Top 16 Push-Up Variations

Hi, I'm Ben Greenfield, and in this video I'm going to show you 16 different push up variations. I've chosen some of my top versions because as you probably know, the push up can be kind of a boring exercise. But when you put some of the twists on it that I'm about to show you, you'll be able to work your muscles from a bunch of different angles with different loads and forces depending on what your goals are. So let's just jump right in. First one that I'm going to show you is basically a push up that takes place between two chairs. You could use benches at the gym, you could use bleachers, whatever you want. But when you put your hands out slightly wider than your shoulders and allow yourself to drop lower than you normally would during a pushup, what you're going to do is activate more muscles and specifically work your chest through a greater range of motion. Now, to turn this exercise into basically a suspended pushup, which is going to work more of your abdominal muscles and your core, a little bit more of your legs too. You can suspend not only your arms but also your legs. So this is called a chair elevated push up. Alright, so that's version one. Next one that I'm going to show you and I do have my little papers over here to keep me reminded because I honestly didn't memorize 16 pushups. Is a feet elevated push up. Now, they've actually done electromyographic studies of what kind of push up variation works the most muscles. And the feet elevated push up is the one that really works a lot of your muscles. So what you do for this one is you simply put your feet up on an elevated surface. If you wanted to make this even more difficult, you could use a stability ball as your elevated surface. And you do your push up with your feet elevated. You can also make this one more difficult by going up onto your fists like so, and creating a more unstable surface or lifting one leg off of that elevated surface as you do the pushup. Okay, so we've got our.

Feet lower, I'm sorry, our feet higher than our hands version. You can also do a version with your hands higher than your feet. Now, when I've got my hands lower than my feet, it's going to tend to work a little bit more of my upper body musculature and my shoulders. But when I put my hands on an elevated surface, that will tend to work just a little bit more of my lower body musculature in my abs.

So what this version would look like for example, is I would have my hands up on an elevated surface, like so. And this is a good one to do too. When you don't want to get your hands dirty so you're like at an airport and you don't want to touch the ground, you could use a chair and you would simply do your push ups like so, with your hands on an elevated surface rather than your feet on the elevated surface. And again, like I mentioned, that one can work a little bit more of the lower chest. Okay, the next version that I've got here is a handle grip push up. Now, if you don't have access to chairs or an elevated surface that you can put your hands on, you can still work through a greater range of motion when you use something like a couple of dumbbells to do your push up. So in this case, I would simply put my hands on the handles and do my pushup like so. The nice part about using dumbbells for an exercise like this is that in between each pushup, if you want to work your upper back muscles, you can do your pushup, but then row in between each pushup with one hand or the other. And this can turn it into more of a full body exercise. So that's the handle grip push up. The next one is the staggered base pushup. And the next two variations that I'm going to show you are really good. For example, for athletes who need to load their bodies asymmetrically, like tennis players or baseball pitchers or MMA fighters, you know, anybody who's kind of moving side to side as they're doing their activities. So staggered base push up, staggered base means one hand goes slightly farther in front of the other hand and you do your push up with a staggered base like so. So you can do your whole set with your left hand in front of your right and then switch. Now, the other version is a side to side pushup. And to do this, you put both of your hands next to each other, but as you do the pushup, you shift your entire body weight towards one side or the other, like so. And this is almost a little bit more. It'll give you a little bit more of a feel of almost doing like a one arm push up because you're going to load one side of your body more than the other. So that's a way that you can do kind of sort of one arm pushup. Or get yourself up to the point where you can do a one arm pushup is by simply doing that side to side push up. Okay. Next variation is a Corkscrew push up. This one's really good for balance. It's really good for the sides of your abs. And if you throw a few of the twists on that, I'm going to show you can also be really good for your butt inside your legs. So, corkscrew push up. I'm going to get in this position. I like to do it on my fists again to make a more unstable surface. Rather than using the whole hand to do this version, you simply do your full pushup. But then in between each pushup, you rotate your entire body. You reach for the sky, and this is tougher to do with the fists. And then you come back around and you do your pushup again. And then you rotate to the opposite side. And what you can do is as you rotate towards the sky, you, you can actually lift one of your legs. And when you lift a leg, what you do is you really load the opposite leg, the hip on the side of the opposite leg. So the corkscrew can really be a full body exercise. So I really like that version of the pushup. Okay, next one I want to show you is a narrow grip pushup. This one, a lot of people do it, but they do it wrong. You don't need to have a super narrow grip. I mean, my normal pushup grip is about shoulder width. All I'm doing is moving about 2 inches in. When most people do this exercise, they allow their elbows to flay up like this. You don't want that. You want your elbows to brush the sides of your ribcage so that you work more of your triceps muscles. When you do a narrow grip pushup, you don't have to come all the way in and have like a triangle or anything like that. Literally, just slightly more narrow than your standard push up is fine. Okay, next one is a one leg pushup. I hinted at this when I was showing you the elevated pushup with the legs on the chair. But when you lift a leg as you do your pushup, you're going to load your upper body more and you're also going to really load that leg that is not elevated, that leg that's in contact with the ground a lot more. So what you'll feel when you do leg elevated push up is that the quad of the leg that's in touch with the ground is going to work more and you'll feel more of a weight on your upper body. Okay, the next one is the Spiderman pushup. I love this one. It's also a really, really good one to do when you've got your feet higher than your hands.

