Most people agree on what a push-up looks like. The arguments start at the edges: how low is low enough, does a slight bend at the top count, what if the hips go first. In Pushgard those arguments matter, because reps move your hero up the tower and decide duels against other players. So the counter has a fixed answer, the same for everyone.
The three parts of a full rep
A push-up that counts has a top, a bottom and a body that stays in one line between them.
- The top: arms straight, body in a plank. This is also where the set starts: the counter measures your top while you hold still for a moment, so every rep after that is judged against your own body, not an average one.
- The bottom: your arms bend deeply and your whole upper body comes down towards the floor. A small dip of the head or a nod of the shoulders is not a bottom.
- The line: shoulders, hips and knees stay close to a straight line, and your hips travel down with your shoulders, not after them and not instead of them.
Then you push back to the top. You do not have to lock your elbows hard for the rep to close. Once you are back near your own top and stop rising there, the rep counts.
Why half reps do not count
A half rep stops about where the movement gets hardest, which is why it is so easy to repeat when you are tired.
When the counter was tuned on recorded sets, the movements fell into clear groups. Full push-ups folded the arm a lot. Deliberate half reps folded it much less. A third group sat in between: partial reps that people themselves called incomplete when asked. The depth bar was placed above that middle group on purpose, not in the gap below it.
That is why the last few reps of a hard set are the ones that usually go. Tiredness shortens a rep long before it stops you completely. If the line under the count says “Go lower”, that is the counter telling you the rep landed in the middle group.
The bar is also the same for every player. A duel against someone who counts half reps would not be a duel.
Two signals that both have to say yes
The front camera sees you head-on, and from that angle one measurement is easy to fool. So the counter uses two that fail in different ways.
The first is how much your arm folds: the distance from your wrist to your shoulder, divided by the width of your shoulders. Straight arms give a long distance, bent arms a short one. Dividing by shoulder width means it does not matter how far you are from the phone, because both numbers grow together as you come closer.
The second is your shoulders alone. As you lower your chest, your shoulders come closer to the camera and look wider in the frame. Bend your arms without lowering your body, and the width stays the same. Rock your body towards the phone with straight arms, and the arms do not fold.
A rep counts only if the second signal backs up the first. On the standard setting the shoulders have to confirm at least about a third of the depth the arms report. If only one signal moved, the line under the count says “Use your whole body”. How the camera counts reps shows the same idea with pictures.
Why not just measure the elbow angle? From the front, a narrow push-up tucks the hands under the chest and hides the forearms. The elbow angle the model reports then jumps around from frame to frame. The distance between wrist and shoulder does not break that way, and the shoulders are visible in every frame.
Form checks that can cost you a rep
Depth alone is not enough. A few more checks run on every rep, and each has its own line under the count.
| What the counter checks | What fails it | Line you see |
|---|---|---|
| Hips move with the shoulders | Hips stay on the floor while the chest lifts, like a cobra | Use your whole body |
| Shoulders, hips and knees in line | Folding at the hips by more than roughly 40 degrees | Keep your torso straight |
| Time from top to top | Under about half a second, or no moment at the bottom | Too fast |
| Time from top to top | Over five seconds | Too slow |
The torso check is careful about what it judges. It only rejects a rep when your hips and knees are clearly visible. A form check is the one thing that can take away a rep you already did, so a guess based on a barely visible knee is not allowed to do it.
The timing rules exist because bouncing is the easiest way to fake depth. A real push-up spends a moment at its bottom; a bounce does not. Five seconds is the other end: real reps in the recorded sets took roughly one to four seconds, and anything longer looked like lying down and getting up.
How to check your push-ups without a camera
You can hold yourself to a clear standard with no phone at all. Fitness tests do this every day, and they ask for the same three things: straight arms at the top, real depth at the bottom, one rigid body.
The push-up test protocol from the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, as published by ACE, counts a push-up only with full elbow extension and a straight back at the top, and the chest touching a fist, a rolled towel or a foam block at the bottom, without the stomach resting on the mat. That gives you a simple home check:
- Put a rolled towel under your chest.
- Do your set. Each rep touches the towel lightly and returns to straight arms.
- Any rep that misses the towel, or stops with bent arms at the top, does not go in your count.
To check the line of your body, the U.S. Army’s hand-release push-up asks for a generally straight line from the top of the head to the ankles, and a rep where that line breaks does not count. On the way down, chest, hips and thighs should touch the ground at the same time. If your hips land last, you are sagging at the top. If your chest lands last, you are piking.
The counter does not measure centimetres, so these are not the same bar as the camera’s. They point the same way, though. Train to the towel with a straight body and you are doing the reps the game is looking for.
Film one set from the side with any phone and watch it back. Half reps are easy to miss from the inside and obvious from the outside.
Getting your reps to count
If full reps are not counting, the movement is rarely the only reason. The camera has to see you well first, so check where to put your phone for distance and light. Then work through the lines under the count in why a rep did not count.
If full depth is hard for you right now, pick an easier version of the push-up and keep the depth, rather than keeping the push-up and cutting the depth. How to do a push-up covers the setup and the easier versions.
Every rep shown by the push-up counter has passed the rules on this page.
