Why You Should Be Doing The Mike Tyson Push-up
Mike Tyson, in his prime, is considered one of the greatest heavyweight boxers out there. Having over 40 knockouts in his boxing career, and that was all thanks to his training routine. He would spend hours upon hours focusing on cardio, air squats, situps, bench dips, etc. Using an exercise that not a lot of people do but is known for developing his physique.
Mike Tyson Pushups
A lot of people think that he came up with the push-up variation, but in reality, he just popularized it. This push-up variation is a unique pushup variation to help make you gains.
Benefits
Mike Tyson pushups are more of a full-body exercise because they involve the legs more than the regular pushups. Activation in the deltoids is also a bit more because it mimics the pike pushup.
How to do it
Have your fingers just below your shoulders, keep your feet on the wall the whole time, keep the knees close to the ground, and depress and protract the scapula engaging the butt and abs.
Mike vs Regular Pushup
Comparing the regular pushup versus the Mike Tyson pushup, the regular pushup has more activation in the chest and triceps, while less activation than the Mike Tyson pushup. If you want to hit your deltoids, it’s best to stick to pike pushups or pseudo-planche pushups. The Mike Tyson pushup also targets the quads more than the regular push-up, but not enough as a regular squat because it is in the horizontal plane of field.
If you want to hit the chest more, you could add parallettes to make it more of a chest movement due to the extra range of motion.
Some people may say that the Mike Tyson pushups can improve cardio which depends on your fitness level. If you can only perform a few reps, then your cardiovascular system isn’t going to be working as hard as if you were doing dozens of reps in one sitting.
The Mike Tyson Pushup is also not the best for boxing even though it has extra deltoid activation. That's because it lacks the explosive power needed to build those muscle fibers. In a lot of sports like football, basketball, etc. You need explosive power to excel in your sport. Someone who seems smaller than the next person but trains for explosive power is going to have more force in their punch. I’ll give you an example, Bradly Martin and Ryan Garcia. Now compared to Bradley Martian, Ryan Garcia is a toothpick. If there were more similar sizes, Ryan Garcia's punch would provide more force because that is what he trains his muscle fibers for. Bradley Martin's 260-pound self doesn’t. So it’s important to focus on explosive variations such as the explosive pushup to improve in boxing.
Progressions
If you are new to the Mike Tyson pushup, you can elevate the body to make it easier, or to make it harder you can elevate your feet using some type of yoga block, or add a weighted material such as a weighted vest.
Conclusion
If you are looking to get fit or just want to add some new variations to your routine, the Mike Tyson pushup is a great one to add. It might get you stares in the gym, but it’s a new variation you can add to your routine to take your fitness to the next level.
