A neuroscientist says there’s a powerful benefit to exercise that is rarely discussed

When I was about to turn 40, I started working out regularly after years of inactivity. As I sweated my way through cardio, weights, and dance classes, I noticed that exercise wasn’t just changing my body. It was also profoundly transforming my brain—for the better.
The immediate effects of exercise on my mood and thought process proved to be a powerful motivational tool. And as a neuroscientist and workout devotee, I’ve come to believe that these neurological benefits could have profound implications for how we live, learn and age as a society.
Let’s start with one of the most practical immediate benefits of breaking a sweat: exercise combats stress. Exercise is a powerful way to combat feelings of stress because it causes immediate increases in levels of key neurotransmitters, including serotonin, noradrenalin, dopamine and endorphins, that are often depleted by anxiety and depression. That’s why going for a run or spending 30 minutes on the elliptical can boost our moods immediately—combatting the negative feelings we often associate with chronic stressors we deal with every day.
 Exercise improves our ability to shift and focus attention.  In my lab, we have also demonstrated that exercise improves our ability to shift and focus attention. Even casual exercisers will recognize this effect. It’s that heightened sense of focus that you feel right after you’ve gotten your blood flowing, whether it be a brisk walk with the dog or a full-on Crossfit workout. These findings suggest that if you have a big presentation or meeting where you need your focus and attention to be at its peak, you should get in a workout ahead of time to maximize those brain functions.
But my favorite neuroscience-based motivation for exercise relates to its effects on the hippocampus—a key brain structure that’s critical for long-term memory. We all have two hippocampi: one on the right side of the brain and the other on the left. The hippocampus is unique because it is one of only two brain areas where new brain cells continue to be generated throughout our lives, a process called adult hippocampal neurogenesis.
Studies in rodents demonstrated that increased levels of physical exercise can result in improved memory by enhancing both the birth rate and the survival of new hippocampal brain cells. Exercise encourages the long-term growth of hippocampal cells by immediately increasing levels of a key growth factor in the hippocampus called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF. Now, when I exercise, I imagine BDNF levels surging in my hippocampi, encouraging all those new hippocampal cells to grow.
All this should serve as a powerful motivator for regular physical activity. But the immediate and long-term benefits of exercise on the brain have even bigger implications.
 Exercise could help students better absorb everything from history lessons to chemistry experiments–and they’d be happier too. Just consider how the educational system might be altered if we acknowledge exercise’s ability to brighten our mood, decrease stress, and improve our attention span and memory. The growing evidence that exercise improves these key brain functions should encourage schools around the world to increase—not decrease—students’ physical activity. Not only would this help students to better absorb everything from history lessons to chemistry experiments, they’d be a lot happier too.
The positive brain-based effects of exercise for education are just as relevant for very young children. The growing popularity of outdoor preschools are a promising sign that this message is starting to get through.
These brain effects of exercise also have implications for our search for that magic “smart” pill we hope will make us more productive, successful, and—if you believe the Bradley Cooper film “Limitless”—a lot sexier as well. What if the real magic does not come in the form of a pill, but in the form of an exercise regime?
That’s exactly what the neuroscience research suggests. In fact, my lab is focusing on identifying how we can use exercise to optimize brain function for people of all ages, fitness levels and abilities. If regular exercise becomes routine for the vast majority of children and adults, we could have a population that’s not only healthier and less stressed, but also more productive.
 Exercise could make students more imaginative at school and adults more creative at work. The good news doesn’t end there. Recent findings have suggested that the brain’s hippocampus is also involved in giving people the ability to imagine new situations. Since we know that exercise enhances the birth of new hippocampal brain cells and can improve memory function, this discovery suggests that exercise might be able to improve the imaginative functions of the hippocampus as well.
This idea has not yet been tested in people. But the hypothesis raises the exciting possibility that exercise could make students more imaginative at school and adults more creative at work, with broad benefits for society as a whole.
It is also worth noting one of the most profound long-term benefits of exercise on the brain. That is, the longer and more regularly you exercise through your life, the lower your chances are of suffering from cognitive decline and dementia as you age. Part of this effect can be attributed to the build-up in the numbers of healthy young hippocampal cells as you exercise over the years.
Granted, this is a very long-term benefit that may not be seen for decades to come. But if more people were to join the gym this month and actually stick to it, more of us will be able to avoid debilitating cognitive decline, which could save society billions of dollars as we enter old age. This problem is even more relevant for countries with particularly large aging populations, including the US, Japan and Germany.
In these ways, neuroscience gives us a framework to understand exercise as a tool for better education, increased productivity in the workforce and combating cognitive decline. It’s time for us to stop using the looming prospect of beach season as the motivation for exercise—and instead shift the conversation to a discussion about how staying active can change the way we live.

