It’s not clear to me from the verbal description what direction the push in/pull out is suppose to be. Is it pulling left hand towards right hand, left foot towards right foot? Or pulling hands towards feet? The muscle engagement is very different for the two different options.
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In one of the descriptions, they mention “as if you’re pushing out on your mat to the sides” or something like that. So laterally, which focuses on upper body.
I think. 
Good question. For the push out I tend to push up to the top of the mat with my hands and down with my feet, then in towards the middle
of the mat with hands and feet for the pull in. Never occurred to me to move laterally.
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Good question indeed. I used to do it laterally, it never occurred to me that it can be done longitudinally.
I had a set of quadruped pushes and pulls today and having seen that thread I decided to do them diagonally 
.
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I’d love to know which specific workout they give this description. I don’t recall hearing anything like that, but I could easily have either missed it, or not done that particular workout.
@way9e0 Core Focus 3 has those two exercises. Generally I have my knees slightly off the mat and brace my core and create tension in my arms and legs that either pushes in or out depending on the exercise but without moving my arms and legs. The movement seems to activate a lot of the smaller stabilizing muscles.
Thanks Sir @JSampson . I can find the exercises in the workouts, but not where they give the more detailed description of which direction to push/pull that @CPT_A referred to.
I could very much be mistaken, but in one of the upper body focus vids i did recently, id swear the narrator references the “push the mat out” and “pull your mat in” comments.
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Thanks @CPT_A. I will go through them and see what I can find.
Upper Body Focus 1, timestamp from 5:00, instruction given is pull inwards and push outwards, no mention about arms towards/away from feet, nor out to the side (laterally). It may be in other progressive videos. One would think they would start with the correct instruction in the first progressive video.
For myself, I push/pull towards/away from arms/feet (longitudinally).
Now, if only it was easy to FFWD and REW these videos without it going into a stutter.
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OK, here’s what I found - I feel less crazy now…
From Shoulder and Upper Back Mobility B:
Quadruped Push Out and Hold: “Press outward with your hands and feet, as if you’re trying to stretch out your mat.”
Quadruped Pull In and Hold: “Pull inward”
Still not precise, but both of those imply lateral motion to me. Plus I actually tried the motion both laterally and longitudinally - when you do them longitudinally you engage the core muscles. Laterally engages the shoulders and upper back. Given that this was from the “shoulder and upper back mobility” workout, that to me says that the “push out”, “pull in” are lateral motions.
Flagged for minions/coaches to weigh in with a definitive answer…
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Thanks for tracking that down!
Agreed that it’s still not precise, and is open to interpretation. Your argument based on it being in a ‘Shoulder and Upper Back’ workout, and the muscle activation from the lateral movement, is compelling.
Hopefully one of the coaches or minions gets back to us.
I have the same question and have tried both directions. Lateral makes more sense and feels right. It would be helpful to have arrows or more direction in the video.
@David.McQuillen.KoS and the Minions are taking a look and working to clarify. Stand by.
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It’s good to watch as well as listen.
When you watch you can see the effort aims to make your base feel wider on the out and narrower on the in… As opposed to longer and shorter
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Sorry Dame @Christine-B , but I don’t see this when I look at the video. I don’t see any movement at all after the person comes up onto their toes at the start of the workout. For reference, I’m looking at Shoulder and Upper Back Mobility A. Are there other workouts with different video that make the movement more visible?
It’s definitely there in one of them! This move does come up in quite a few workouts though… much easier to see on a big screen!
You can just take my word for it if you like 
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@way9e0 et. al., Sorry for the delay here, but this move is designed to be an isometric contraction. During the “pull-in” you are using abdominal muscles, adductors and chest to pull your extremities toward the center of your body (which is likely to be on a mat). For the Push-out you are doing exactly the opposite. Pushing out with hip adductors, shoulders and back muscles. As far as the width of your base you should start in a position where you feel stable, that will be a bit wider than the mat for most people. In fact, changing your “footprint” and “handprint” positions will give you a more novel stimulus because you are continuously varying joint angles and therefore contracting muscles at different lengths. Variety is good. I hope this helps.
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So, is it a lateral or longitudinal push/pull? Or diagonal?
It’s diagonal, inward
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