Pushup is one of the most famous and basic exercise in the world. It was first introduced in 1905, which makes it more than a century old. This move is performed to strengthen and tone your upper body muscles. Pushup primarily works your pectoral (chest) muscles.
The secondary muscles involved are your shoulders, triceps and core. These muscles are engaged to maintain stability during the movement.
Pushups can be done anywhere as no equipment is required. This makes it a safe option for anyone looking to get fit.
Adding pushups to your workout routine can have multiple benefits like stronger upper body, better posture, and improved stability. So, whether you’re a beginner or a professional athlete, pushups are a great exercise for you to try.
This exercise can be easily modified to increase or decrease the intensity.
For challenging your strength, place your feet on an elevated surface like a bench or stability ball. For beginners, use your knees instead of your toes to make it easier.
In this article you’ll learn about the different variations of the pushup exercise. Reading about these exercises will help you in selecting the best ones for your workout.
Various Type Of Pushup Exercises
Here are the most successful variations of pushups that can help you in building strength in different areas of your chest muscles. Adding these variants to your workout routine can train multiple muscle groups together.
CLAP PUSHUPS
Clap push ups are a dynamic and challenging variation of the standard push ups. This move benefits everyone, from a gym goer to a professional athlete. During this exercise, you’re clapping your hands together in between the repetitions. But what do clap push ups work? Clap push ups primarily build strength in your chest, triceps, and shoulder muscles.
Benefits Of Clap Push Ups
1. Clap push ups benefits your explosive power, muscle coordination, endurance and agility.
2. This exercise is also a part of high intensity interval training workout which helps in improving cardiovascular health.
3. The dynamic nature of clap push ups requires you to act quickly and stabilize your body. This helps in improving your overall balance and upper body flexibility.
4. Clap push ups are worth adding to your workout routine as they provide a lot of benefits without any equipment.
How To Do Clap Pushups
1. Start in a push up position with your hands slightly wider than your shoulders width.
2. Bend your elbows to lower your body towards the ground in a controlled motion. Breathe in while going down. Pause the movement at the bottom.
3. Lift your body explosively to raise your hands above the ground. Clap your hands together in mid air. Land back in a push up position. Breathe out while raising your body back to the start. This is one repetition of the clap push ups.
4. Aim for 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions. Keep increasing the number of sets and repetitions as perform the exercise regularly.
SUPERMAN PUSHUPS
The superman pushups is another pushup alternative that works similar to the clap variation.
While doing the clap pushups your upper body is raised off the ground but during the superman variant your whole body is lifted off the ground. This is accomplished by lifting your hands and feet together into the air and then landing back to the start.
This exercise strengthens the twitch muscles in your chest which improves your performance in various sports activities. The superman pushups are mostly performed by athletes in sports like basketball, boxing, martial arts and swimming.
It’s important for beginners to master the clap pushups before attempting this advanced variation.
DIAMOND PUSH-UPS
In this form of push-up your hands should be closer to each other and narrower than your shoulders. Both of your thumbs and indexes should be touching and forming a triangle shape.
This exercise strengthens your triceps and middle chest line. Beginner’s can start doing this exercise with a little gap between their hands as it makes this exercise easier to perform.
WIDE GRIP PUSHUP
This type of pushup is recommended if you want to focus more on your chest and front shoulders. This exercise is similar to the traditional pushup but your hands are wider than your shoulders.
This push-up form puts more tension to the pectoral muscles of your chest than the traditional pushup.
STAGGERED PUSHUP
This pushup exercise is best if you want to strengthen your chest individually. This pushup exercise is similar to the traditional push-up, the variation is that your one hand is kept in front position than the other hand and equivalent to your shoulders.
The hand which is in normal position will work more than the hand in front, as more weight will transfer to the normal position side.