The Sugar That's Hiding in Your Kids' Foods

_{Image via iStock}

In a typical week, my teenagers might eat edamame straight out of the pods, roasted seaweed, whole grain pasta, homemade granola, frozen mango right out of the bag, and fruit and vegetable smoothies made with kefir, chia seeds, kale, carrots and pineapple.
I was shocked to realize that they were also eating potentially toxic levels of sugar in the course of the day, well above recommendations from health experts like the American Heart Association.
Even if we think our kids are relatively healthy eaters, there's a good chance they are eating far too much added sugar from foods even healthy kids typically consume. Foods like fruit-flavored yogurts, sports drinks, pasta sauce, cereal, ketchup, energy bars, and barbecue sauce are all loaded with added sugar.
The American Heart Association recommends that children consume no more than 12 grams, or 3 teaspoons, of added sugar per day. While a wonderful goal, it is very difficult to achieve for children whose regular daily diet includes any packaged or processed foods.
To find out how quickly those grams add up, I calculated how many grams of sugar are in the foods that my kids and the children of some of my health conscious friends might eat or drink in a day. (I did not pick the products with the highest amount of sugar; rather I picked a random sample of foods many parents may think of as healthy - or at least not as unhealthy):

- Yogurt: 8 oz. Yoplait Strawberry Greek yogurt = 11 to 12 grams added sugar, 18 grams total sugar* (these can easily go up to 18 grams of added sugar, depending on the brand)
- Cereal: 1 cup Cinnamon Life Cereal = 10 grams total sugar (most or all is likely added sugar, but no information is available)
- Frozen waffles: 2 Trader Joe's Multigrain Toaster Waffles = 7 grams added sugar
- Ketchup: 2 Tbsp. Heinz Ketchup = 4 grams added sugar, 8 grams total sugar
- Pasta sauce: 1/2 cup of Barilla Traditional Pasta Sauce = 8 grams added sugar
- Chocolate milk: 8 oz. chocolate milk = 13 grams added sugar, 26 grams total sugar
- Jam: 2 Tbsp. Stonewall Kitchen Strawberry Jam = 6 grams added sugar, 14 grams total sugar
- Cereal bars: Special K Red Berries Cereal Bar = 8 grams added sugar (granola and cereal bars can easily go up to 11 grams or more)
- Sports drinks: 12 oz. Powerade Sports Drink + B-Vitamins, Grape = 21 grams added sugar

