How and Why to Measure your Push

What is push? Your push is how high above your grip you can clear. How can you figure this out? And why is this important?

Well for starters it amazes me how many people do not know how high they can grip? So many people say “I grip here.” What does that mean? Data is always important in training and your grip and push are important data points. You should always measure your grips and know your maximum and average grips for particular runs, 3 left, 4left, 5left, etc.

So now that we know our grip, as an example lets say our grip is 13’, what is my push? Well, if my PR with 13’ grip is 13’ feet my push is 8”. How did I figure this out? I subtract 8” from my grip and then the distance between my grip, adjusted for the 8” drop in the box, and the bar is my push.

13’grip – 8” = 12’4”

13’ clearance – 12’4” = 8” push

Lets do another example:

14’ grip – 8” = 13’4”

16’ clearance – 13’4” = 2’8” (32”) push

Now that you can calculate your push and you are tracking your grip as well you can see if you are becoming more or less efficient. There are times when people grip up in a season and the athlete’s push actually goes down. This means you might be gripping too high.

Example

14’ grip 16’ clearance, 32” push

Your grip goes up 6”

14’6” grip – 8” = 13’10”

16’3” clearance – 13’10” = 2’5” (29”) push

In the example above the grip has gone up 6” but the push has decreased 3”. This still produced a PR, but why was there a loss of efficiency. Perhaps it’s too early to tell and you are adjusting to the new grip, but perhaps you are over-gripping and now the jump is too slow? (please check out the maximal effort article)