Return Push from Stance

Muscles worked

The force comes from the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.

A plyometric repetition is over before a slow contraction could contribute anything, so they have to produce that force immediately on contact.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the chest adds pushing force at the shoulder; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:ShouldersChestTriceps

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

A medicine ball can be thrown and caught, which suits movements where you keep accelerating the load all the way through instead of decelerating it to spare a joint.

Every exercise using:Medicine ball

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

• Reverse Flyesdumbbell
• Reverse Machine Flyesmachine
• Seated Cable Shoulder Presscable
• Seated Front Deltoidbody only
• Seated Military 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 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 74 are listed at beginner level.