One Arm Push Up Progression | Minimal Equipment, Maximal Strength
Disclosure: This article may contain affilitate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Overview
You'd be hard pressed to find an exercise more well known than the push up. For many people, it was likely the first formal exercise they ever did. It's a highly functional movement, works almost all of your upper body pushing muscles in addition to your core, and allows for natural hand placement and scapular movement. It also requires absolutely no equipment and can be done almost anywhere.
However, the standard push up is only useful for building strength up to a point. That's where the one arm push up progression comes in. By shifting more of your weight to one arm, you can increase the resistance and continue to build your upper body pushing strength.
There are a few other ways to progress the push up, but working towards a one arm push up is great because it doesn't require any equipment, making it very budget friendly and able to be done pretty much anywhere. It also is unilateral, helping to smooth out any imbalances between your arms. Finally, it introduces a rotational challenge, which improves your core and shoulder stability.
So, how do we build maximal pushing strength with minimal equipment? There are two general strategies which we'll start with before discussing the usual progression approach.
Assisted One Arm
The first general strategy is extremely simple. Just shift more of your weight onto one arm and assist with the other one. As you get stronger, you'll assist less and less until you can push yourself up with only one arm. There are a couple different ways to accomplish this.
The most measurable and consistent way to progress this is by setting your assisting arm increasingly farther out as you get stronger. The wider apart that you set your assisting arm, the less it can help. You can definitely just eyeball it each time, but using something to mark the floor (like tape) or a measuring tape can help you stay consistent. Once you're able to keep the assisting arm completely straight throughout the whole rep, you can start progressing by using less fingers. Once you can do a push up with the assisting arm straight using only one finger, you'll be very close to a one arm push up.
Two other options are uneven push ups and staggered push ups. With uneven push ups, you'll put the assisting arm on a higher surface or object. The higher the object, the less assistance it can provide. However, this really only works to a certain point, where it then starts to reduce your range of motion.
Staggered push ups are similar to setting hands increasing further apart, but rather than putting your assisting arm out to the side, you'll put it out in front of you. You can certainly use this method if you prefer, however, I've found the putting the assisting arm off to the side to be more consistent.
One Arm Incline
The second general strategy is probably the most direct way to work towards a one arm push up. However, it requires some additional set up or equipment. You'll be doing one arm push ups right away, just on an incline, so that your hands are higher than your feet. To progress, simply do one arm push ups with less of an incline.
This strategy works really well if you have a rack and a barbell that can be set at different heights. A low budget option that also works fairly well is using a staircase and going down a stair as you get stronger.
Traditional Progression
The usual approach for getting the one arm push up is working your way up through a series of progression steps. There are a lot progression series already out there, so rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I'll highlight some of the most important steps.
The first important inclusion is the diamond push up, also called a close push up. Rather than being placed about the shoulder width apart, the hands are placed close together, so that your pointer fingers and thumbs sort make a diamond. These are a great beginning progression step since it closely matches where your arm will be positioned when doing a one arm push up.
The second important inclusion is some form of archer push ups or typewriters. These should come as a more intermediate progression and are important because they closely match the arm positioning while introducing more of a strength and rotational stability challenge.
The final important inclusion would be some variation that trains the rotational stability needed for the true one arm push up. Incline one arm push ups, one arm push up negatives, or simply holding the top position with just one arm are all good examples.
Tracking Progress
Tracking your progress can be difficult. With the one arm push up progressions, you don't know exactly how hard each progression exercise is, which makes incremental progression and precise tracking very difficult. While I'm still working on a good method for tracking push up progress, Worked Out Fitness' workout tracking feature was developed to help make tracking calisthenics easier. The difficulty of each progression exercise is quantified, allowing you to easily compare a set of archer push ups to their weighted push up equivalent.
Alternatives
While the one arm push up progression has definite advantages, one of these is sort of a drawback in disguise depending on your goals. The advantage in question is the rotational stability that the one arm push up both trains and requires. This is a great component to train, but it can take away from developing upper body pushing power.
So, if you're looking to progress your upper body pushing power a bit more directly, there are two general ways to do so with the push up. The first is by actually adding additional weight. While this requires a bit of equipment, it can be quite effective. For a more thorough explanation on this method, check out this article.
The second way of progressing your push up is by working toward the planche push up. This has maintains the benefit of requiring no or minimal equipment, and is also an impressive looking skill. For more info on this method, check out this article.