Many foods like fruit and yogurt have naturally occurring sugars, which many nutrition experts differentiate from added sugars. FDA labels may soon reflect amounts of both added and naturally occurring sugars. (Source: Fooducate and others)
If your child has a container of fruit flavored yogurt or a bowl of cereal in the morning for breakfast (as ours often do), she is likely to meet or exceed her daily sugar recommendation by the time she walks out the door to catch the school bus. I asked my 16-year-old daughter to record her diet on a recent day, and although her diet sounded very healthy and included plenty of fruits and vegetables, she had likely consumed 36 grams of sugar, or 3 times the recommended amount! If using adult guidelines for her, she still would have had 1 1/2 times the recommended limit, and that's with no desserts (or at least none she reported to me).
For kids whose diets typically include cookies, candy and soda (a 12 ounce soda has 30 to 40 grams of added sugar), their sugar intake can easily be quadruple the recommended levels or worse.
Eating too much sugar can not only lead to obesity but also to metabolic disease and early onset of diabetes and heart disease as well as general inflammation that may lead to other diseases like cancer. A recent study found that after just nine days without added sugar, even though their diets still were full of non-sugary junk food like chips and hot dogs, metabolic health improved drastically in overweight kids, and their appetite decreased.
"Developing a healthy diet is critical while still in childhood as lifestyle changes become increasingly difficult to adopt with age, and adolescents are often resistant to these changes. Unfortunately, once a child has developed Type 2 Diabetes, studies have shown that most of the currently approved treatment regimens are not particularly effective in children. As the number of children with Type 2 Diabetes increases, one can expect the disorder to multiply exponentially in future generations. This is due to a biologic process known as metabolic imprinting, where the children of mothers who have obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and high blood pressure during pregnancy are more likely to also develop these conditions," according to Bethesda, Md.-based pediatric endocrinologist, Rachel Gafni, M.D.
What's more, sugar is addictive, so if we are used to eating sugar, as most of us are, our brains crave more and more. The only way I've found to combat this in our family is by removing added sugar completely from our diets for three to seven days to lose our cravings, and that's not easy to do. The kids often start enthusiastically and lose their interest within less than a day.
Last year I served as a member of the media advisory board for "Fed Up!," a movie that links the epidemic of obesity and early onset of disease in the U.S. to our high consumption of sugar. The film's producers, including Katie Couric and Laurie David, found that sugar is in 80 percent of the products on supermarket shelves, and not just in the candy and desserts where we would expect to find it, but in bread, pasta sauce, marinades and salad dressings.
This awareness has lead me to make changes in how I shop (like reading labels more carefully and choosing products without added sugar) and how I cook, and to educate and try to inspire better choices for our children.
By buying and demanding lower sugar products, and supporting the FDA's proposed new rules to separate added sugars from naturally occurring sugars on nutrition labels, we concerned parents can put consumer pressure on food manufacturers to reduce the amount of added sugar in foods they produce, which some are already doing based on consumer demand. Along with changing our own purchasing and consumption habits, doing so is one of the best routes to consuming less sugar in our daily lives, losing our sugar cravings, and reducing the epidemic of lifestyle and weight related diseases, especially diabetes and heart disease, that are afflicting so many children at earlier and earlier ages.
Even for someone whose profession and passion is healthy eating, reducing sugar in my own family's diet is a major challenge, and I understand all too well the power of sugar cravings. (More than once, my family has walked in to find me lolling in a sugar-induced daze on the couch, with empty marshmallow bags and nutella-stained spoons strewn around me.)
I can only imagine how hard it is for families with more typical American diets to combat the power of sugar-laden foods. I hope that as more kids see films like "Fed Up!," and "That Sugar Film," and as we make gradual reductions of sugar in their diets, their dietary choices when they are out of the house will also include foods with less added sugar

This Is What Happens to Your Body When You Eat Sugar

Oct. 27, 2015

Sugar affects your brain as well as your body

Here’s a quick question: How many spoonfuls of high-fructose corn syrup did you eat yesterday?

Oh, you don’t recall slurping down any of the hyper-sweet corn extract? Well, you did—about eight teaspoons’ worth, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In fact, the average American consumed 27 pounds of the stuff last year.

But while 8 teaspoons of artificially manufactured syrup may seem like an awful lot, it’s only a drop in the sugar bucket. The USDA’s most recent figures find that Americans consume, on average, about 32 teaspoons of added sugar every single day. That sugar comes to us in the form of candies, ice cream and other desserts, yes. But the most troubling sugar of all isn’t the added sugar we consume on purpose; it’s the stuff we don’t even know we’re eating.

In recent years, the medical community has begun to coalesce around a powerful new way of looking at added sugar: as perhaps the number one most significant health threat in America. But what exactly is “added sugar,” and why do experts suddenly believe that it’s the ISIS of nutrition?

When they talk about “added sugar,” health experts aren’t talking about the stuff that we consume from eating whole foods. “Added sugars are sugars that are contributed during the processing or preparation of foods and beverages,” says Rachel K. Johnson, PhD, RD, professor of nutrition at The University of Vermont. So lactose, the sugar naturally found in milk and dairy products, and naturally occurring fructose, the sugar that appears in fruit, don’t count. But ingredients that are used in foods to provide added sweetness and calories, from the much-maligned high fructose corn syrup to healthier-sounding ones like agave, date syrup, cane sugar, and honey, are all considered added sugars.

