I can’t do a push-up, but I don’t care. Here’s why.

Confession. I work in the Pilates and fitness space and I hate push-ups.

They’ve never made me feel good. They’ve always hurt my wrists. They make my chest feel excessively tight, and during all the years that I forced myself to do them, they made me feel like my entire workout sucked because I wasn’t good at them and they felt so miserable to perform.

Are push-ups bad? Of course not, but for me, they were a roadblock in my fitness. Because they are such a popular metric of strength and no matter how often I practiced them, I never liked them or seemed to get better at them.

For a long time, my inherent dislike of push-ups and inability to do them influenced how I felt about fitness and my physical capabilities. I secretly thought that if I couldn’t effortlessly do push-ups that I wasn’t strong or athletic enough. This was despite my experience as a competitive athlete.

This all changed when I discovered Pilates.

Through my Pilates practice, I became more aware of how my upper body moved and felt. While I played competitive soccer growing up, the emphasis for training was lower body. Upper body was an afterthought and I never had the chance to develop upper body coordination and strength.

The upper body exercises that we practiced on the Pilates reformer made me feel how I thought a push-up should make me feel. I always finished class feeling stronger, taller, more coordinated, and energized. It was the exact opposite of my relationship with push-ups. Beyond that, the upper body strength and control I developed in Pilates gave me the confidence and ability to tackle more challenging whole body movements that require upper body strength that I thought I would never have, because…you guessed it…I couldn’t do a push-up!

What I realized is that while push-ups might be a helpful and valuable exercise for some people, they aren’t a necessary exercise for me. Everything that I want to be able to physically accomplish in life doesn’t require push-ups and there are endless alternatives to develop pushing strength without ever having to practice them.

I hope it’s clear that I don’t say this to bash push-ups. Rather, it’s a reminder that if something doesn’t feel good, you don’t have to do it. There is more than one way to accomplish a goal. The path to sustainable fitness and results is paved by small action steps and an enjoyable process. I know traditional marketing suggests otherwise, but you can’t and don’t have to hate your way to better health and fitness.

Pilates taught me that if you feel awful all the time, physical achievement isn’t worth it. To date, I still can’t do a push-up, but I don’t care, because my body feels good and I can do all the activities I enjoy without pain.

Ultimately, the best forms of exercise are the ones that you enjoy that support your body in the life that you are living now, while setting you up for success for any physical goals or activities that you want to pursue. What that looks like will be different for everyone and that’s okay. There’s no one right way to pursue fitness or health and there’s a lot to be said for figuring out what works for you.

Has there ever been a time when your experience with an exercise or movement modality changed the way that you felt about yourself or your body? I’d love to know. If you feel so inclined, let me know in the comments section or connect with me about it on Instagram @kaleencanevari.