Push-Ups: How Much Weight Are You Pushing?
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The push-up is a popular, simple, and convenient exercise that can produce positive strength, muscle, and endurance adaptations.
Moreover, the push-up is versatile. By modifying the position of your hands or feet, you can vary the stimulus created.
In this brief article, we’ll explore an interesting study by Ebben et al. that experimentally calculated how much weight you press during push-up variations.
How Much Weight You Push
In essence, the researchers had young adults (14 men and 9 women) perform a few push-up variations while their hands were on a force platform.
Peak ground reaction forces were measured from the force platform and expressed relative to the subject’s body weight. This gives us an indication of what percentage of a subject’s body weight they press during various push-ups.
The table below summarizes the results:
