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74 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Home Exercise Equipment For the Upper Body, February 19, 2009
There are some advantages and disadvantages to this product that buyers need to be aware of before purchasing:
-this is a great in-home piece of equipment to primarily exercise the chest (pecs), front shoulder (anterior deltoids), and back of the arms (triceps)
-once you can do 20 reps in a row with this item, you will not get these muscles any stronger using this piece of equipment. The srength training literature is quite clear (ex. Fleck and Kramer) that anything OVER 20 reps of an exercise will build primarily muscle ENDURANCE and NOT strength. Thus, you can strengthen the above named muscles only to a certain extent- since this exercise equipment is unable to provide progressive resistance (unlike a weight machine or dumbbell where you can keep adding a little more weight now and then which challenges the muscle and makes it grow bigger and stronger). Having said that, it is a great tool to use for moderate strengthening and to maintain a certain level of fitness. Just know it won't turn you into Hercules...
-this is an especially good piece of equipment to use if you have wrist problems since it can rotate and let your wrists do what they do naturally with you do this pressing type motion- unlike other exercise equipment where your hand is fixed on a bar.
-using this piece of equipment is vastly superior to regular floor push-ups as it allows the torso to "sink down" to the floor more which increases the range of motion for you to exercise in. Thus, the muscles are exercised more thoroughly thru a greater range.
When all is said and done: Its a good product for someone looking for a moderate upper body workout and wants to "stay in shape". Also recommend Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff if you have a shoulder problem that interferes with your workout.
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688 of 769 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Push ups transformed into serious weight training by a deceptively simple device., May 22, 2007
I lift weights at a gym 3x a week and don't have room for a serious weight setup at home. I have a few dumbbells and medicine balls. I figured push ups would be a way to get the bench press in at home. I ordered Perfect Pushup because doing push ups hurts my wrists and the product looked like a good idea.
First impression - 'hey, it's plastic'! I thought it was going to be metal, based on the pictures. I was disappointed by their lightweight plastic build. Once I started using them, the disappointment turned to appreciation. These transform push ups into serious weight training three ways: 1) Proper wrist angle - means that I can do push ups until muscle fatigue stops me; not sore wrists. 2) Elevated hands means you can go deeper than when your hands are on the floor. This greater range of motion had an unexpectedly large impact. 3) Rotation reduces stresses and brings even more muscles into play. The hand grips rotate freely, forcing you to exert effort to keep your hands oriented. You can feel different muscle groups come into play as you alter your wrist position. The wrist naturally rotates as you move through the push up motion in different ways depending on how far from your body you place your wrists. It takes a moment to learn how to do push ups this way (the included chart is a good starting point) and rewards some experimentation. Once you've gotten used to Perfect Pushup you will not want to do push ups on the floor ever again. Going back to the floor really shows you how conventional push ups strain the wrist by bending back and punish your elbows by forcing them into a single plane of motion when they naturally want to twist.
Throwing a few sets of these "super push ups" into the mix on weekends has greatly enhanced my home workouts and my overall fitness level. Now that I've used Perfect Pushups for over a month I'm not worried about their durability. They seem quite sturdy in use.
Follow-up: There is some confusion between the two non-travel versions of this product: "Perfect Pushup - Original" (the one sold here and many other places for around $40) and "Perfect Pushup - Basic" (the one sold at Walmart and Ebay for around $20). The Perfect Pushup - Basic has a red stripe under the "Perfect Pushup" logo and the text "Basic" within the red stripe. It has a similar design to the Perfect Pushup - Original but lighter weight plastic build and comes with the handles unattached from the base and you snap them on yourself. I haven't used the "Basic" model - but you can readily see the difference between the models in the photographs: "Original" has a metal handle embedded in a larger, single piece, plastic rotating part. The stanchions holding the handle are molded and of a single piece with the rotating part. The "Basic" model has a lower flatter rotating part, and a plastic handle shaped like a letter "C" - so that the handle itself forms the stanchions connecting down into the rotating part - which is flat and not molded. I don't know if the "Basic" model is compromised in any way as to its function - but it is clearly of a lighter build quality. There's also a "Travel" version that looks a lot like the "Basic" version, but has removable handles and the flat rotating part is much thinner (1/2" instead of 1").
