Most people aren’t aware that you don’t need fancy gym equipment to build muscle — in fact, simple bodyweight exercises like pushups can be effectively used to build muscle up.
It’s understandable that you might not realize how effective the grand-daddy of exercise moves is at building your chest and arms. At a glance, pushups are simple and repetitive. And that’s true to an extent. But what you might not realize is that there are nearly endless opportunities for pushup variations that you never learned in high school gym class.
There is a wide variety of pushups that you can perform to isolate different muscle groups, but we’re going to focus on five types in this article. These will not be the best five for all people, but they should open your eyes to the variety possible in simple bodyweight exercises.
Military pushups: military pushups are similar to standard pushups, except that you move your hands underneath your shoulders and tuck your elbows tightly to your side. This variation works the triceps more than the chest.
Fist pushups: Sometimes referred to as “knuckle” pushups, require the use of your fists, instead of the palms of your hands, to bear your body weight during the pushup. Fist pushups are beneficial because they target different areas of your body than traditional pushups, and may actually increase the effectiveness of your workout.
Divebombers: also referred to as “yogi pushups,” you start the pushup in the yoga down dog position, and then in one motion, graze your nose, chin, chest, abdomen to the ground, lifting your chest in the air as you straighten your arms. The motion is similar to trying to squeeze underneath a fence while keeping your feet rooted. These pushups isolate your shoulders and will also increase the range of motion in your shoulders.
Decline pushups: Instead of placing your feet on the floor, or using your knees, place your feet on a platform so that your head is lower than your feet. You can use a chair, a stepstool, or a bench — pretty much anything that will allow you to raise your feet up so that they are higher than your head. These types of pushups work your upper chest muscles.
Stacked pushups: with stacked pushups, one arm is spread wide to the side as in wide pushups, and the other is tucked in tight like military pushups. After 5 repetitions, the hand positions are switched.
Here is a more detailed listing of styles you can consider to achieve muscle weight gain: fly, wide, military, diamond, fist, yogi, incline, decline, deep, stacked, inchworm, and prison cell pushups.
Tips to increase the effectiveness of your pushup workouts: remember to add some weight once the pushups begin to get easy. You don’t want to push out 50 easy repetitions. Rather, struggle with 20 or 30. Also be sure to add variety by varying your hand position for each of the above types of pushups.
Push ups are a great way to strengthen your upper body and exercise, build muscle at the same time. If you keep it interesting by mixing up your hand positions and trying a few different styles of pushups you can increase the effectiveness of your at-home exercising and relieve the boredom!
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