The narrow grip push up is a variation of the push up that focuses on hitting the triceps.
If you’ve mastered regular pushups and want to target your muscles a little differently, wide pushups are a good option. By positioning your hands further apart, wide pushups target your chest and shoulder muscles more than standard pushups.
A feet on wall push up is an interesting variation on your standard push up as it provides a different direction or stimulus to your working muscles in a standard push up.
This is a great activation exercise that can help with getting those stubborn inner fibres of your pec muscles to kick in.
This is a progression from your standard Bosu Push Up. By elevating the feet using a bench we slightly change the angle and thus the stimulus placed on the muscles.
This is a progression from both your standard and elevated Bosu Push Ups. Your body is angled downward which slightly changes the stimulus placed on the muscles. Also, the use of the swiss ball increases the level of stability required throughout the exercise and will engage your core muscles.
When push ups become soooo last year! Using a Bosu Ball decreases the amount of stability of the movement this requiring you to work harder to keep yourself stable. It is a different form of stimulus for the working muscles and there will be an increased amount of recruitment of stabiliser muscles! This is a great way to spice up and evolve a staple of the exercise world!
The Incline Squeeze Press is a Dumbbell Press with a few differences. The dumbbells are held in a neutral position and at all times you are squeezing them together as hard as you possibly can! By doing this we are shifting the stress of the movement onto your chest muscles. We drop the weight of this exercise so that you can concentrate more on the squeeze as opposed to how much weight you are lifting!
Sometimes it’s good to mix it up and use machine based weights. There is added stability and the movement is effectively dictated by how the machine is set up. The Machine Chest Press can also help hit some chest muscle fibres that sometimes like to be a bit stubborn!
This exercise is an evolution of your standard dumbbell press. By placing the bench in an incline position, we get to put emphasis on the upper pectoral muscles. This is because we have changed the angle in which the muscles will contract in conjunction with gravity.
This variation of the bench press is a fantastic way to get the upper muscle fibres of your chest muscles to get involved. It is important for you to keep those shoulders pinned back and down while doing it and to ensure that your elbows stay directly under the bar as you do this exercise.
Dumbbell Press is a great exercise to progress to from doing your standard barbell bench press. It forces your muscles to work harder to stabilise the movement and means you get more engagement in your shoulder joints.
One of the first exercises that come to mind when you think fitness! Push ups are a great way to exercise your chest, shoulders and arms. If you are new at this exercise and do not have the strength to perform it, you can either bend your legs at the knees to take off resistance or perform the exercise against the wall instead of the floor.
For the most advanced lifters, you can place your feet at a high surface such as a bench in order to increase the resistance and to target the upper chest more.
Bench Press – One of the staples of the gym.. yet scarily enough – most people don’t know how to do it safely or effectively.
Things to note are that your connection to the ground through your feet and thus ability to engage your core will help your lift to no end. You should be able to lift your hips off the bench by pushing through your feet.
Bar positioning above the chest is very important. You want the bar to always be above the wrists, elbows and shoulders.
In this image, you can see that the forearms are vertical in from a side and front view. It is vital that you keep the weight stacked in this way to keep the lift about working the right muscles!
If the weight begins to be a struggle, by pushing into the floor with your feet, engaging your core and lifting your hips from the bench can aid in getting that last rep out!