Author: G. Jones

Building muscle with pushups is the most basic, easiest way to start building upper body muscles quickly. For those of you who dont have time to go the gym, or even if you just love to do calisthenics you know you can always benefit from pushups. Building muscle with pushups is one of the oldest ways to gain muscle yet its also one of the best ways to gain muscle.

There are a variety of pushups you can do to get your chest, shoulders, and triceps busting out of your t-shirt! Even your biceps are hit to a certain extent but not as much as the other muscles. Incorporating these different types of pushups in your workout can have a huge positive effect on the muscular development of your upper body. For example, you can start  building muscle with pushups  by starting with a set of 20 normal pushups, then 15 diamonds and 15 inclines with no rest in-between. Imagine the intense burn a workout like that can have on your upper body! (Change those rep numbers according to your physical ability of course.)

Try These…

Normal Pushups – Get down on the floor, back facing the ceiling, extend and balance yourself on top of your toes. Spread your hands shoulder width apart. On the way down keep your body in a straight line downwards toward the floor, but dont let your back go down before the rest of your body goes down.

Wide Pushups – Wide push ups are self-explanatory, they are performed with your arms extended further from your shoulders. This style of pushups hits a larger area of the chest.

Diamonds – With this type of pushup you are to put your index fingers and thumbs together on the floor in the shape of a diamond. With your hands in this position you will get more direct stimulus in your triceps. This is sort of like the calisthenic version of the close grip bench press.

Decline pushups – Decline pushups concentrate on your upper chest muscles as well as all of the areas of a regular pushup. In this exercise you place your toes on a stable surface above the floor which puts your body at a downward angle. Put your hands on the floor and perform as normal.

Incline pushups – Inclines are the exact opposite of decline pushups. Incline pushups concentrate on the lower chest muscles as well as all the areas of a regular pushup. Incline pushups are performed just like normal pushups, except you want to tilt your upper body in a upward angle with your feet on the floor. Find a sturdy surface to rest your hands to perform your pushups.

Take these different types of pushups and create an intense workout. To make it more challenging, you could even have someone lay a weight plate on your back! You could even have a small child sit on your back as you perform your reps up and down! Be creative, get results, and enjoy yourself.

Tags: body building, muscles, push ups, strength, types, upper body

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Fitness, Strength Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.