Benefits Of Push Ups And What Muscles Do Push Ups Work
Push-ups are going to be working all the major muscle groups in your upper body if you are doing them correctly
. It is a great movement and that is why it has been used so effectively for years in order to stress the upper body so effectively.
There are four muscle groups that you have in your back and your rhomboids are a thick muscle in the middle of your back that holds these all together. When your elbows go past the mid-line of your body you are extending your rhomboids to their maximum.
So when doing push-ups, you will certainly be stressing your rhomboids but also you will be stressing your chest, shoulders and arms. It goes without saying that your triceps will be stimulated and stressed when you lock-out at the top of a push-up.
Probably the least amount of direct stress that you are putting on your upper body when doing push-ups is your biceps. The biceps are involved with any pulling movement and when doing push-ups you are pushing so the biceps are being used only as support and stabilizers when doing push-ups.
The same as when you do bench-press and change the grip on where you hold the bar you can also change the stress of a push-up by spreading your arms wider. The wider you spread your arms the more of the pec-delt tie-ins you will be working and eventually only be working your shoulders.
To increase the amount of muscle that you have one needs to increase the overall strength that you have and that includes all the different mechanisms of training. For example the basics are squats, bench-press and deadlifts. These three movements will increase the thickness of you abdominal cavity as well as the thickness of your neck as you get stronger.
But do not think that a simple press-up is something that cannot add strength because there is no doubt about it that simply doing a few sets of push-ups every day will make you stronger. But because we all know that the only way to increase muscle size is by progressive resistance you need to make sure that the stress of your push-ups is increasing.
This will start when you do more reps with your own bodyweight but it can also increase when you start to change the angle of your hands when they are on the ground. One can also increase the strength and also the stress of push-ups by putting your feet up against a wall and increasing the stress on your chest.