Having trouble wrapping my brain around this basic concept.
Where I’m getting caught up is that I understand that muscles can only pull, not push. And it has something to do with antagonist/agonist Muscle pairs. So if muscles can’t push, then how am I able to do a pushup? All explanations I can find are going right over my head.
In: 1
Look at your arm. The part between your shoulder and your wrist is like two rods with a joint in the middle. You can bend it and you can extend it back to straight. You have muscles that only can pull, so you need two of them, one to close the angle between the two “rods” (biceps) and one to open the angle (triceps).
When you do a pushup, think of every single joint that needs to move, which way it needs to move and which muscle can do that. You extend your arm, so you need your triceps. At the same time you swing your upper arms from your side to the front of your chest, around the shoulder, your pecs do that. In reality a lot more muscles are involved, among other things to stabilize all the joints that need to stay where they are.
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