Overview

This is the upper body compound movement of horizontally pushing.

You’re probably coming at this from one of two places.

If you’re still starting out in the first two or three years of intentional lifting, the major movement patterns should be your bread and butter. The standout exercises listed here should be the core part of your programming, rotating every so often (we’re talking months, not weeks). At a certain point we likely get diminishing returns specialising in one or two exercises, but if it’s your first few years in of serious lifting, you are assuredly far, far away from that point.

If you’re an experienced advanced lifter, chances are you’re viewing things through 12 muscle groups or multiple movement slots within each muscle group. Even so, it’s still worth periodically checking your programs aren’t going so far as to neglect all the compounds, and occasionally cycling one of these exercises back in.

For everyone in between, take the middle point between those two parameters.

Description

We’re looking for a compound exercise that targets the chest, shoulders and triceps.

Either with the exercise selection or exercise form, we generally want all three muscle groups to get as close to failure as possible.

In this sense we have the opposite aim when dissecting things from a ‘muscle group’ perspective, where we generally want to isolate a certain muscle.

There are many specific exercises that can work here; there are tens or dozens (depending on how nitpicky you want to be with classifying a different exercise) of exercises that is a vertical pushing motion.

There’s not going to much value add in just listing endless options, instead we’ll stick to some key foundational ones that categorically work, hence the two options above.

Again, to repeat – if you’re around your second or third year into intentional lifting, your focus should be precisely here. If you’re advanced, you’ll be well aware there are endless variations and these may simply serve as a checkpoint to ensure you don’t have a gap in your training.

Standout exercises

For horizontal pushing, there are two standout exercises:

Push-up

An obvious choice, but the classics are a classic for a reason. Before anybody dismisses this as being too basic, let’s clarify what we mean with a push-up. As with all bodyweight movements, there are regressions and progressions to it.

Generally speaking we can consider three levels of push-ups:

• Push-up regression: an incline push-up (hands at a higher point than feet)
• Standard push-up: a push-up off the ground (chest tapping the ground or 1cm above)
• Push-up progression: a full range of motion push-up (hands in an elevated position to allow the chest to move)

Push-up regressions

If a standard push-up is too challenging, an incline pushup is the way to go. A bent knee push-up isn’t recommended as it puts your torso in an awkward angle; you won’t get the same skill transfer.

Gradually lower the height as you progress through 5-15 reps of the exercise. It may be easier to conceptualise the heights at various angles – essentially we want to work through 15 degrees at a time.

In other words, you might progress from a 45 inch jump box, to a 30 inch, to a 15 inch, to a 7.5 inch.

Standard push-up

A lot of folks who suggest the push-up is trivial are simply doing the standard variation without exploring a full ROM push-up. Or worse, doing the standard variation without getting close enough to the ground.

Form cues; place your hands a palm width or two wider than your shoulder width, and around nipple height. Keep the knees locked out and squeeze the glutes.

As alluded to the key with the push-up (and most other bodyweight exercises actually) is not skipping the top and bottom end ranges of motion.

At the top position, maximally push your shoulders back (to get scapula protraction). Some people call this the ‘push-up plus’; here we’re simply treating it as part of a normal push-up.

At the bottom position, lower your torso (still with your abs and glutes engaged) until your chest lightly touches the ground. Or another way of thinking about this is lowering till your nose is a half inch off the ground.

Push-up progressions

If you delve into the calisthenics world, there are countless progressions beyond even full ROM push-ups. They can generally be divided into two branches; skill progressions and load progressions.

Skill progressions would include things like ring push-ups, one arm pushups and planche pushups. These should be considered as specific skills that you can train for if that’s your goal, but they won’t have much carryover as a foundational strength movement. Those would be outside the scope of this guide.

Load progressions would be adding weight to the full ROM push-up, either with a weighted vest or a dip belt. If you can get this set-up easily, it’s a great progression to the full ROM push-up.

There’s only one drawback to it but it’s a big one – it’s just a pain to set-up. If you’re fairly strong a weighted vest probably won’t have enough weights, at that point you need a dip belt. So you need enough height under your chest to clear the dip belt and plates. So you’ll need a sturdy box on either side for your hands, and be elevated around 1 metre for your torso and dip belt and plates to hang. Guys will probably find this cumbersome to set up; girls may have more luck as the weights will probably be lighter, hence not requiring a dip belt.

All things considered, full ROM push-ups is a good final progression for most folks.

As an approximate rule of thumb, you don’t really need to progress beyond the push-up until you can hit a full ROM push-up for 10 strict reps. That’s a 3 count eccentric, 1 count pause at the bottom, and a 1 count explosive concentric up.

That doesn’t mean if you mix up your training with different exercises your gains with evaporate – that’s nonsense, but you can keep the mental focus on push-ups in the back of your mind.

Barbell Bench

The bench is a good place to move towards after you can rep out full ROM push-ups. That’s not to say you can’t do benching until that point, but it probably shouldn’t be your primary focus.

You’ve probably seen your fair share of advice of bench form and cues. The key distinction here is the barbell bench for general training and the barbell bench for a powerlifting competition are two separate concepts.

The goal in powerlifting is to maximise your 1 rep max. This will likely mean maximally arching the low back, maximally driving with your feet and having the widest grip possible.

Our goal is generally increasing size of the chest, triceps and delts, as well as the ability to brace and generate tension. Over time this will lead to an increase in strength of course, but not specifically targeted at 1 rep max strength.

The form is pretty straightforward.

• Take a comfortable medium grip width on the bar (probably one to two fists wider than shoulder width)
• Upper back on the bench, think ‘flat back’
• Lower back may have a small arch, but a minor one at most
• Feet stable on ground
• Keep pressure in the rib cage. When you lower the bar, breathe in and expand the chest. When you push up the bar, breathe out.

Like all other compound exercises recommended in this section, the bench is an evergreen exercise you can run indefinitely. What you’ll likely find is you mentally go stale before you physically run out of progress.

As mentioned earlier, the barbell bench is an especially good option for those in their second or third years of intentional resistance training. After that, you’ll want a greater focus on the muscle groups, but the bench can always be rotated in over the years and decades.