[pinkmuffinere]

Don’t be discouraged, the concept of a “correct push-up” is made up by humans. There’s nothing that makes that definition the truth, except that we’ve agreed upon it. To be fair, it probably works out your muscles more effectively, or in a balanced way or something. But even your “incorrect” push-ups are correct for _some appropriately defined cost function_. I promise, what you are doing is optimal. I just don’t know what for.

And doing 0 pushups is 100% worse than doing 50 of your personally-defined push-ups

[tstrimple]

Sure. As long as you ignore the push up forms that develop problems when done over long times. Not all "that's not the correct form" comes from clueless gatekeepers. Sometimes it comes from actual experts who know certain repetitive motions can lead to injury.

[pinkmuffinere]

Ya, bad form _may_ cause problems. But I'll claim that many more problems arise from doing nothing and getting really out of shape, rather than from doing one of the "wrong" things.

Besides, I can kick my (rather low) ceiling, and none of your experts will advise me on the correct form for this. Without their advice what am I supposed to do, just stop kicking my ceiling? Ridiculous.

[tstrimple]

I don't necessarily disagree with your overall message. But I do think you're undercounting the number of folks who get injured through ignorance. And I don't even necessarily mean traumatic injury. Even just enough injury or soreness to discourage them from trying things again can be problematic enough. Is kicking your ceiling really a good measure of some sort of fitness? Is it worth the risk of slipping and cracking your head? I don't know. Maybe. But it's far more risk of injury than walking around the block a few times and the vast majority of people really just need to start there.

[satvikpendem]

No, you can easily cause injuries from bad form that you wouldn't have gotten simply by doing nothing. I know several people know who broke or damaged something in their bodies and a few who needed surgery to fix it due to bad form over time.

[pinkmuffinere]

I again claim: many more problems arise from doing nothing and getting really out of shape, rather than from doing one of the "wrong" things. You know several people that have been injured, i don’t doubt this. But in the US, 40% of adults are obese[1]. Europe is better but still bad (~20%).

[1] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

[satvikpendem]

Obesity is rather unrelated to exercise, it is about diet primarily; one can do nothing wrt exercise and still be thin. Injuries in terms of suffering are far worse than being unfit (not necessarily obese but not exercising in general), the amount of pain is incomparable.

[safety1st]

While I agree that bad pushups are better than no pushups until you fix them, your first paragraph is misinformation. Anatomy is a 2,000 year old science, not a personal opinion. As a point of fact, if someone flares out their elbows when doing pushups, this will cause two things. #1, it will increase recruitment of the chest muscles at the expense of the triceps, which isn't necessarily a problem. But #2, it will place stress on the shoulder joints, and over time, this can lead to shoulder injuries.

There is no good reason to do pushups in a way that will cause joint problems. If you want to build your chest with pushups, the answer is wide grip pushups, not flared elbows. Your parent may find they are quite good at wide grip pushups, this is common because the chest muscles are bigger and stronger than the triceps.

Given sufficient time, a trainer worth their salt will teach you to develop every muscle. They might very well have you do wide grip. But there are definitely incorrect exercises, those are the ones that harm you. Dead lifting with rounded shoulders is a classic example, lots of people ruin their back doing this. I do both standard and wide grip push-ups. Though personally to build the chest I prefer the bench and other forms of chest press.

[deskamess]

Ah... so I always though pushups were for my chest, but my triceps always got a workout. So I thought I was doing something wrong. I have shoulder issues so the tricep pushup is probably better for me.