I'll show you both versions. So regular Spiderman pushup all you're going to do, and you'll see how this kind of looks like Spiderman is as you're dropping, you would bring your left elbow or your left knee to your right elbow, your right knee to your right elbow. You can also do a version of this where you simply bring your right knee to your right elbow or your left knee to your left elbow. And if you wanted to do this as an elevated version, it actually gets pretty difficult. But it's a really good exercise. You would simply get onto your fists, feet elevated, and as you drop, you drive that leg. And that's a really great push up variation. It's one of my favorites for working especially your abs and putting a really big load on your upper body. Okay, after the Spiderman push up, we've got the Dive Bomber push up. Great flexibility exercise for your low back and for your hamstrings. It's also a really good way to work your shoulders if you don't have something like a set of dumbbells to lift overhead with. What you do for the Dive Bomber push up, and this is also known as the Hindu push up, is you put your hands farther in front of your torso than you normally would and you kind of start in like a capital letter A position. What I do is I imagine there's like an electric fence or barbed wire fence above each of my hands and I simply dive under that fence, swoop up into this position right here, and then I swoop back under that fence and push myself back to my starting position. So again, it's from here.

Swoop under and come up and then swoop back. So that one's a really good full body workout too.

Next one is the clapping push up. Be really careful with this one because it puts a ton of stress on your low back. So if you've got low back or disc problems, don't do this one. When your hands land on the ground, a lot of stress in the low back. But this is a really good exercise again for athletes, people who need to produce explosive movements. Just like it sounds you've probably heard of or seen this one before. But you simply drop and then as you raise, you clap and come back. So you drop, raise, clap and come back. So really quick, explosive exercise, the clapping push up. Next one is the torso forward. The torso back push up. When you have your torso forward, meaning your torso is farther forward than your hands, you're Going to work a little bit more of your shoulders and your triceps. And when your torso is back or your hands are farther in front of your body, you're going to work a little bit more of your chest. So torso forward. All I'm going to do is shift my torso farther forward than I normally would. I drop like this. So I'm working more of my triceps. When I'm doing this version of the exercise. When I go torso back, all I'm doing is shifting my hands farther forward and I'm doing the push up with my hands farther forward. And this is going to work more of the pec muscles when I do that variation. Okay, almost done here, you guys. If all these variations are getting too easy for you, you can simply add resistance to the pushup. One way to do this is if you've got a backpack full of books. That's a perfect way to add resistance to a push up. But there's a couple other things that you can do. You can get a plate and you can literally just like put a plate on your back. The tough part about this is if you really want to go with like a heavy plate, then you'll need a partner or somebody who's doing the workout with you to put a heavier plate on your back. But you can literally put a plate on your back, get into your push up position and do your push ups with a plate or with an added weight on your back. And this actually works better. I'm using a small plate, but this would work better if you're kind of more advanced. You've got the bigger weight plates, like the 45 pound weight plates at the gym that take up a greater surface area. Putting one of those on your back and doing a push up is an awesome exercise. But let's say you don't have a plate, you don't have somebody to help you to put a plate on your back. You can use elastic band or elastic tubing. This is a really cool exercise. You're going to find the elastic tubing tends to kind of shove you towards the ground. So doing this version in a slow, controlled manner is a great way to add weight to the pushup. You'll see I just put this kind of across the lower base of my neck. If you have neck issues, this might be a problem for you. But if your neck's fine with this, then this is a really good way to add resistance to the push up by simply having that band or that tubing on the back of your neck. Doing your pushup that way. So what I just showed you, if you happen to count, was 16 different pushup variations. So try those out, let me know what you think. Hopefully, that helps you from getting bored from your standard pushup. I'm Ben Greenfield. Thanks for watching.