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4 Fighter Push-ups To Get You Ready For The Cage

4 Fighter Push-ups To Get You Ready For The Cage

  1. Are you looking to step up your fight performance and fitness?
  2. Do you want to develop strength that is specific to enhancing your fight performance?
  3. What are you doing to venture beyond the standard push-up to achieve optimal fitness?

Push-ups are a powerful and effective training tool, but fighter push-ups can be found in nearly every box gym, military, and fight gym across the globe. Before anything else happens every athlete should become proficient at performing the standard push-up. Once this is achieved there should be an effort for every individual to progress to the next level. Today’s article is all about exposing you to some of that next level when it comes to fighter push-ups. 

Fighter Push-ups 

1) Hindu Push-up:

When it comes to fighting your shoulder mobility and stability is a huge factor. This is why push-ups are great for your shoulders. Once you’re proficient with the standard push-up then you can branch out to perform some other very dynamic push-up movements. Doing this will elevate your fitness and performance. 

A great example of this is the Hindu push-up. This is a tremendous movement for getting you to move your body in an entirely different way. This style of push-up is designed to help you open your shoulders by simultaneously stretching and strengthening your body.

Perform the Hindu push-up by getting into the yoga downward dog pose with your hips pointing to the sky. From this position you want to dive towards the ground head first and perform a swooping motion as if you’re diving underneath a fence post.

Black and white image of a man performing a one arm push-up off of the kettlebell.

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Once you’ve swooped under the fence post you just simply kick your hips back towards the sky. This will immediately get you back into the downward dog yoga position for the next repetition. By incorporating the downward dog yoga position you’ll stretch your lats. This will allow you to pull your shoulders into flexion for greater overhead mobility. 

This will free up your shoulder girdle allowing you to develop stronger upper body control. When it comes throwing punch combinations this is crucial once you step into the ring.

2) Walkout push-up:

The best fighters all have great body control and reaction time. To reinforce body control the walkout push-up is a bodyweight movement you definitely need to incorporate into your strength program.

This fighter push-up is performed by you starting to settle into a squat from the standing position to place your hands on the ground. Once your hands on the ground you want to walk out on your hands extending your body into an upright push-up position.

Now the key to this movement is at your main point of contact which is your hands. As you walk out on your hands you want to move with intention feeling the ground beneath your hands. The idea here is for you to activate the muscles in your wrists, forearms, and upper arms as you perform the walkout.

Black and white image of a man performing push-ups off of a kettlebell.

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When I have my students perform these I always cue them by telling them to imagine a lion stalking its prey. The point of this is to communicate the image of a big cat always carefully placing its paws on the ground as it walks towards its target. In this case the point is that the cat doesn’t just plod along the ground carelessly, but instead exhibits total control over how it moves in this scenario.

The point is that you should exhibit much of the same control and movement during the walkout push-up. Once you have fully extended your body you want to perform a standard push-up before walking back to stand up out of the squat position.

3) Rotational push-ups:

As a fighter you spend a lot of time throwing punches. This means you spend a great deal of your training with your shoulders getting overloaded with forward movement out in front of your body.  

So this can potentially lead to what is referred to as pattern overload since your action of punching is constantly being performed with your arms moving in the same plane of motion. As a result, this pattern overload can potentially lead to shoulder and neck pain.

One way to combat this is by breaking your body out of the same pattern by opposing the usual pattern which in this case is an overload of movement only occurring in front of your body.

The rotational push-up is a great way to break out of this pattern. To perform this movement you want to perform a standard push-up and simply lift one hand off of the ground to rotate your body so that your hand points towards the sky.

From here simply return to the push-up position to perform a subsequent push-up and rotate with the opposite hand.

4) Plyometric push-up

So if you expect to catch your opponent off guard in a fight you’ve got to have fast hands. Therefore, your hand speed and reaction time are an absolute must when looking to upgrade your fight training.

One way to develop more hand speed is by incorporating some plyometric push-ups into your regular strength program.

The plyometric push-up basically involves you getting into a standard upright push-up position. So upon performing the push-up you want to push off the ground with enough force that your hands elevate up off the ground.

As a result, once you land you want to descend into the next push-up to load your body for the next repetition.

So you can perform plyometric push-ups directly off the ground, but if you want to take some compressive forces off of your wrist you can do them off the side of a bench, or box to redistribute more weight to your feet.

Fighter Push-ups: The Takeaway

Remember that fighting demands certain physical traits. Therefore, when you train you need to be able to recognize what these traits are such as shoulder stability, hand speed, core stability, and reaction time. So once you recognize your physical needs then you must train for those needs.

So what push-ups are you currently using in your strength program?

Are you performing any of the push-ups mentioned here?

Post up and share here in the comments below.

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Related Articles:

Top 5 Ways To Become A Push-up Machine For Optimal Fitness 

Correct Hand Position For Your Push-ups For Optimal Gains

What Push-up Protocol Are You Using To Test Yourself? 

20 Reasons Your Strength Program Is Failing You 

3 Powerful Push-up Variations For Building Lean Muscle Mass

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Brandon

I'm a Certified Strength And Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and author. I have had over 17 years experience in MMA fitness, strength and conditoning, and athletic performance for most every sport. As an author and specialist I've written close to a million words on fitness and strength. I'm also a Muay Thai practictioner and enjoy helping others to reach their peak potential through fitness and performance.

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