If you're doing regular, full-range-of-motion push-ups to target your chest, you might not be making the best choice. While Athlean-X's Jeff Cavaliere loves the exercise as a great bodyweight movement for hitting the chest, shoulders, triceps and core all at once, he believes there are limitations if you want a more targeted pec stimulus.
'When we do a full-range-of-motion push-up, as I always advocate for building the entire upper body, it's the last bit of extension that really works the triceps and is responsible for helping complete the development of the upper body beyond just the shoulders and chest,' Cavaliere explains in a recent YouTube video. 'That being said, it's also a fatiguing portion of the repetition. Every time I have to get to full extension, it's going to fatigue my triceps and therefore limit the number of repetitions I can do in total.'
So, if your triceps are fatiguing first, your chest might not be getting enough volume to actually grow. As a result, Cavaliere instead suggests doing half-reps – prisoner push-ups – if you're solely seeking chest gains.
'Instead of locking out every rep, you stay in the bottom range of motion, where the chest has to do more of the work.
'At first glance, it may look like a half-rep push-up, but that is exactly the point. By staying in the lower portion of the push-up, you can shift more of the focus onto the chest and shoulders while reducing how much the triceps limit the set.'
Here's how you can make more upper-body progress by making a few minor alterations to your push-ups.
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How to Do the Prisoner Push-Up
- Begin in a high plank position with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Squeeze your shoulders, glutes and core to create full-body tension. Your body should form a straight line from head to heels.
- Lower your chest towards the ground with your elbows below your shoulders, creating an arrow shape with your body.
- Push back up off the floor, but only partially – you shouldn't fully extend your arms, instead completing 'half reps' from the bottom position.
Benefits of the Prisoner Push-Up
More Chest Volume
By eliminating a large portion of the triceps' involvement, you'll be able to do more reps of prisoner push-ups than full-range-of-motion versions.
'This allows you to accumulate more chest-focused volume and continue the set without the triceps becoming the limiting factor too early,' Cavaliere says.
As a result, the chest muscles are worked harder and taken closer to failure than they would be with regular push-ups.
Metabolic Stress
Cavaliere also suggests performing the reps more quickly with prisoner push-ups.
'When we try to go a little bit faster, we take advantage of the metabolic stress that we could drive to the pec specifically here, or in large part. It's a 75% contribution towards the chest in this portion of the range of motion versus a drop down to around 60% in the upper portion of the range of motion.'
Prisoner Push-Up Progressions
Once you've mastered the prisoner push-up, you can step things up a notch and maximise your chest gains with these harder variations.
Angled Prisoner Push-Up
Instead of going straight up and down as you would in a regular prisoner push-up, lower yourself to one side and push up and across to the other, moving in an almost figure-of-eight pattern.
'This gives you a chance to keep increasing the stimulus on the chest because I stay in that lower range of motion,' he says.
Staggered Prisoner Push-Up
This explosive variation involves lifting your hands off the ground with each rep and changing their position as you land.
'Little bit of plyometric, hardly lifting the hands, but staying in that bottom range of motion like this. Again, increasing the intensity. So, even though I can't do as high a volume there, I will increase the intensity to compensate for that,' Cavaliere explains.
Archer Push-Up
The archer push-up already requires you to stay close to the ground throughout the movement, making it a useful progression for biasing one side of the chest more than the other. It's a challenging exercise that requires you to move from side to side while extending the opposite arm.
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