Decline Push-Up

🎯 Chest🏋️ OtherBeginnerCompoundShoulders (2°)Triceps (2°)

How to do the decline push-up

  1. Lie on the floor face down and place your hands about 36 inches apart while holding your torso up at arms length. Move your feet up to a box or bench. This will be your starting position.
  2. Next, lower yourself downward until your chest almost touches the floor as you inhale.
  3. Now breathe out and press your upper body back up to the starting position while squeezing your chest.
  4. After a brief pause at the top contracted position, you can begin to lower yourself downward again for as many repetitions as needed.

Muscles worked

The prime mover is the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:ChestShouldersTriceps

How this movement works

The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

These train the chest too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 105 chest exercises in this database, 63 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.