Counter Push Ups

Here’s the video on countertop push-ups I refer to in my earlier Ten Minutes to Great Arms video.  When Covid kept us all indoors, the priest at my little Episcopal church here in Laguna Beach asked me if I’d do some short exercise videos so people could move at home without the gym or a class. 

The video below is one that I created to answer that request.  Simple and not real fancy, it shows you how to use the countertops in your house to do some effective movement that will strengthen your arms, upper back, and core. 

I learned these from my yoga teacher Geo Moskios. 

When I began taking yoga, I started with Geo’s Power Yoga.  If Geo hadn’t been around, maybe, just maybe, I would not have fallen in love with yoga like I did.  I was once told by a podiatrist that I had a marine mentality for exercise.  I liked exercise to be hard, painful and exhausting.  If it wasn’t, I felt cheated and that the exercise was worthless.  When I found Geo, former marine and the father of Power Yoga, I felt I had found home. 

Long story short, continuous injuries led me to change my mentality about always pushing hard with exercise. But at that time in my life, his class was just what I was looking for. Sometimes in his hour and a half class, we did 180 pushups scattered throughout his killer sequence that pushed hard.

His class built to a great and painful crescendo and then finally, after standing on one leg, head to the standing leg, other leg raised in a standing split, and balancing with hands at prayer position on the chest, we jumped back into plank pose, and did our last set of chaturanga pushups, to Updog, and finally, to our final resting pose in Shivasana where Geo led us into a deeply soothing and thoroughly relaxing meditation from our toes to head to the center of our brain. 

And here we could rest. 

Ah, but I wandered off point.  

Back in 2006, I had a terrible injury from water skiing, that detached my C7 nerve from my spine and left my right arm limp and lifeless.  Doctors told me I may never be able to use that arm again. (Don’t ever listen to that kind of talk.  But that’s another story.) 

My pain was excruciating and the muscles of my back and neck were in constant spasm to protect my nerves. I had a hard time walking and even holding my head up. It took me a year to be able to walk around the block and hold my head up for any significant period of time without lying down.  

I spent a lot of time lying on the floor picturing my nerve growing back into place. It took the right chiropractor, reiki practioners, cranial sacral therapists, massage therapists, healers of all sorts, along with a lot of encouragement from Geo to get back my strength and ability to function normally.  It was 3 years before I was able to fully do a dance or power yoga class again.  

My arm was very weak when I was first back in class. I was able to put some weight on it, but not a lot. I couldn’t do the pushups I used to breeze through in class. 

And so, Geo taught me about countertop pushups. 

While I can do pushups on the floor again, I still love countertop pushups.  I do them every single day.  

Usually, 20 at a time in a set.  But you start slowly, with maybe 8 at a time, if you haven’t been doing work like this.  

I stand about 2-3 feet away from the counter.  Find what’s comfortable for you.  The farther you move back, the harder they will be. 

I do them first in the chaturanga position with elbows in tight to the sides.  Then I move my hands out wide, turn them slightly inward towards each other, and do them from this wide position to use more of my pectoral muscles across the chest.  

You can fit these in when you’re waiting for your morning tea or coffee to brew or waiting for the water to get hot so that you can wash your face. 

To get the full benefit from these, you want to use all of your body.  

If you feel like they are getting too easy, do more.  Or find something lower to lean on so that the angle of your body to the floor is reduced … like on a staircase. Or on the side of the tub.  Then, take them to the floor.  You can even start the floor ones on your knees until you can do little half pushups from plank pose. 

Even in a floor pushup, you do not need to go all the way to the floor.  You can hurt your shoulders doing going too deep.  Half way down or less, elbows in tight to the sides, and squeezing your shoulder blades together as you go down, while really engaging all of your core, will keep you safe on the floor.  

But as I said, I keep the countertop pushups in my daily routine. I love them. 

Hope you do too. 

Listen to your body.  And enjoy!  

Much love, Martha