reckonerPush-up
The press with no kit at all. It trains the chest, the triceps and the front of the shoulder, it doubles as a plank the whole time you are doing it, and it is the movement Reckoner falls back to when a room has nothing in it.
Body in one line, chest to the floor.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, triceps, front delts
- Kit
- Bodyweight, floor
- 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
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Wrist
How to do it
Set the plank first
Hands under the shoulders or slightly wider, feet together or a little apart. Squeeze the glutes and brace the belly so you are one straight line from your ears to your heels.
Set the elbows
From above, your arms should make an arrow rather than a T. Elbows travel back at roughly forty five degrees to your body, not straight out to the sides.
Go down to the floor
Lower until your chest is an inch off the ground, keeping the line. Your nose, your chest and your hips should arrive at the bottom at the same time.
Push the floor away
Press up and finish with the shoulder blades spread apart at the top. That last inch is where the serratus works and it is the bit almost everyone leaves out.
What goes wrong
Hips leading the way down
The hips sag, the lower back takes the load, and the range gets shorter every rep. If the line breaks, the set is over: log what you did and Reckoner works from that.
Stopping halfway down
The commonest way a push-up quietly gets easier as the set goes on. Chest to the floor or it does not count, which is also how you keep this week comparable with last week.
Elbows flared to ninety degrees
Same shoulder position as a flared bench press and the same reason not to. Tuck them in and the press gets stronger.
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 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 | More reps 7 → 8 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 | Deload 40% of sets offThree 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. |
| 4 | 2 x 8 | More reps 8 → 9 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets. |
| 5 | 4 x 9 | More reps 9 → 10 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. |
| 6 | 4 x 10 | One more set 4 → 5 setsYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7.5 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 reckoner/engine.py 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
What happens when push-ups get easy?
Reckoner climbs the rep range first. When you finish the top of the range comfortably and there is no weight to add, it adds a set instead, because volume is the only lever a bodyweight movement has left.
Should I be doing them on my knees?
Put your hands on a bench instead. An incline push-up keeps the whole line and the whole range, which a kneeling one does not, and it comes down to the floor as you get stronger.
Can I load a push-up?
Yes, with a weight vest, and the library has that as its own movement. Reckoner treats it as a loaded lift from then on, so it goes back to adding weight rather than sets.
Similar movements
Reckoner will offer any of these when this lift stalls. None of them is written up yet.