The Power of Pushups - Beginner to Advanced
Build muscle and strength with these seven accessible pushup variations
For the life of me, I can’t figure out whether it’s push-ups, pushups, or push ups. Push-ups seems like it’s probably correct, but it’s annoying to type out that hyphen. Throughout this article, I’m going to stick with pushups. Alright, alright, enough with the trivial grammar thoughts, let’s get into the training talk.
Pushups have been a top resistance training move for centuries. They allow us to easily use our pressing muscles, which are the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Through different variations, pushups train the press motion through a wide array of angles. You can train decline pressing, overhead pressing, and every angle in between by getting creative with pushups. It’s actually pretty crazy just how many variations exist.
It’s realistic to say that, if a person is strong enough to do the necessary variations, they could achieve impressive chest, shoulder, and tricep development using pushups alone.
On that note, it’s time to break down seven pushup variations to help you up your pressing muscle game!
1. Incline Pushup
The incline pushup will be the easiest variation in this lineup, provided no additional resistance above your bodyweight is added to the mix. This variation requires your hands to be above your feet, reducing the percentage of your bodyweight you’re lifting.
It’s great for beginners, but it’s also great for adding additional reps at the end of a workout when you may be too tired for tougher variations.
Personal Tip
With the feet being lower than the hands, it’s second-nature to want to shift your weight onto your heels. Instead of doing this, keep your weight shifted over your hands. You’ll know you’re doing this if it feels like you’re standing on the tips of your toes and your heels are far from the ground.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Chest
Triceps
Front Shoulders
2. Traditional/Floor Pushup
When you tell someone to do a pushup, this is what they inherently do. Their hands and feet are placed at the same level, the floor. When someone tells you they can’t do a pushup because they’re too weak, this is the variation they conjure up in their mind. By the way, they actually can do pushups (the inclined kind), just not this variation…yet.
This just goes to show how when someone mentions pushups, this is often the only option people think about. I want this article to change that.
Personal Tip
The most common mistake people make during traditional pushups, and many other variations, is letting their stomach/hips sag. It’s somewhat natural to do this, especially when pushups are challenging. The reason for that is because as the stomach and hips sag toward the floor, less range of motion (ROM) is needed before they hit the floor on the way down. Of course, we all know that once the torso hits the floor, it’s time to push back up.
The end result is a cheated rep with a shorter ROM, robbing the chest, shoulders, and triceps of benefits associated with full ROM lifting.
Avoid this mistake by keeping your stomach muscles pulled inward toward your spine and keeping a slight break in your hips. Thinking of holding your body in line with an imaginary straight line from your heels to your shoulders is an effective mental cue.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Chest
Triceps
Front Shoulders
3. Decline Pushup
Being able to visualize what standard weightlifting exercises mimic different pushup variations is a valuable skill. In the case of the decline pushup, the feet are placed on a platform above the hands. Take a second to think about which typical dumbbell or barbell exercises this pairs with. If you said incline presses, you’re correct!
Decline pushups have you pushing weight at an angle that’s between a flat press and an overhead press…aka, the incline press.
When doing incline presses, as the degree of incline increases, the shift to the upper chest muscles and shoulder muscles increases as well. Past a certain degree of incline, generally 30-45 degrees, the shoulders become more dominant than the chest. The same will be true with decline pushups. As you place your feet higher and higher, and find yourself closer and closer to a handstand(overhead press) position, the shoulders are targeted more and more.
What does all this angle talk mean? It means that decline pushups are perfect/best for targeting the upper chest. To avoid over-recruiting the shoulders, shy away from having your feet so high that it results in a pressing angle higher than 30-45 degrees.
Personal Tip
One major issue with decline pushups is that you naturally lose range of motion if your hands are on the floor. But why? The answer is that as you lower down, your head is going to hit the floor before your ROM is maxed out. Don’t worry, the fix is simple.
By simply raising your hands off the floor with blocks, weight plates, or handles, you’ll be able to lower your head below the plane of your hands. And just like that, the ROM issue is fixed.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Upper Chest
Triceps
Front Shoulders
4. Diamond Pushup
To me, if I can correlate a pushup variation with a free-weight exercise, it helps me understand what muscles it’s targeting. In the case of the diamond pushup, it’s very similar to a close grip bench press due to the closeness of the hands.
The ultimate diamond pushup form requires your pointer finger and thumb from one hand to touch the pointer finger and thumb from the other.
This pushup variation is much more difficult than traditional pushups because it majorly reduces chest activation, favoring the triceps and front shoulders much more. Without the usual amount of help from those large chest muscles, difficulty ratchets up. By the way, for added fun, the incline and decline angles can be applied to diamond pushups as well.
Personal Tip
When I’m doing these, I relate them to a close grip bench press. I do this because it helps me find the proper positioning for my body relative to my hands, resulting in the perfect touchdown point at the bottom. The dynamics of any pushup change greatly depending on the positioning of the hands relative to the body, so this is an important tip.
