Improve Your Mood: Push-Ups Can Help

 

 

 

 

 

Push-ups are a good way to measure your upper body strength. They are a challenging movement at first.  And they may look intimidating, especially when we watch it in military movies. But we improve at anything with practice and the benefits of push ups are worth it. Not only does it strengthen your body it also improves your mood. Stress relief along with stronger muscles are the benefits waiting for people willing to take up the practice. Just keep a good posture, a level back, and proper placement of your hands to minimize stress on different parts of the body. Do that and you can have a good set of 5, 10 or 20 or more.

The exercise is simple and useful for training. It can enhance ones life in sports and the everyday. Push-ups don’t just train the muscles like the pectorals, deltoids and arm muscles. They can be used to train the mind as well.

The Everywhere Exercise

Push-ups are an essential exercise that can be done anywhere. They’re easy to learn and anyone can do them. There are variants of them which can work out different parts of the upper body in different ways. They can be combined into nearly any workout scheme as a warm-up or cool-down filler. All you need is solid ground beneath you.

It’s no question that regular exercise helps the body in more ways than just building muscle. This Exercise activates a healthy release of endorphins in the brain which help manage and uplift mood. So it fully helps out with brain health. Push-ups regulate blood flow to parts of the body that may get strained or sore from long periods of rest. They are a quick and simple maneuver. Be sure they can break up that rest in an instant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s important to listen to our bodies and make form a priority. There is no need to rush into the standard push-up form. Push-ups can be modified in many ways to accommodate all types of people. Those who lack upper body strength can reduce the load with kneeling push-ups, starting with knees to the floor instead of balanced on the toes. Wall push-ups, or push-outs, are also viable to control how much body weight is being lifted with each push, and prevent any sudden slips chest-first to the floor.

A female fitness instructor demonstrates the finishing position of a kneeling push up

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pushing Up a Routine

You can do push-ups everyday or fit them into any schedule. They can immediately improve your outlook and mood when done. Push-ups provide the same relief and stress release as a quick, sweet snack, but they shred pounds instead of add them. And like sweet snacks, they’re best in thoughtful moderation. To get the best results from push-ups, they require Discipline.

Discipline is a hard quality to master. It’s setting your own schedule and sticking to it without any external punishment for failure. All the responsibility of success falls on you, which means so does the responsibility of managing failure. If you choose not to punish yourself for straying from a routine or failing to meet a self-imposed deadline, who’s going to know? That kind of pressure can be a lot to handle when changing our routines. That’s where learning self-discipline comes in.

 

 

 

 

 Push Ups As a Motivator

So where do push-ups come into play? Whenever you need them. The benefits of push ups are endless. They can be used as a tool to promote better discipline. You can use it either as a punishment or a motivator to keep yourself on track. Did you set a deadline and fail to meet it, even though it was something that was strictly personal and affected no one else? That’s a set of ten push-ups. Did you order delivery when you had perfectly good meals to cook at home? Push-ups until it arrives. Forgot to wash the dishes? There’s the floor, get to pushing.

 

 

 

 

 

But beware: using any activity as “punishment” has a long-term psychological effect. Our brains are good at learning from patterns, and if you pair disappointment, guilt or any other stressors related with personal failure with push-ups, they will cause those demeaning feelings as you do them. The regular balancing release of positive chemicals may lessen as your body and brain associate push-ups with negativity.

You can swing those emotions around by using push-ups as a motivator. If you’re about to do something you like and are excited for it, do some push-ups to pump yourself up and get excited. Using push-ups as the warm up for a workout, or interspersed throughout a regular day in the gym, gives them association with the rest of the endorphin-releasing activities in a positive manner. Push-ups before breakfast help associate them with meals and beating hunger. Push-ups while you’re watching your favorite show give them association with entertainment. Eventually you’ll learn to want to do push-ups as their own reward.

By repeating this pattern, using push-ups as the simple go-to exercise to strengthen a routine, you build discipline. Your brain and body learn in different ways, so when your body feels good your brain associates your activity at the time with what made it feel good. You can “learn” to enjoy or accept certain behavior patterns as you do them until it becomes second nature. Once you develop a sense of care and a self-motivated desire to adhere to your own expectations, you can enforce that with discipline.

Repeat your Gains

Learning discipline takes more than a sit-down lecture or a class, it requires active learning. Part of that activity is exercise, and push-ups are the best basic exercise to incorporate into a routine centered around discipline. Even if you fail a few times and subject yourself to punishment pushes, you will notice progress in an unavoidable way: your gains. Push-ups will help build muscle even if you have trouble cutting fat. You will feel better as you develop, whether you use push-ups to your benefit or as a punishment, and that feeling of progress will help you affirm your goals.

This is how you use push-ups to improve your life from the ground all the way up. By the time you manage to perfect your routine, you’ll feel the difference. What felt like a punishment of 10 push-ups is now as simple and effortless as getting dressed or doing the dishes. Just be sure to up the reps as you get stronger. What’s easier, two minutes of scrubbing plates or 200 push-ups?

 

 
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Push-Ups & Motivational Speeches.

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