reckonerVest close-grip push-up
A close-grip push-up with a vest on. Once you can do more of them than a working set has room for, the choice is a longer set or a heavier one, and this is the heavier one.
Elbows tucked in, hands under the chest.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Triceps, chest
- Kit
- Bodyweight, floor, weight vest
- Loading
- Bodyweight, with weight added
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 1 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Wrist, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Fit the vest before you get on the floor
Tighten it so it sits on the ribs and stays there when you lean forward. A loose vest slides toward your neck the moment you are horizontal, and then you spend the set holding your head up instead of pressing.
Hands under the chest, elbows tucked
Elbows tucked in, hands under the chest, exactly as without the vest. The narrow position is the reason this lane exists, and the added weight is not a reason to widen out to make the set easier.
Brace harder than you think you need to
The load sits on your back, which means it is pulling your hips toward the floor for every rep. Squeeze the glutes and the abs before you start and hold one line from the shoulders to the heels.
Stop the set while the reps still look the same
A vest does not change the rep, it changes how many of them you have. The moment the tuck goes or the hips drop, the useful part of the set has finished and the rest is practice at doing it badly.
What goes wrong
Putting the vest on before the reps are clean
If your unloaded close-grip push-ups already end with flared elbows and a sagging middle, the vest makes all of it worse and none of it stronger. Fix the shape at bodyweight, then load it.
Wearing a vest that rides up
Where the load sits changes what has to hold it. When a vest designed to load the shoulder blades was compared at two weights during a push-up, the serratus anterior and lower trapezius both worked significantly harder under the heavier one4. A vest that has slid up to your shoulders is loading something other than what you set out to load.
Treating a loaded push-up as a lesser bench press
Eighteen men trained for eight weeks, one group benching at 40 per cent of their maximum and one doing push-ups matched to that load, and both increased their bench press maximum and their triceps and pectoralis major thickness2. Five weeks of band push-ups matched to a six repetition maximum bench press for muscle activity produced strength gains no different from benching3.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 5 kg, 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 | 3 x 10 at 5 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 at 5 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 at 5 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 at 5 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 at 5 kg | 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 14 at 5 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
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
Is a weighted push-up as good as a bench press?
At the loads that have actually been tested, the two are hard to tell apart. Push-ups matched to 40 per cent of a bench press maximum produced the same growth and the same strength gain over eight weeks2, and push-ups matched for muscle activity produced the same strength gain over five3. The limit worth stating is in the matching: both studies compared a push-up against a relatively light bench press, so none of this shows a vest replacing heavy barbell work. It shows that a push-up carrying a real load is real training.
How heavy should the vest be?
Start with the smallest amount that makes your top set feel like a top set, and move in small steps. The published progression rule is a two to ten per cent increase in load, the lower end of that for exercises using less muscle mass, once you can do one or two reps past the target on two sessions in a row1. On a vest that percentage is of the plates rather than of you plus the plates, so it is a smaller step than it sounds, which is the right direction to be wrong in.
What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?
It eases what is in the vest and lets you rebuild toward the load that stopped moving. It never takes you below your own bodyweight, because it cannot. Only a second stall after that reset gets you an offer of something else from the group below.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Ratamess and colleagues, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, American College of Sports Medicine position stand, 2009. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults the recommendation of a two to ten per cent load increase, the lower percentage for smaller muscle mass exercises, once the lifter can perform the current workload for one to two repetitions over the target on two consecutive sessions
- Kikuchi and Nakazato, Journal of Exercise Science and Fitness, 2017. Low-load bench press and push-up induce similar muscle hypertrophy and strength gain eighteen men over eight weeks, push-ups adjusted to match 40 per cent of bench press one repetition maximum producing comparable increases in maximum strength and in triceps and pectoralis major thickness
- Calatayud and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2015. Bench press and push-up at comparable levels of muscle activity results in similar strength gains thirty trained students over five weeks, band push-ups matched to a six repetition maximum bench press for muscle activity producing similar strength gains in both groups
- Liu and colleagues, Healthcare, 2024. Effects of using a special weighted vest on muscle activity around the scapula during knee push-up plus in healthy subjects thirty two healthy adults, with serratus anterior and lower trapezius activity significantly higher under the heavier of two vest loads during a knee push-up plus