maratoolPush-Up Wide
How to do the push-up wide
- With your hands wide apart, support your body on your toes and hands in a plank position. Your elbows should be extended and your body straight. Do not allow your hips to sag. This will be your starting position.
- To begin, allow the elbows to flex, lowering your chest to the floor as you inhale.
- Using your pectoral muscles, press your upper body back up to the starting position by extending the elbows. Exhale as you perform this step.
- After pausing at the contracted position, repeat the movement for the prescribed amount of repetitions.
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
Several joints move together, so effort spreads across a chain rather than concentrating in one place. Coordination is part of the difficulty: the movement is only as good as its weakest link, and improving it often means fixing a position somewhere other than the muscle you meant to train.
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:
- 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.