That’s because naturally occurring sugars, like what you find in an apple, come with their own health posse—fiber, which slows the digestion of the sugar and prevents it from spiking insulin response and damaging your liver, two serious side effects of added sugar. “It’s almost impossible to over consume fructose by eating too much fruit,” says Johnson. Consider this: You’d need to eat six cups of strawberries to get the same amount of fructose as in one can of Coke.

Fortunately, giving up added sugar has been shown to have several dramatic and rapid impacts on your health. In a newly released study, children who cut added sugars from their diets for just 9 days showed dramatic improvements in cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

On the flip side, adding sugar to your diet can quickly put your health into a spiral: People who consumed beverages containing high fructose corn syrup for two weeks significantly increased their levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterols), plus two proteins associated with elevated cholesterols and another compound, uric acid, that’s associated with diabetes and gout. So found a 2015 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

In fact, in a 2014 editorial in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors made a bold statement: “Too much sugar does not just make us fat; it can also make us sick.”

The editors of Eat This, Not That! took a look at the most recent research and discovered just how much harm added sugars are doing to us:

·  Added sugar makes eating healthy almost impossible

The more added sugar that sneaks its way into your diet, the less healthy food you’ll eat the rest of the day. That’s the finding of a 2015 article in Nutrition Review, which looked at dozens of studies conducted between 1972 and 2012. The researchers found that a higher intake of added sugar was associated with poorer diet and a lower intake of micronutrients.

That’s in part because of how sugary foods retrain our taste buds and mess with our bodily systems. When even tomato sauce is laced with sweetener, we then need greater and greater doses of sugar in order for the flavor to register. That leads us to seek out candies and baked goods at the expense of real food.

But it’s not just a matter of taste. A sugar rush creates an overflow of insulin into the system to try to manage the toxic substance. Because it can create an overreaction within the body—too much insulin pulling too much sugar out of the bloodstream—it can lead to crash that sends us seeking another immediate sugar rush, the kind that no whole food can satisfy.

The most powerful effects, however, aren’t on our bodies. They’re on our brains. In one study, researchers measured the levels of oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that helps us feel satiated, in the brains of rats. When rats that ate a low-sugar diet were given a meal high in sugar, their oxytocin levels didn’t change. But when they were given the high-sugar diet regularly, their brains began to show lower levels of oxytocin activity. In other words, the more we’re bombarded with added sugars, the more chronically unsatisfied we feel, and the more we need to eat. An editorial in JAMA Internal Medicine asked, “Why are we consuming so much sugar despite knowing too much can harm us?” The answer: “The high prevalence of added-sugar consumption…is very likely influenced by and a result of addictive behaviors incited by reward system activation after overeating highly palatable foods.”

·  Added sugar causes your body to store fat around your belly

Within 24 hours of eating fructose, your body is flooded with elevated levels of triglycerides. Does that sound bad? It is.

Triglycerides are the fatty deposits in your blood. Your liver makes them, because they’re essential for building and repairing the tissues in your body.

But when it’s hit with high doses of fructose, the liver responds by pumping out more triglycerides; that’s a signal to your body that it’s time to store some abdominal fat. In one study, researchers fed subjects beverages sweetened with either glucose or fructose. Both gained the same amount of weight over the next 8 weeks, but the fructose group gained its weight primarily as belly fat, thanks to the way this type of sugar is processed in the liver.

What’s unique to fructose is that it seems to be a universal obesogen—in other words, every creature that eats it gains weight. Princeton researchers recently found that high-fructose corn syrup seemed to have a unique impact on weight in their animal studies.

“When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese—every single one, across the board,” psychology professor Bart Hoebel, a specialist in appetite and sugar addiction, said in a report from the university.

“Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain weight.” Fructose is the freak show of fat.

· Added sugar makes you skip going to the gym

There are a lot of ways that added sugar can make you gain weight, but the most bizarre may be the way it reduces actual physical activity. In one study at the University of Illinois, mice that were fed a diet that mimicked the standard American diet–i.e., one that was about 18 percent added sugars—gained more body fat even though they weren’t fed more calories. One of the reasons was that the sugar-addled mice traveled about 20 percent less in their little cages than mice that weren’t fed the sugary diet. They just naturally…slowed…down.

