Long story short I want to get a daily push up routine in addition to my gym schedule and being perfectly honest I don't see myself having the strength to do a regular push up for a long time if ever. The issue is that I'm just quite tall and at a 25 BMI while I'm not particularly "fat" I am heavy in absolute terms and I just dont realistically see my upper body getting strong enough to support that weight without a level of training that I doubt I have the capacity to do.
So that leaves me with doing push ups where I support my lower body with my knees. The issue I'm finding is that my knees are also not that great at supporting my weight (even if I didn't have a bad knee I'm sure it'd be pretty normal for them to hurt in this situation) and my pillow isn't stable enough to get a good push up without changing my position slightly with each push up which isn't great for multiple reps.
Are there any good solutions you can think of where I wouldn't have to buy anything to put under my knees? Household goods or other methods? I know I can buy an exersize mat but I don't really use them for other workouts and I want to cut down on the amount of money I spend
sounds like the towel will work for you. in the long term, you may want to consider doing a controlled descent portion of a pushup and not worry about the "pushing up" portion. This will still strengthen your chest muscles and help you build up towards a full motion push up. Same concept for pullups but only do the lowering portion. fitness is a marathon, not a sprint, and we all have different starting positions.
A folded/rolled up towel or something similar would probably work well in a pinch
I tried a rolled up blanket and it wasn't stable enough but I didn't think about doing a towel. Worth a shot, thanks :)
Are your feet in classic push-up position? That should give you some grip to stop you from sliding around.
I saw a thingy that would be perfect for your use case on sale at my local Aldi recently -- they called it a Pilates cushion or Pilates pad or something like that. It was this very thick piece of foam the size of about a sheet of paper.
It would be a purchase but at least it wouldn't take up too much space and it is not very expensive (maybe 5 bucks or so iirc)
I've had good luck with certain kinds of dense styrofoam board that were just a packing material for something else
