Bodyweight strength training exercises are a great way to enhance your physical and mental abilities. These exercises need both muscular strength and control abilities to be done accurately.

The advance variation of the traditional pushups requires incredible core strength and body balancing capabilities.

The advantage of bodyweight exercises is that they can be performed anywhere and everywhere. You do not need to have any fancy gym equipment to attempt this effective strength gaining exercises. Calisthenics exercise use the weight of the body to provide resistance and pressure on different muscles. This stress in return enhances the overall ability and strength factor of the muscles.

One such variation of this bodyweight exercise is tiger bend push-ups or also commonly called tiger pushups. Tiger bend pushup is an advanced version of regular push up and must not be attempted before getting accustomed to standard push up.

Tiger Bend Pushup

Tiger bend pushups is an effective exercise for your upper body muscles like deltoids, triceps, and trapezius. If you think that regular push-ups are getting lame in your fitness routine, this variation of push-up is an efficient way to rule it out.

This type of pushups has more variation in itself, which can also be tried out.

You can attempt the elevated tiger bend pushup and the floor tiger bend pushup, depending upon your compatibility with the exercise. Both of this exercise have different difficulty levels and but they involve the same shift and bend in weight.

In this segment, we will discuss the technique involved in tiger bend push-ups, the benefits of this exercise, how often you should attempt tiger bend push up, its comparison to other bodyweight exercises and how you can make it more challenging.

Technique to do tiger bend pushup

This is an advanced progression of standard pushups. So if you’re not comfortable with regular push-ups, you should not try tiger push-ups at all. However, this is a great exercise and can be used to work your way up to the freestanding handstand push-ups. Following are the steps involved in executing the perfect tiger push up.

1. Get in the top position of a push-up and extend your arms. The neck and the back must be in a straight line. Place your hands a little wider than the shoulder width and tighten up your core. This is your starting position for the push-up.

2. Now lower yourself to the bottom position until your chest almost touches the floor. Push yourself back by getting the forearms and back of the elbow to the ground position. At this point, the hip may rise a little high.

3. Now go back to the bottom position of push-up by pushing forward, and later go back to the starting position by pushing up.

4. Repeat. Perform as many repetitions as possible.

Changing the level of inclination of the body will increase or decrease the amount of body weight that gets lifted up. Also altering the distance between your feet will alter the expanse of core involved.

Elevated tiger bend push-ups

To attempt the elevated tiger bend push-ups, you must have the necessary strength to perform the freestanding handstand pushup and hold the position for at least a minute or two. Only do this variation, if you are capable of executing the handstand pushups easily.

Elevated tiger bend push-ups involve shifting the weight from hands to elbow stand as compared to handstand push up. From the elbow stand position, push forward and then up. Continue the same movement as you come down.

Body Form and Breathing Pattern

The hand position must be slightly wider than the shoulder width, and the elbow must be in line with the body. Engage your core and keep it tight. Your body must maintain a straight line from head to heels. This is the correct form to attempt tiger bend push-ups.

Breathing is quite essential in any fitness exercise. Breathe in as you slowly lower the body to the floor. Breathe out as you extend the elbow and push your body in the starting position.

Muscles involved in tiger bend push-ups

Tiger bend push-up is an effective exercise that targets various smaller and larger muscle groups. The primary targets of this exercise are the triceps, forearm, and the shoulder muscle. This exercise enhances the quality of pectorals, deltoids, trapezius, and triceps.

This workout is great for athletes who are required to pass or shoot the ball.

If you have strength in the triceps, it reduces the chances of tendinitis. Elbow joints are the one to take a major hit if you have weak triceps muscles. Thus, include this exercise in your fitness routine to have powerful triceps and reduce the chances of injuries to your elbow joints.

Sets and Reps

Before adding this exercise to your fitness routine, you must be able to do at least 10 – 12 repetitions of regular push-ups. This is not an exercise for beginners. Start with the regular push-ups and build your way up to the tiger bend push-ups.

For intermediate, this is a great exercise to get yourself involved in and try to attempt at least 2 – 3 sets of 5 – 8 repetition. Continue doing this until you get the form and movements right.

For advanced level athletes, increase the number of reps from 8 to 12. Incorporate this exercise with your other full body workout, and in a week time, you will be able to feel the difference in the tricep and chest.

Challenge Yourself with Tiger Bend Pushup Variations

You must know it is time to increase the difficulty level when your body gets accustomed to the normal fitness routine. Increasing the difficulty level is important because, after a certain stage, muscle growth reach a saturation level and then they hardly make any improvement.

Thus changing the angles and added weight becomes so much important in any fitness routine.

To add intensity in tiger bend push-ups, you can use a weighted vest and increase the weight carrying lifting of the body. You can try the elevated tiger bend push-ups, which is another effective bodyweight exercise.

If the normal tiger bend push-up is difficult itself, try the knee position and build your way up. Remember, do not try this exercise if you are a beginner. This exercise is for intermediate level.

Precautions While Performing Tiger Bend Pushup

1. Make use of a step to increase the range of motion for better triceps. Place the hands on the step so that the elbows will be able to go further down. This increases the range of motion for the elbows that they go through.

2. Getting your feet closer to each other will engage your core more. The core will then have to be tougher to stabilize the body.

Tiger bend pushup vs. other bodyweight exercises

Tiger bend push ups are effective for athletes who are required to push or throw the ball. In movements like throwing the ball, a lot of tricep strength is required. If you don’t have the necessary triceps strength, elbows and shoulders are the ones that get the punishment.

Since these are the multi-joint muscle, it might affect one of the many joints in that region.

Tiger bend push-ups can be little difficult one to do because of the complicated form and movements. You need to be more technically correct in this exercise as compared to other bodyweight exercises.

The muscles involved in this exercise is more or less the same as that in the standard push-ups.

This workout, as with other bodyweight exercises, enhances the ability of your triceps, chest and shoulder muscles. To break free the monotonous-ness that the regular push-ups bring in, tiger bend push ups can be a great variation to be added in your regime and ultimately feel like a tiger.

The body creates a form that a tiger does and it will certainly provide you a strength as that of a tiger.

Wrapping up

Tiger push ups are not as difficult as some of the other bodyweight exercises like planche push-ups, superman push-ups or the freestanding handstand push ups. Tiger bend push-ups require the right form and are only effective if done properly.

This workout doesn’t need a super powerful core, but it must follow if only you are able to execute regular push-ups quite easily.

You can play around with your feet to increase or decrease the complexity level of the exercise. The closer your feet are, the tougher will be the workout and resistance to provide stability.

You can also vary the position of your palms according to your compatibility. Keep them closer if you are not able to pull your body weight initially and gradually extend it. So introduce the tiger bend push ups in your fitness routine to get stronger triceps, shoulders and chest muscles.

So put your PJ’s on, get the floor mat and start feeling like a tiger.