reckonerDecline push-up
The push-up with your feet up on something. It is the way to make a push-up harder in a room with nothing to put on your back, and the thing it asks for first is not chest strength. It is holding a longer, heavier plank while you press.
Feet on the surface, chest to the floor.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, front delts, triceps
- Kit
- Bodyweight, sturdy surface
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Wrist
Muscles worked
How to do it
Start low
A step, a low bench, a stair. Feet elevated push-ups produced higher ground reaction force at the hands than every other push-up variation tested1, and the higher the feet go the more of you the arms hold. Earn the height rather than picking one.
Walk the hands out and set the line
Feet on the surface, hands under the shoulders or slightly wider. Squeeze the glutes, brace the belly, and make one straight line from ears to heels. That line is harder to hold here than on the floor and it is the first thing to go.
Lower to the floor with the elbows back
Chest to an inch off the ground, elbows traveling back at about forty five degrees to the body rather than flared out. Head, chest and hips should arrive at the bottom together.
Press away, and keep looking at the floor
Push up and spread the shoulder blades at the top. Keep your neck in line with your spine: with your feet up, the temptation is to crane the head forward and let the eyes lead.
What goes wrong
Piking the hips up
The hips rise, the line becomes a V and the load slides back down toward your feet. It looks like the hard variation and it is doing less work than a flat push-up. Squeeze the glutes and hold the line.
Dropping the head instead of the chest
The nose reaches the floor before the chest does, so the rep ends early and gets shorter as the set goes on. Chest to the floor is the standard here exactly as it is on the ground.
Going straight to a high box
A big jump in height is a big jump in load, and it usually turns into short reps with a sagging middle. Move up in the smallest step the room gives you.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 6 | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 10 | One more set 2 → 5 setsYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7 and there is no weight left to add. When a lift runs out of load, the set is the increment, so it does five sets next week. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How much harder is it than a normal push-up?
It depends entirely on how high your feet are. What is measured is the direction: feet elevated push-ups put more force through the hands than the flat, knees down and hands elevated versions1. There is no fixed multiplier to quote, so let the rep range tell you.
Does it train the upper chest?
With your feet up, your arms travel toward your head relative to your torso, the way they do on an incline bench. That is geometry rather than a measured finding: nobody has published the muscle by muscle comparison, so this page will not claim one.
Should I do this or put on a weight vest?
A vest is the more controllable answer, because you can add a small amount and keep the line you already hold. Reckoner has both, in the same swap group, and a vest push-up goes back to being a lift it can add weight to.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Ebben and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2011. Kinetic analysis of several variations of push-ups peak vertical ground reaction force being higher for feet elevated push-ups than for all other push-up variations measured, including the regular, knees down and hands elevated versions