Full Planche Push Up

1. Start in a push-up position with your hands turned slightly inward, placed under your hips.
2. Lean your shoulders forward past your hands and lift your feet off the ground.
3. Balance your entire bodyweight on your hands with your body held parallel to the floor.
4. Brace your core hard and keep your legs and hips in a straight line with your torso.
5. Bend your elbows to lower your chest toward your hands while maintaining the horizontal position.
6. Press through your palms to extend your elbows and return to the top planche position.
7. Keep your shoulders protracted, rounded forward, throughout to stay balanced.
8. Perform reps only within a range you can control without your hips sagging.

Common Mistakes

• Letting the hips sag: Dropping the hips below body line breaks the straight-line position and shifts load off the shoulders. Keep your entire body rigid from shoulders to feet.
• Placing the hands too far forward: Hands positioned ahead of the hips make the balance point unreachable. Keep your hands roughly under your hips before leaning forward.
• Attempting full range before you're ready: Trying a deep planche push up without sufficient shoulder and core strength leads to loss of balance and poor form. Build up with tuck or advanced tuck planche push ups first.
• Losing shoulder protraction: Letting the shoulder blades pinch together instead of staying rounded forward reduces stability in the position. Actively push the floor away to keep your upper back rounded.

Programming Tips

Train the full planche push up at the very start of a session, right after a thorough wrist and shoulder warm up, when the nervous system is fresh. Work with 3 to 5 sets of 1 to 3 reps. It is a maximal strength skill rather than a muscle builder, so quality and full body tension are the entire point.

Place hands under the hips, fingers turned slightly out, and hold a 3 to 5 second full planche before the first rep to confirm the position. There is no external load; progress by adding reps, reducing band assistance, or moving from a straddle planche push up to full. The most common fault is the hips sagging or the feet dropping as the elbows bend. Fix it by pushing the floor away hard through the whole rep, keeping the shoulders protracted, and cutting the set as soon as the body line breaks.

Common Questions

How long does it take to learn a full planche push up?

Most people need 2 to 5 years of consistent training after achieving a solid full planche hold of 10 seconds. The push up adds a large strength demand on top of the hold, so prerequisites like 15 second straddle planche holds and weighted pseudo planche push ups come first.

Is full planche push up harder than one arm push up?

Yes, by a wide margin, because the planche push up requires the whole body to be held off the floor by the shoulders at an extreme lean. The one arm push up is a strength feat but keeps the feet grounded.

What muscles does the planche push up work?

It loads the front deltoids and chest most heavily, with the triceps, biceps tendons, serratus and forearms all working hard to hold the lean. The core, glutes and low back must stay rigid to keep the body horizontal.