· Added sugar is the number one factor in your risk of dying from diabetes

The link between increased sugar and diabetes risk is right up there with “smoking causes lung cancer” on the list of immutable medical truths— despite what soda manufacturers are trying to tell us. (You’ll read more about sugar-based hocus-pocus in the next chapter.) But researchers at the Mayo Clinic have come right out and said that added fructose—either as a constituent of table sugar or as the main component of high-fructose corn syrup—may be the number one cause of diabetes, and that cutting sugar alone could translate into a reduced number of diabetes deaths the world over.

·  Added sugar affects your brain

“Reduce fructose in your diet if you want to protect your brain,” announced Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, professor at the University of California Los Angeles.

He and his team tested how well rats recovering from brain injury learned new ways to get through a maze. They found that animals that drank HFCS took 30 percent more time to find the exit. “Our findings suggest that fructose disrupts plasticity—the creation of fresh pathways between brain cells that occurs when we learn or experience something new,” he says.

In an earlier study, researchers found that a combination of sugar and fat could actually change one’s brain chemistry. The brains of animals on a high-fat, high-sugar diet had decreased levels of BDNF, a compound that helps brain cells communicate with one another, build memories, and learn new things; decreased levels of BDNF have been linked to both Alzheimer’s and depression.

One of the recent mysteries of science is why depression, diabetes and dementia seem to cluster in epidemiological studies, and why having one of these health issues seems to increase your risk for the others. The answer: In a study in the journal Diabetologia, researchers found that when blood glucose levels are elevated, BDNF levels drop. That means that the simple act of eating sugar makes you instantly dumber; the more you do it, the greater your risk of diabetes, and the greater your risk of depression and dementia as well. In a 2015 study of post-menopausal women, higher levels of added sugars and refined carbs were associated with an increased likelihood of depression, while higher consumption of fiber, dairy, fruit and vegetables was associated with a lower risk.

And, in a study of nearly 1,000 seniors (median age: 79.5), researchers found that eating a diet high in simple carbs significantly increased the risk of developing dementia. All of the subjects were cognitively normal at the beginning of the study, and about 200 developed signs of dementia over the next 3.7 years. The risk of mental decline was higher in those who ate high-carb diets, and lower in those whose diets were higher in fat and/or protein.

· Sugar doubles your risk of dying from heart disease

People who get 25 percent of more of their calories from added sugar are more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who eat less than 10 percent, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

One out of ten of us fall into that category.

Now, if you’re an average American, your daily sugar consumption is about 17 percent of calories, according to the study.

But that’s hardly a laurel to rest on. People who ate between 17 and 21 percent of their calories from added sugar had a 38 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with people who consumed 8 percent or less of their calories from added sugar.

At first, the researchers figured that since those who ingest more sugar have poorer diets, that might be a main cause. But even after making adjustments for the quality of one’s diet, the link between sweets and cardiovascular risk remained the same.

The study found that the major sources of added sugar in the American diet were:

• Sugar-sweetened beverages (37.1%)
• Grain-based desserts like cookies or cake (13.7%)
• Fruit drinks (8.9%)
• Dairy desserts like ice cream (6.1%)
• Candy (5.8%)

And sodas and other sweet drinks are a major red flag: The researchers found that a higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was directly tied to an increased risk of dying from heart disease. The impact is so great that you don’t need to be meandering through middle age to see the impact: Even teenagers who consume food and beverages high in added sugars show evidence of risk factors for heart disease and diabetes in their blood, according to a second study in The Journal of Nutrition.

·  ·  Added sugar raises your blood pressure

In fact, sugar may be worse for your blood pressure than salt, according to a paper published in the journal Open Heart.

Just a few weeks on a high-sucrose diet can increase both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Another study found that for every sugar-sweetened beverage, risk of developing hypertension increased 8 percent. Too much sugar leads to higher insulin levels, which in turn activate the sympathetic nervous system and lead to increased blood pressure, according to James J. DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., cardiovascular research scientist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. “It may also cause sodium to accumulate within the cell, causing calcium to build up within the cell, leading to vasoconstriction and hypertension,” he says.

·  Sugar causes your skin to sag

Your skin has its own support system in the form of collagen and elastin, two compounds that keep your skin tight and pump. But when elevated levels of glucose and fructose enter the body, they link to the amino acids present in the collagen and elastin, producing advanced glycation end products, or “AGEs.” That damages these two critical compounds and makes it hard for the body to repair them. This process is accelerated in the skin when sugar is elevated, and further stimulated by ultraviolet light, according to a study in Clinical Dermatology.

