
Muscles Worked in Push-Ups

Primary muscles worked:
Secondary muscles worked:
How to Do Push-Ups
- Assume the starting position, with hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Try to form a straight line from head to feet, and brace your abdomen slightly.
- Lower yourself as deep as you can, while inhaling.
- Reverse the motion when you’ve touched the floor, and push yourself up to straight arms again while exhaling.
- Repeat for reps.
Commentary
The push-up is a classic bodyweight exercise for the upper body, with the benefit that you don’t need any equipment to perform it. In push-ups, you lift about 70% of your own body weight, but you can increase or decrease that amount by placing your feet or hands, respectively, on an elevation. In kneeling push-ups, you lift about 55% of your body weight.
You can also vary the exercise by placing your hands closer or wider apart, which will transfer more of the load to the triceps or chest, respectively.
A hidden bonus with push-ups is that you also get some static training of your core, similar to that of the plank exercise. To get even more core training, you can do your push-ups with either your hands or feet in a pair of suspended gymnastic rings or similar.
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Text and graphics from the StrengthLog app.