When doing diamond pushups, my advice is to position yourself so your thumbs are touching just below your chest at the bottom of each rep. This is going to be right in that sternum area, as another way to look at it.
Doing this will help you keep your elbows more tucked, focus the work on the triceps and front shoulders, and mimic proper close grip bench press form.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Triceps
Front Shoulders
Upper Chest
5. Archer Pushup
We’re now breaking into lesser-known territory with the archer pushup.
This variation shines in it’s ability to focus on one side of the body at a time, making it a great step toward single arm pushups.
On top of this single-sided benefit, this pushup also works and strengthens the core muscles, which activate to maintain stability during each rep.
As seen in the picture below, weight is shifted towards one arm, causing that same side of the body to activate much more than the other. As with most pushups, depending on the height of your feet relative to your hands, the overall difficulty and the degree of shoulder or chest activation will change.
Personal Tip
As shown in the picture above, note the distance between the hands. When you set up, make sure you start with your hands far enough apart. This gives you the ability to shift your weight greatly to one side without tipping over.
Without enough distance between your hands, archer pushups aren’t possible, so this tip is very important.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Triceps
Front Shoulders
Chest
Core
6. Pike Pushup
Continuing into the land of lesser-known pushup variations, we encounter the pike pushup. This variation seriously steps up the difficulty, as it edges closer to the most challenging variation, in my opinion, which is the handstand pushup.
The increase in difficulty comes from the fact that the chest is essentially removed from the list of activated muscles and the shoulders need to fill that void.
When looking at the basic pike positioning, whether the feet are kept on the ground or elevated, it’s easy to see this is, biomechanically, an overhead press. Overhead pressing generally works the front/medial shoulders and the triceps. In the case of pike pushups, there’s no difference.
Personal Tip
I think it’s completely natural to make this mistake when learning pike pushups, which is trying to keep you head in between your hands. This seems like the way you’d want to do things, but it’s not. When doing pike pushups, you actually let your body move forward as you lower down towards the floor.
If you feel like your head and shoulders are out in front of your hands while lowering, you’re doing things right.
Focusing on this tip will keep you from poor form during your pike pushups.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Front/Medial Shoulders
Triceps
Core
7. Handstand Pushup
I hinted at this earlier, but to me, this is the big daddy of the pushups. If you can do these for reps, you’ve won the pushup game. Inherently, this is the heaviest pushup variation, as it requires you to lift the largest percentage of your bodyweight. Consider that, on average, a traditional pushup has you lifting 60-70% of your bodyweight.
When it comes to the handstand pushup, you’re looking at nearly 100% of your bodyweight, along with removing the chest muscles from the equation.
Remember, this is an overhead press, which focuses on the front/medial shoulders and the triceps.
Since this pushup is so challenging and advanced, it needs to be said that it should not be attempted without first becoming comfortable with pike pushups. Remember, jumping into handstand pushups is no different than grabbing a barbell equivalent to your bodyweight and pressing it overhead. Take a moment, think about if you’re ready for that, and choose wisely.
One more aspect to consider is the fact that the prerequisite for the handstand pushup is also being able to do a handstand, or at least a handstand against a wall.
This is a skill in itself! Take the time to practice different handstand variations before attempting this pushup variation.
As you can see, the reason this pushup is at the top of my difficultly list isn’t just about the weight being lifted. There are multiple challenging aspects at play, but that’s also what makes it so special when you find yourself able to rep some out. It’s a big accomplishment and if you get to that point, congratulations!
Personal Tip
Once you’re comfortable getting yourself into the starting position for handstand pushups, I highly recommend aiming for partial reps in the beginning. This is a heavy exercise and you’re upside down while doing it.
There’s no reason to immediately aim for full ROM. You could easily find yourself collapsing by lowering too much without building strength through partial reps in prior training sessions.
Initially focusing on partial reps will keep you safer, help you build confidence, and give your body the stimulus it needs to build strength and muscle to support full ROM reps in the future.
Primary Activated Muscles:
Front/Medial Shoulders
Triceps
Core
Closing Thoughts
This article isn’t meant to be the ultimate guide to pushups, it’s meant to shine some light on an exercise that’s often forgotten because it isn’t fancy, nor does it necessarily look as impressive as loading a bunch of weight on a barbell and pressing it. Even so, some of these variations are extremely difficult and will challenge even the most seasoned weight room veterans. Of course, some of them look totally badass too!
While a typical modern-day hypertrophy program isn’t going to have it’s foundation laid with pushups, they are certainly a high-value exercise that can be a part of the plan. I’ve seen long time lifters add brand new size to their chests from pushups alone.
My challenge to you is to give some of these variations a try, particularly any of them that you’ve never done. Experiment and see how they feel. You might really like them.
If you’re not currently including pushups in your routine, I’m confident you’ll appreciate what they add to your press-focused training day(s).
Thank you for reading,
Ryan