Pick the Push-Ups That Work for You!

There are so many excellent Push-Up variations you can do, that it is not necessary for you to think you must master them all in order to develop a flawless physique.

I personally think that the standard Atlas I Push-Up may be the single best variation for sculpting one’s body. Charles Atlas had thousands upon thousands of students who developed awesome physiques and outstanding fitness in just twelve weeks of concentrated effort following his Dynamic Tension Course.

This one exercise, the Atlas I Push-Up between chairs with feet on the floor, was the foundational exercise upon which the entire Atlas system of training was built. It really is that good.

Atlas recommended that students who were interested in achieving the best possible results should work up to performing 200 repetitions each day by performing half of them each morning and half each evening. One man who did exactly that was former “Tarzan” actor Jock Mahoney. When Mahoney appeared on Merv Griffin’s show more than 35 years ago, Merv showed a clip from the film Tarzan Goes to India , and exclaimed, “My gosh Jock, how many hours a day did you spend at the gym to look like that?”

Jock, who had been an ace stuntman in Hollywood for years before playing Tarzan, just laughed and responded, “I didn’t go to a gym, Merv. I just did what I’ve always done since I was a 16 year old kid who wrote to Charles Atlas in 1935.” In other words, Jock Mahoney built his lithe, perfectly sculpted body by doing exactly what we teach in Transformetrics.

But even the Atlas Push-Up has three additional variations that allow one to sculpt and build the upper body from different angles. Is it necessary to perform all four variations? Absolutely not! Atlas only featured the standard version with feet on the floor. Nonetheless in my upcoming book Ultimate Push-Ups for the Awesome Physique I present all four variations of the Atlas Push-Up because it does add for some interesting additions.

Now, is it absolutely necessary to perform Atlas Push-Ups? NO WAY! The Atlas is great, but in my new book I share several examples of men like Woody Strode who built flawless physiques doing nothing more than standard (on the floor) Push-Ups.

Is it necessary to perform Standard Push-Ups in order to obtain a great physique? Again, absolutely not. For example: I had a friend in high school, Tim Peterson (no relation), who like me had had polio and was totally paralyzed for life from the hips down. Nonetheless, his upper body was flawless because, like me, he was an Atlas student. Since he couldn’t use his legs to do Atlas Push-Ups between chairs, we made him some makeshift parallel bars that didn’t look good, but which worked like a dream. Before long Tim was knocking out four to six sets of 50 reps each day—and man did he have an awesome upper body from just that one variation A-L-O-N-E!

My point is to never—under any circumstance—allow what you can’t do to prevent you from doing what you can.—J.P.