Push-up variations, from easiest to hardest

The push-up has a reputation as the exercise you do before you are strong enough for the bench press, or the one you do when there is no bench press. Then, once you can do a set of them, the usual advice is to do more, and then more again, until a set of push-ups is a test of patience rather than strength.

Both ideas leave a lot on the table. A push-up can build muscle and strength as well as a bench press, as long as it is hard enough for you. And the way to keep it hard enough is to change the push-up rather than keep adding reps to the same one.

A push-up can do a bench press's job

When push-ups and the bench press are matched for how hard they are, the results come out close. In one eight week trial, men did either a light bench press or push-ups adjusted to the same load, kneeling where they needed to. Both groups gained bench press strength and muscle thickness in the chest and the back of the arm by similar amounts³. In another, experienced lifters trained for five weeks with either a heavy bench press or push-ups made just as hard with an elastic band, and both groups improved their bench press by similar amounts⁴. A third had moderately trained men either bench press or work through progressively harder push-up variations for four weeks, and both groups raised their bench press⁵.

These are older studies, and small ones. They agree with each other, and they agree on the thing that matters for this page: the push-up is not the lesser exercise. A push-up you never make harder is.

The push-up is not the easy exercise. The one you never make harder is.

What makes a push-up heavier

You cannot add plates to a push-up, but you can change how much of you is on your hands. Researchers measured this with a force plate under the hands of people doing six versions. Push-ups with the feet up on a box put more force through the hands than every other version. Push-ups with the hands up on a box, and push-ups from the knees, put less through them than every other version¹.

So the rule of thumb is simple. Hands higher than feet makes it lighter. Feet higher than hands makes it heavier. A second study found that you carry more of your weight at the bottom of a push-up than at the top², so a rep that stops short of the floor skips the heaviest part of it.

The variations, from easiest to hardest

1. Incline push-up. Hands up on a bench, a box or a kitchen counter. It keeps the whole movement and the whole range and takes weight off your hands. The higher the surface, the lighter it is, so one exercise covers a lot of ground.
2. Push-up. Hands and feet on the floor, body in one line, chest to the floor.
3. Fist push-up and close-grip push-up. Not harder versions so much as different ones. The fist push-up keeps your wrists straight for anybody whose wrists complain on flat palms. The close grip brings your hands in under your chest, and Reckoner counts it as a triceps exercise first.
4. Decline push-up. Feet up on a bench or a box. More of you on your hands, and a longer plank to hold while you press.
5. Vest push-up. A push-up wearing a weight vest. The one version you can make heavier in small, exact steps, the way you would load a bar.

The pike push-up and the elevated pike push-up look like part of this list and are not. With your hips high, they press up over your head rather than out in front of you, so they are a shoulder press rather than a chest press, and Reckoner files them with the overhead presses for that reason. If you want a bodyweight press for your shoulders that gets heavier as you get stronger, the elevated pike push-up does it by raising your feet, the same lever that makes a decline push-up harder.

When to move to the next one

1. Do every rep the whole way down. Chest to the floor or to the surface, body in one line. A rep that stops short is an easier exercise than the one you think you are doing.
2. Climb the reps first. Add reps to the version you are on until you reach the top of your rep range on every set.
3. Then change the version, not the count. At the top of the range, step to the next variation and start again at the bottom of the range. On an incline, a lower surface is the next step.
4. Step back down without a second thought. If the new version takes your reps below the bottom of the range, or takes your form with it, go back one step for another few weeks.

Climb the reps, then change the push-up.

What Reckoner does with a push-up

A push-up has no weight to add, so the engine adds reps instead, one at a time, until you reach the top of the prescribed range. There the reps hold, and when your sets feel no harder than they should, the engine can add a set. If the lift sits at the top for a few trained weeks, the engine offers you a swap, and you choose what comes next. The vest push-up is the exception: it carries a load, so once its reps are done the engine adds weight in small steps, the same way it does on a bar.