Push Up Technique

If you’ve ever watched someone do pushups, maybe you’ve been a nerdy enough CrossFitter or movement person to wonder if their elbows should stay in close to the body, or if it is okay for the elbows to bow out.
The answer is, as always, complex. However, I have found, over the years, that if I coach students to keep their elbows in close, they tend to experience less shoulder, elbow, and wrist pain. That’s good, right? The downside is that this style of pushup tends to be harder than if you let your elbows wing out. In addition, people with bigger wrists don’t tend to get much pain if they let their elbows wing out.
So what’s the answer? I recommend everyone try to keep the elbows close to their torsos when doing pushups. If flaring elbows hurts smaller wristed folks right away, I suspect that the habit may eat away eventually at folks with bigger wrists.
Another piece to add that will return some of the power to your pushup when you keep your elbows close is to externally rotate your hands into the ground while going both up and down in the movement. If you’re familiar with this concept from the squat (where you externally rotate your feet into the ground) just transfer it right over to the pushup and see if it helps. My experience of adding the twist is that you get a substantial boost in power.