Struggle to do push-ups? This simple resistance band trick makes them SO much easier

Have you ever tried to do a push up and felt embarrassed when you ended up in a face-plant to the ground? If the answer is yes, you aren’t the only one. A full push up requires upper-body and core strength in order for you to carry out a proper rep. If these are areas you need to work on, then you probably won’t have much success throwing yourself into 20 push ups. 

However, Cassey Ho, the founder of Blogilates, posted an Instagram video showing how a resistance band can make the move possible for anyone to try.

Learning how to do a push up properly might feel a little alien to some of us, especially when it comes to executing the correct form and in the video below. Ho swears that her tutorial  will  help those who feel like they ‘can’t do a push-up for the life of them.’ Her super simple hack only requires a resistance band, which we can help you find in our best resistance bands guide. The bonus of this piece of equipment is that you can complete a full body resistance band workout from home, as you build up to mastering the art of push ups.

Cassey Ho begins her Instagram reel looking ridiculously ripped and ready to show us a pretty gnarly fitness hack. She grabs a resistance band, guiding viewers to place it around the arms and above the elbows. Then getting into a plank position with hands underneath the shoulders, and going onto either your toes or the knees.

Then Cassey excitedly says: “Watch how the band actually pushes up your chest - isn’t that crazy?!”

Watch Cassey's push-up hack here:

The resistance band is pushing the chest back up to help Cassey successfully perform a push up. The fitness guru’s Instagram caption says: “If you’re starting out, use the heavy band, then go lighter as you get stronger until you can one day do a push-up completely bandless.”

More push-up tips

We spoke to online personal trainer, Scott Laidler, to find out what other useful tips are good to know when learning to do a push up. Here’s what he had to say:

“Another strategy will be to work the individual muscles involved in a push-up, and then periodically come back to your push-up practice and see how the strength translates to move push-ups. 

"You would do this by specifically targeting your chest, shoulders, arms, quads, and of course working on core strength,” Scott adds, “If you are new to resistance training, using a protocol of three sets of ten will help you build strength.” 

Chests and shoulders can be worked with resistance band chest presses and shoulder presses, while you can hang up the resistance band to do pulldowns, working your triceps. 

“Think of it as hitting a plateau with a 5k time, for example, there is a point where you can't get any faster by simply running more 5ks, you need to take a temporary deviation into other types of workouts, like hill sprints, for example, you then come back to a 5k and your time has improved, you can use this same principle with push-ups.”

YouTuber Hampton from HybridCalisthenics also recommends beginning your push-up journey by training wall push-ups, before slowly working your way down to lower and lower surfaces. Eventually, you'll be able to do full plank push-ups on the floor.