Exercises and training protocols can only be consistent or non-consistent with your training goals, depending upon the results they produce. So as to give you an example, let’s put the slow push-up under the microscope.

WHAT ARE SLOW PUSH-UPS GOOD FOR?

Any type of push-up can build local muscular endurance of the arm extensors and chest muscles. Push-ups can also promote stability at the hips, the torso and the shoulder girdle – as long as they’re performed with proper form.

If your belly is sagging or your butt is sticking up, if your shoulder blades are popping away from your ribcage (winging), if your head is dangling towards the floor, then your form is not proper, and you might be doing more harm than good, both to your posture and your joints, so keep those points in mind (and no, bad form does not ‘promote relaxation’). But what are the benefits of performing push-ups slowly?

Well, performing one repetition of an exercise that lasts one minute is a rather uncommon training protocol that I have never come upon during my years of training or in any of my training books (and I have quite a few).

With the amount of unconventional (bordering on exotic) resistance training methods explored by the Soviets during the 70’s and 80’s, if there was remarkable value in this one, we would definitely know a lot more about how it works, but it is not so. What we can do then, is make a few educated guesses based on similarities with other training methods whose effects we know more about. So, let’s give it a try:

SLOW PUSH-UPS INCREASE CONNECTIVE TISSUE STRENGTH/TENDON STIFFNESS

According to Verkhoshansky, “long application of isometric exercises leads to significant expansion of the connective tissue”. ‘Isometric’ is a contraction of the muscles that is not accompanied by changes in muscle length – when you push against an immovable object, a wall for example, your muscles are contracting isometrically.

Connective tissue in our case is tendons and ligaments, most probably tendons only, since normal everyday activity (without training) appears to be sufficient to maintain 80–90% of ligaments’ mechanical potential.
Remember here that tendons connect muscles to bones, while ligaments connect bones to bones (in joints). Research also indicates that long duration (more than 20 sec) isometric exercises lead to decrease of the elasticity of tendons, i.e. tendon stiffness.

One more thing we often find in strength training literature is that moderate repetition sets (8-12) are optimal for building connective tissue strength – in case you haven’t had the chance to use a timer while training, it is interesting to know here that 8-12 repetitions of an exercise performed in moderate pace last somewhere between 30 and 35 seconds.

What is most likely then is that the accumulated time under tension rather than the way of performing muscle contraction (statically or with movement) is responsible for the increased strength and stiffness of the connective tissues: whether you’re moving or not, if you maintain constant tension for 20-30 seconds in a group of muscles, your tendons become stiffer. It would make sense then to assume that a push-up performed slowly will make the tendons of the muscles around the shoulder and elbow joints stiffer, i.e. harder to elongate.

(SOME) SLOW PUSH-UPS INCREASE LOCAL MUSCULAR ENDURANCE

A variation of the slow push-up often proposed by RMA instructors involves repetitions performed slowly in a limited range of motion, mostly around what is known as the ‘sticking point’ of the exercise, where the effort becomes increased to the mechanical disadvantage of that particular position.

This partial reps protocol has been used extensively by the bodybuilding community and is supposed to facilitate hypertrophy of the slow-twitch muscle fibers, by impairing the blood circulation to the slow fibers through the constant tension. Increasing the size of your slow twitch muscle fibers can also translate to better oxygen utilization by them, thus improved local muscular endurance.

SLOW PUSH-UPS CAN FUNCTION AS A MENTAL TOUGHNESS EXERCISE

Constant muscular tension is associated with a feeling of discomfort, so performing resistance exercises slowly can be used as a means of desensitizing one to the feeling of fatigue – a meditation on pain, if you like. Various methods of removing the focus from the feeling of discomfort can be used, the most common being that of focusing on the breath and regulating it.

WHAT ARE SLOW PUSH-UPS NOT GOOD FOR?

In a few words, slow push-ups will not improve your maximum strength, i.e. the ability of your nervous system to recruit a lot of muscle fibers at the same time, in order to produce more force. They will also not improve your power, which is the ability of your muscles to produce work (movement) in a short amount of time. They will not improve your skill either, since push-ups are a rather simple movement pattern.

One more useful note here is that like any other training method, slow push-ups are subject to the law of diminishing returns: the longer you perform them over time, the less the effect becomes, since your organism becomes desensitized to them and does not adapt any further.

Finally keep in mind that if you only perform horizontal pushing movements (such as the push-up), without any horizontal pulling exercises, you might end up with muscular imbalances in your shoulders and subsequent chronic injuries.