maratoolPlyo Push-up
How to do the plyo push-up
- Move into a prone position on the floor, supporting your weight on your hands and toes.
- Your arms should be fully extended with the hands around shoulder width. Keep your body straight throughout the movement. This will be your starting position.
- Descend by flexing at the elbow, lowering your chest towards the ground.
- At the bottom, reverse the motion by pushing yourself up through elbow extension as quickly as possible. Attempt to push your upper body up until your hands leave the ground.
- Return to the starting position and repeat the exercise.
- For added difficulty, add claps into the movement while you are air borne.
Muscles worked
The force comes from the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.
A plyometric repetition is over before a slow contraction could contribute anything, so it has to produce that force immediately on contact.
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.
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 plyometrics, which trains the stretch-shortening cycle: loaded fast, released immediately. Contact time matters more than volume, so these belong early in a session.
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:
- Single-Arm Cable Crossovercable
- Smith Machine Bench Pressbench + smith machine + machine
- Smith Machine Decline Pressmachine
- Smith Machine Incline Bench Presssmith machine + bench + machine
- Wide Grip Decline Bench Pressbarbell + bench
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.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.