One Armed Push Ups -One Arm Chins

Mar13-122

total push ups/chins 347,598

I have been doing lots of push ups and chin ups now for a few years. It strikes me that I should be able to do a one arm push up. Whether you are watching Sylvestor Stallone in Rocky or Jack Palance crank them out on the stage of the Oscar's-they are an impressive feat.

Oscar Push ups

However I cannot do a one arm push up or a one arm chin up. However I am going to be able to do one of each before next New Years Eve. To get myself to the point where I can do one armed push ups, I am adding a few sets of one arm assisted push ups and some negative one arm push ups to my regular push up routine. The assisted push ups can be found on the perfect push up site. There are photos of how to do them and also a video you can view.

Assisted Push Up

You don't have to do these with the Perfect Push Ups bars although the bars do put a little less stress on your wrists. The negative push up is just like a regular push up except on the way down instead of lowering yorself with both arms you put most of the weight on one arm to increase the resistance or load that arm is bearing.

For chin ups I will be adding negative one arm chins and one arm towel chins. The negative one armed chins are similar to negative one armed push ups. Use both arms to get you up above the  bar and lower with one arm doing most of the work. It sounds a little easier than it is. I find that even though I am concentrating on lowering myself with one arm- half way through the rep my instinct is to use both arms.

One arm towel chin ups look just like this:

One arm towel chins

The idea is to use the arm holding the towel, mostly as a stabilizer and only a little to reduce the weight being lifted/pulled by the alternate arm. These are a little tough. The arm holding the towel really gets a forearm workout. Really you will know how much your non-towel arm was working the next day by how sore your forearms are. For all of these exercises I am alternating the working/ non -working (or maybe assisting arm is a better description) each rep. This should be fun.When I get to the point where I can do one arm push ups and one arm chins-I think I'll post my own video.