The Perfect Push-Up: A Form Guide That Actually Fixes Your Reps
The push-up is the most-tested movement on REPPED for a reason: it's brutally honest. Bad form doesn't hide in a push-up — it shows up immediately as a half-rep, a sagging hip, or a stall two reps before you wanted to quit. If you've ever finished a set feeling like your arms did all the work and your score still came back low, this is why.
Our pose-estimation model watches four things on every rep: hand and elbow position, chest-to-floor depth, hip alignment, and lockout at the top. Get any one of them wrong consistently and it caps your score no matter how fast you move. Below is the form that satisfies all four — and doubles as good general-purpose push-up technique, on or off camera.
1. Hand placement: slightly wider than shoulder-width
Place your hands just outside your shoulders, fingers spread, middle finger pointing forward. Too narrow (hands under your chest) overloads the triceps and shortens your range of motion in a way that looks like — and often is — a shallow rep. Too wide flares the elbows and stresses the shoulder joint.
2. Elbow angle: 30–45 degrees from your torso
Flaring your elbows straight out to 90 degrees is the single most common push-up fault we see. It feels stable because it recruits the chest more, but it's a fast track to shoulder impingement over time. Keep your elbows tucked to roughly a 30–45 degree angle — imagine your arms forming a slight arrow shape, not a T.
3. Depth: chest to within a fist of the floor
This is the one that costs the most points. A rep that stops halfway down might feel like it 'counts' subjectively, but it isn't the same movement as a full rep, and it isn't scored the same. Depth is judged relative to your own shoulder-to-elbow proportions, not a fixed number — so there's no cheating it with a slightly different camera angle. Go down until your chest is a fist-width from the ground, every rep.
4. Hips: a straight line, not a sagging line
Fatigue makes the hips drop first. A sagging lower back turns a push-up into a partial plank-push-up hybrid that no longer trains (or scores) the same way. Brace your core like someone's about to prod your stomach, and keep glutes lightly squeezed through the whole set. If your hips are dropping by rep 12, that's a sign to build core endurance, not just chest strength.
5. Lockout: elbows fully extended at the top
Stopping just short of full extension at the top is the second most common way people lose points. It's subtle enough that most lifters don't notice they're doing it. Push all the way through until your elbows are straight — that's what separates a counted rep from a 'flagged' one.
Put it together before your next battle
Slightly-wide hands, tucked elbows, full depth, straight hips, full lockout. That's the whole checklist. Most people can fix two or three of these in a single practice session just by slowing down and filming themselves — which, conveniently, is exactly what happens every time you step into a REPPED battle.
Want to understand exactly how the scoring works under the hood? Read our breakdown of how the AI judges every rep, or jump straight into a live battle and put the form to the test.