How to do push-ups: from an incline to the floor, and past it

Push-ups and the bench press produce similar patterns of muscle activity:¹ mainly the chest and the triceps, with the front of the shoulders helping.² Your body is the weight and the floor is the bench. If the floor version won't come yet, the way in is the same as with any lift: start with a load you can move well, then add to it.

This page covers the rep, a ladder of versions from easiest to hardest, how many to do, how push-ups compare with the bench press, and where to put your hands. The barbell version of the same push is the bench press; the pull that balances it is the pull-up.

How to do a push-up, step by step

1. Hands on the floor, a little wider than your shoulders, in line with your chest.
2. Body in one straight line from head to heels. Squeeze your glutes and brace so your hips neither sag nor pike.
3. Lower your chest until it's close to the floor, elbows angled back toward your ribs rather than straight out.
4. Press the floor away until your arms are straight, still in one line. That's one rep.

The bottom is the heavy part. In 28 highly strength-trained men holding push-up positions on a force plate, the arms supported more weight at the bottom than at the top, on the toes and on the knees.³ A half rep skips the hardest part, and the American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand lists a complete range of motion among the things that enhanced strength.⁴

How much of your body weight a push-up moves

Less than all of it, because your feet hold some. Two force-plate studies measured it:

• Floor vs knees. In eight healthy men, the starting load of a standard push-up was 66.4% of body weight, about two-thirds. On the knees it was 52.9%, about half, and the chest and triceps were less active.⁵
• Hands up, feet up. In 23 recreationally fit adults, 14 men and 9 women, push-ups with the hands on a box 12 or 24 inches high, or from the knees, produced less force than a regular push-up. Feet up on the same boxes produced more than every other version. Men and women didn't differ in how each version changed the load.⁶

So each version is the same exercise with a different share of your weight. Here's the incline ladder, built from those two studies, with the steps ordered by a simple rule: the higher your hands, the less weight they hold. The studies didn't rank knee push-ups against each step, so they're left out of it.

Can't do one from the floor? Start on an incline

Knee push-ups work, but an incline is easier to adjust in small steps (counter, bench, stair) and keeps the same straight body as the floor version. So:

1. Find your step: the highest surface where you can do at least eight good reps.
2. Train there until you can do about 20 with reps to spare.
3. Move one step lower and drop back toward eight reps. Repeat until you reach the floor.
4. Mix while you cross over. When the floor gives you only a few reps, do those, then finish the set on the bench.

The ACSM's 2026 stand notes that earlier guidelines recommended one to four sets of eight to twenty reps,⁴ and its 2009 stand recommends adding load once you can do one or two reps more than your target.⁷ On a push-up, a lower step is the added load. How long the floor takes varies with where you start; none of these studies says how fast anyone gets there.

How many push-ups, and how often

• Two or three sets. The 2026 stand found strength was enhanced by two to three sets, and it advises at least two sets per exercise.⁴
• Two or three days a week. The 2009 stand recommends two to three days a week for beginners,⁷ and the 2026 stand found strength was enhanced by training at least twice a week.⁴
• Hard sets. Stop most sets with one to three reps left, or three or four while you're learning (how to judge that). Write down the version and the reps: that's progressive overload without plates.

Do push-ups build muscle like the bench press?

In the few trials that tested it, strength rose about as much with push-ups as with the bench press in all three. Muscle growth was measured in two of them: similar in one, no change in either group in the other. Push-ups held up when they were hard enough:

• At a matched load. For eight weeks, 18 male physical-education students aged 19 to 22, recreational lifters with at least a year of experience (the authors' aim calls them untrained), did either bench presses at 40% of their one-rep max or push-ups adjusted to the same load (kneeling, for example): three sets to failure, twice a week. Chest and triceps thickness and bench press max rose by similar amounts in both groups.¹
• At a matched effort. In 30 university students with advanced lifting experience, five weeks of six-rep-max push-ups, made harder with an elastic band, improved one-rep and six-rep max scores about as much as six-rep-max bench pressing did. A group that didn't train stayed the same.⁸
• Through harder variations. For four weeks, 23 moderately trained men did either progressively harder push-up variations or the bench press, three days a week. Both groups raised their bench press max; muscle thickness didn't change significantly in either.⁹

These are small, short trials, two of them only in young men, and the ACSM's 2026 stand notes that body-weight training wasn't studied on its own in the reviews it pooled, apart from one hamstring exercise.⁴ Read together: a push-up is a real strength exercise when the version is hard enough for you. When even the hardest version runs well past 20 reps, a loaded press such as the bench press is the simpler way to add weight.

Wide, normal or narrow hands?

• In 40 people, 11 men and 29 women, the chest and the triceps were both more active with the hands close together than with them wide apart.¹⁰
• In 20 recreationally active young men, the diamond push-up (hands under the chest, thumbs and fingertips forming a triangle) produced the highest activity in both muscles, the standard push-up came next and the wide one last. The authors note that earlier findings on hand position are inconsistent.²

Muscle activity in a few reps isn't growth over months, and neither study trained anyone. What both suggest is that a narrow push-up works the chest and triceps more, and that going wide didn't make the chest work harder. Start a little wider than your shoulders and use narrow push-ups as a step up.

Harder versions, once 20 are easy

1. Feet up. A low step, then a bench or the couch. In the 23-adult study above, feet-up push-ups produced the most force of any version.⁶
2. Slow down, or pause at the bottom. Three seconds down, or two seconds' pause where the load is highest. It isn't magic (the 2026 stand found time under tension didn't change muscle growth);⁴ it just makes a set hard in fewer reps.
3. Add load. A resistance band across your back, or weight on it, such as a backpack with a few books in it.¹ The band trial above used elastic bands to make push-ups as hard as a six-rep bench press.⁸

For a whole session built around pressing, see the chest workout, and match your pushing with pulling, such as pull-ups or rows.

Common mistakes

• Hips sagging or piking. If the straight line goes, the version is too hard for that set. Move up a step.
• Half reps. The bottom is where your arms hold the most weight.
• Elbows straight out to the sides. Angle them back toward your ribs, as on the bench press.
• Staying on one version for good. Past 20 easy reps, it has stopped being hard. Move down a step.
• A max test every day. Testing isn't training. The guidelines above suggest two or three sessions a week.
• Pushing through pain. Sharp pain is not soreness. Stop, and talk to a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Finding your step on the ladder is easy; fitting it into a week with everything else you train is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in the Trainerize app, built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching for beginners explains how the first weeks work, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: find the highest surface where you can do eight good push-ups, and start there.