Incline Push-Up Reverse Grip

🎯 Chest🏋️ Body onlyBeginnerCompoundAbdominals (2°)Shoulders (2°)Triceps (2°)

How to do the incline push-up reverse grip

  1. Stand facing a Smith machine bar or sturdy elevated platform at an appropriate height.
  2. Place your hands on the bar palms up, with your hands about shoulder width apart.
  3. Position your feet back from the bar with arms and body straight. This will be your starting position.
  4. Keeping your body straight, lower your chest to the bar by bending the arms.
  5. Return to the starting position by extending the elbows, pressing yourself back up.

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 abdominals brace the trunk so force can pass between the hips and the shoulders; 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:ChestAbdominalsShouldersTriceps

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

No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.

Every exercise using:Body only

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.

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

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