Push Up Exercise at Home: Is That What You Prefer?

Many people I know of rely on this exercise-push up for working out at home. In a way it is good that you don’t need any equipment, just a little space that can accommodate you in a sleeping kind of position is enough. It is a considered to be the complete upper body workout for many who train at home. Great!! But how great does it work on your body? It is not the choice to train at home or gym that matters, eventually what matters is results and results.

Firstly, with the standard push up, you can only do as much as you weigh. In fact with push ups you don’t exactly push your weight up but only 70 or 75%.

Exercises like push ups are usually for beginners who are starting out a training program but advanced lifters incorporate these exercises from time to time just for the sake of variation and they get impressive results.

However I personally would not recommend push ups for beginners. Say a 200 pound beginner comes up to me for a chest workout. It would be foolish of me to ask him to do push ups. By giving push ups to be 200 pound beginner I am forcing his body against 200 pounds or say 75% of that. His body may suffer injury. His biceps, shoulder may not be able to withstand that much weight. At the moment what he might need is some 30/ 40 pound weight. Why not give him a dumbbell of that weight and ask him to do some presses. 

I remember training myself at home for several years in and out before visiting any Gym. I used to do countless push ups at any hour of the day. I considered myself very strong until I faced reality the day I visited the gym for the first time ever.

In relative terms, with push ups you will be ’strong’. But go up against someone who has been doing heavy weights with proper rest in strength match, and you will see just how ’strong’ you really are.

However not every person has the same goal. So, depending on your goals, if muscular endurance is your only goal, then go for push ups. Do it daily at home. However, if muscular size is your goal, then adequate overload and proper rest is your key.

Still if you want to train at home. Then let me give you the only tip which seems best to me for this exercise.

Its not how many push ups you can do. Its how many you can do after you feel you can’t do any anymore. That’s when you start building and gain more strength.

But here again to a point your chest will grow, but after that, you need to add resistance for continual growth. Either you add some weight to yourself, or start doing some other form of chest training involving weights.