3 Variations for a More Effective Push-Up

In a recent post called Want a Bigger Chest? 3 Key Tips and a Workout, I explained how, despite the fact that the pectoral muscle is technically broken up into only two parts (major and minor), it is actually best to train your chest by thinking of it in three pieces—upper, middle and lower chest. This makes it easier to plan your workouts and to target the portion of your chest that you want to build. 

Sure, you could hit the weight bench and do some incline flyes, neutral dumbbell presses, and a few decline cable presses, and activate the majority of your chest just by those exercises. But given that push-ups are such an amazing full body exercise, one that doesn't require any equipment or even much space, how can we apply this same approach of targeting specific parts of our pectoral muscles to push-ups? By changing a few variables:

1. The angle of our body
2. The distance between our hands
3. The position of our hands

Let's look at each of these in more detail. 

1. The Angle of our Body

Get down into a push-up position and then look at the height of your head relative to your feet. If your head is higher than your feet, you are in a decline position. If your feet are higher than your head, this is the equivalent of being in an inclined position on a weight bench. That means, if you put your feet up on a bench, chair, stair, ball, or whatever, you can do push-ups that are targeting your upper chest. If you reverse that and instead put your hands on that raised surface, you can do push-ups that target your lower chest muscles. Thanks to good old gravity, a foot-elevated push-up also puts more stress on your upper body and less on your legs. 

Thanks to good old gravity, a foot-elevated push-up also puts more stress on your upper body and less on your legs.

To make this version even more difficult, do your feet-elevated push-ups on your fists, rather than your flat hands. Using your fists will create a smaller surface area that is in contact with the ground, increasing the balance that is required from many of your smaller arm muscles.

When your hands are higher than the rest of your body during the push-up, you will work more of your lower chest and abs. Also, if you use an unstable surface (like a yoga or stability ball) as the elevated surface, you can really...

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