Follow up number two: 1 year after purchase: I've continued to use Perfect Pushup 2-3 times a week and it has remained totally reliable and durable in use. The build quality is obviously better than adequate. I continue to prefer Perfect Pushup over doing push ups on the floor - no comparison. Push ups are great exercise, but they need to be viewed in context as part of a larger exercise regimen. You will not lose weight doing push ups alone (weight training is a piece of the puzzle, but aerobic exercise, diet, and mental attitude work are all vital to that effort also). Push ups are not a complete upper body workout. Push ups exercise the front half of your upper body (triceps excepted) making it really important that you do some lifting to build your back half (i.e. do some sets of rows and pulls with dumbbells). If you build one half of any joint and neglect the other half (i.e. make the half that pushes strong but fail to make the half that pulls equally strong) you can set yourself up for injury. What makes push ups great - and Perfect Pushup in particular - is that they are an excellent upper body workout (one that gets the whole front half of the upper body if you do a few variations in hand grip position) that takes up virtually no space in your home. A good minimal home gym could be just a pair of Perfect Pushups, a Swiss ball (also known as a Yoga ball), and pair of dumbbells (preferably variable weight ones). Final conclusion - Perfect Pushup is a great way to get the mirror visible front half of your upper body worked out in limited space and is part of a home fitness solution but shouldn't be seen as constituting a full fitness regimen in and of themselves.
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82 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty good but overhyped..., December 22, 2007
...and sometimes overpriced!
What these pushup bars allow you to do is simulate the optimal lifting technique if you were doing a bench press using dumbbells (DBs): at the bottom of the bench press when the DBs are next to your chest, your palms are facing each other in a "hammer curl" type of position and as you push the DBs upward and away from your chest, you rotate the DBs inward (counter clockwise on the right and clockwise on the left) so that at the top of the movement your palms are no longer facing each other but your thumb knuckles are facing each other instead, and you might gently clink the dumbbells together for good measure. By adding a twisting motion to the pushing motion, you will feel a deeper flexion over more of the chest muscles including the insides of your pecs, rather than just the outside of your pecs next to your deltoids. This is the other reason that DB bench presses are essential, though obviously you can lift more poundage using a barbell (the main reason is that you will strengthen both your left and right sides of the body more evenly).
Just as you will find that you won't be able to use quite as much poundage doing a twisting DB bench press rather than a non-twisting linear DB press, so with these twisting pushup bars you will find yourself being able to do fewer repetitions than with normal fixed push-up bars. That is really the main advantage of these "Perfect Pushup" devices: you don't need to crank out as many reps to get to the same level of exhaustion. I normally can do around 30-40 reps per set with normal pushup bars, 50 reps per set with no bars just the ground, and only about 20-25 reps per set with these "perfect pushup" bars. This means you get a faster, more efficient workout. And if you are prone to rotator cuff issues, also a safer workout as long as you don't space these bars too far apart. They work best at shoulder width and especially, closer in---which makes perfect sense, since if you were doing a twisting DB bench press you would hold the DBs much closer together than if you were doing a barbell bench press.
Now the big caveat here is cost to benefit ratio. Normal pushup bars can go for as little as eight bucks, so you need to consider if it's really worth it to pay five times more for these "perfect pushup" ones. (I did find them at Wallyworld for twenty bucks though.) The claims of these things giving you spectacularly better results in mass and definition are, of course, just a bunch of sales hype.
Either way, pushup bars of either kind are a HUGE improvement over just plain 'ole pushups off the ground...less carpal tunnel syndrome risk and much fuller range of motion.
PS. The best way to get a great chest workout at home would be to pre-exhaust your pecs with say 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps of DB pectoral flies with moderate weight, and THEN do the pushups! Otherwise what often happens is that the delts and triceps get tired out before the pecs (a much larger muscle) are completely exhausted.
PPS. There is an alternative way to do pushups WITHOUT handles of any kind, and WITHOUT any carpal tunnel syndrome risk: do them on your fists, with a folded up washcloth or other padding under your knuckles if needed. I got this idea from scoobysworkshop dot com, which btw is a TRULY EXCELLENT resource for home workouts without a whole lot of equipment...tons of instructional videos there which are also available on YouTube and it's 100% free.
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