Women's Push-Up Hack: How Anatomy Can Improve Exercise

Push-ups can be difficult, even for people who are otherwise very fit. Yet many women find them hard to master, including after spending months training at the gym.

It is therefore unsurprising that a supposed "women's push-up hack" gained traction on social media, with several videos attracting widespread attention.

The technique requires only a small adjustment to hand placement. Rather than placing the hands facing forwards and in line with the body, women are advised to turn their hands sideways, with their fingers pointing away from the body.

Anatomy offers an explanation for why altering hand position may make push-ups easier for women. The reason relates to a body part that might seem unrelated: the pelvis.

The pelvis influences the position of the arm in relation to the body. In women, the angle at which the forearm joins the upper arm at the elbow - called the carrying angle - averages around 15 degrees, compared with approximately 10 degrees in men. Women have a larger carrying angle to create additional clearance around the pelvis during movement.

This carrying angle affects more than the way the bones of the upper limb join each other and the torso. It also influences the direction in which muscles contract.

Women's push-up hack and arm alignment

This may be why conventional push-ups are more challenging for women. Positioning the hands slightly wider apart and rotating them a little outwards enables the muscles and bones to move in a way that better matches their natural patterns.

Women also tend to have more flexible ligaments and tendons, so their joints commonly have a wider range of movement. However, if a movement's biomechanics are not properly aligned, this may place greater strain on the joints or lead to more pain.

The torso, which links the top of the shoulder with the arm, is 12.4% larger in men than in women. This further contributes to biomechanical differences, including centre of gravity and the muscles that work most efficiently in particular exercises.

Shoulder exercises and women's anatomy

Push-ups are not the only exercise that women may wish to modify to suit their anatomy. It may also be useful to change how other arm exercises are performed, especially movements in which the arm is raised above the head.

Women are more prone to shoulder injuries caused by overuse or repeated movement. This is because women's shoulder joints are smaller and more mobile than men's, giving them a greater range of motion.

However, because the shoulder is such a mobile joint, this extra mobility also brings instability. As a result, the shoulder depends heavily on the rotator cuff muscles to keep the joint in position.

This is compounded by the fact that women have less muscle mass, a differently shaped contact point between the shoulder-joint bones, and clavicles that are shorter and thinner.

Together, these anatomical differences create a higher injury risk for women during exercises involving internal shoulder rotation or overhead movements. These include shoulder presses, tricep dips, lateral raises, upright rows and overhead presses.

Skull crushers - a tricep exercise performed by lying on a bench and slowly lowering a barbell towards the head - along with neutral or thumbs-up lateral raises and seated dumbbell presses, provide safer options for the shoulder.

For those who prefer dips, keeping the torso perpendicular to the ground can lessen shoulder strain.

Angled bars can also be used instead of parallel bars. Because angled bars slope slightly towards one another, they permit a more natural wrist position than parallel bars, where the thumbs point directly forwards.

Exercise and anatomy

The pelvis may also influence the way lower-body exercises are carried out.

Each of the pelvis's two halves consists of three separate bones, which fuse during growth. To allow a foetus to pass through during birth, the female pelvis is about 25% wider than the male pelvis. This variation affects lower-limb positioning.

A wider pelvis gives women a larger Q angle, short for quadriceps angle. The Q angle is created by intersecting lines running from the patella, or kneecap, to the pelvis, and from the patella to the tibia, or shin bone.

The alignment of the Q angle affects the role of leg muscles in producing movement. Women may therefore need to take care with exercises including squats, lunges, deadlifts and box jumps, as these anatomical differences combined with technique could raise the risk of injury.

In general, women are eight times more likely than men to sustain an anterior cruciate ligament injury (ACL), and the Q angle is one factor contributing to this risk. Exercises that place substantial load through the joints may consequently need to be modified.

A wider pelvis can also make the knees bend inwards towards each other, a movement known as caving. When landing from jumping exercises or during squats, this can significantly raise injury risk. Turning the feet around 30 degrees outwards for these movements can decrease caving by up to 50% and lower the likelihood of knee injuries.

When performing a squat, keep the pelvis level - parallel with the ground - throughout, and prevent the knees from caving inwards. The knees should also not travel too far forwards beyond the toes, while the foot must stay in contact with the ground at all times. Given their wider pelvis, some women may also benefit from a slightly wider stance, with the feet just wider than shoulder-width apart.

Small adjustments that account for anatomical differences may help women lower their injury risk and make their workouts more efficient.

Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.