The Jumping Jack Push-Up is a must for all athletes. It incorporates stability, strength and power all in one exercise. Your shoulders, chest, back and core muscles all provide optimal stabilization in the beginning of the Push-Up and while you perform the Jumping Jack. The Push-Up builds strength in your shoulders, chest, triceps and core muscles. Excellent leg power is required to perform the Jumping Jack, along with creating great height. And of course, it’s an intense full-body move so it burn fat.

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Benefits

The Jumping Jack Push-Up builds lean muscle in your anterior and medial shoulders, pectoralis major and minor, triceps, and every muscle below your pelvis, including your gluteal muscles. In addition, because of the range of motion in your legs with the movement, the exercise provides an incredible stretch to your hips along with engaging your hip adductors and hip abductors muscles.

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How to

• Position your hands a little wider than shoulder-width apart with your chest facing the floor.
• Your knees, legs and feet should be together with your ankle complex positioned slightly forward, for more of a challenge to your core.
• Lower yourself to the floor keeping a neutral spine.
• As you rise back up to the starting position, jump out your legs in a “V” shape as wide as possible with as much height as you can obtain.
• After performing a Jumping Jack in the air, land softly back into the starting position.

Sets/Reps: Beginners, 3×10 with two minutes rest between sets; intermediate, 3×16, with 90 seconds rest between sets; and more advanced athletes, 3×24, with 90 seconds rest between sets.

Coaching Points

• Extend (lock) your knees fully during the Jumping Jack portion to promote optimal posterior chain recruitment.
• You may use force in your upper body, including your palms, for stabilization and to assist in creating the excessive height that the exercise demands.
• Maintain a neutral spine during every portion of the Jumping Jack Push-Up.
• Avoid letting your lower back curve inward, which results in the hips dropping excessively.
• But do not round your back, which raises your glute muscles higher than your hips and creates scapulae protraction. Both of these incorrect methods can cause stress to your lower back without developing core power in the stabilization and movement muscles.

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