In other words, eating lots of sugar poolside is the worst thing you can do for your skin.

5 Benefits of Push-Ups: Tone, Trim & Get Back in Shape

If you stroll into a gym during peak hours you'll find people (mostly men) sweating, grunting and valiantly doing one push-up after another. With sturdy arms and a straight spine they'll lift themselves up and down till their bodies tremble and collapse back down on the ground. It makes me wonder, are push-ups really worth all the trouble?

Martin Rooney, creator of the 'Training for Warrior System' seems to think that push-ups are the real deal: "Push-ups help build strength, burn more calories, increase mental toughness and instill confidence." They work every muscle in your body, from your neck to your toes, also strengthening your chest, abs, shoulders and triceps. No wonder an article published in The New York Times referred to push-ups as the 'ultimate barometer of fitness'.

That said, if you're one of those people who remain essentially motionless through the day, except when you squirm around for water or bathroom breaks, doing push-ups a few times a week will serve as a great workout. Here's why:

1. It's a Good Full Body Workout - By working on a large number of muscles in your body, push-ups help tremendously for a fitter you. Push-ups help you focus on your arms, abs and your lower body, all at the same time. They train your muscles to work together and become stronger.
 

2. Helps Create Balance and Stability - According to David Nordmark, author of the book Pushups for Everyone: Perfect Pushup Workout for Muscle Growth, Strength & Endurance, "push-ups help improve your reaction time by helping to train your proprioceptive muscle fibers. These fibers are microscopic nerves that keep your body balanced. When you attempt a push-up these nerves are firing constantly in an effort to keep your body from tipping over. This trains them to respond more quickly to stimulation which aids your balance and speed."

3. Helps Build Muscle Density - With age, you start to lose muscle density which alters the way in which your body uses and burns energy. One of the things exercise intends to do is maintain if not improve muscle density. This does not mean that you'll see results with a few push-ups. An article on the website Fitness Black & White outlines the ideal number of push-ups you need to do to build muscle mass in different parts of your body. 1. Chest, Shoulders and Triceps - 4 sets of 12-15 reps
2. Back and Biceps - 4 sets of 12-15 reps
3. Legs and Abs - 4 sets of 12-15 reps

4. Upper Body Definition - Push-ups have sometimes been labeled as the one of the most suitable upper body workouts and for good reason. According to LaReine Chabut, "When you do a push-up, you recruit your core muscles to help keep your back straight and assist you in pulling your belly button toward your spine." They sculpt not just your arms but your chest, back and shoulders.

5. A Strong Core - If you're looking for washboard abs and a strong core, then push-ups might just be the perfect starting point. By core, we mean the abdominal section, waist, side of the waist and everything right down to the pelvis. Strong core muscles allow you to do physical activities with ease, help with back problems and maintain good posture.

Tips to Doing Push-ups
Watching someone do a push-up makes it seem real hard, but it doesn't have to be. Read these tips before you attempt one and with a little practice, you'll be swift in no time.

1. Don't Rush - Yes, it does matter how many push-ups you can get through, but not when you're doing them in the wrong motion.

2. One Straight Line - Make sure your legs, hips, neck and head are in one straight line. Slowly, but gradually lift them off the floor and come back down in the exact same position. If you can't go all the way up and come back down then try one of the variations to see which one you can follow to the T.
3. Lift Those Hips - Weight distribution changes with difference in the angle of your body so don't let your hips loose. Keep them tight and aligned with your neck and feet. Any kind of weight distribution can hamper with the kind of resistance you're trying to build. When your shoulders are aligned with your feet, your arms are working more than your feet. And when your body assumes an upward slant (moving up from your feet), you lower body is building more resistance.

4. Watch Those Hands - A 2005 study suggests that placing your hands wider than the shoulder width and in line with the shoulder may be an optimum efficient hand position for push-up performance. This wide position would also result in less fatigue or exhaustion.

5. Don't Lift the Shoulders - While lifting your body off the ground make sure you aren't lifting your shoulders but are only moving your shoulder blades backwards.