In case you wondered how much weight you move during a push-up, here’s a chart from Zatsiorsky’s Science and Practice of Strength Training (via).
“Percentages of body weight supported by the hands during push-ups at various postures”
Coincedently, Charles Poliquin also posted something about the efficacy of push-ups.
A new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research identified the percent of body weight you lift with four varieties of the push-up. In a regular push-up, you lift 64 percent of body weight, whereas with a knee push-up, you lift 49 percent. If you’re new to training, performing the push-up with hands elevated on a 24-inch bench will allow you to lift even less than a knee push-up, at 41 percent of body weight. Elevating the feet on the 24-inch bench makes it harder and allows you to lift 75 percent of body weight, still not enough to elicit serious strength gains if you can bench press 225 lbs.
Here is the study he cites from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Kinetic Analysis of Several Variations of Push-Ups
…Unless a person begins working through one-arm progressions.
I did decline push ups with my feet on a dinning room chair and I did 40 of them before exhaustion. Is that good?
not at all
3 years ago I could do 70 push-ups with fists about 12″ apart. I’m just getting back into it &can do 3 sets of 20 the same way. I weigh 198 & am 57 years old! Is that a good start? Been at it for 2 weeks. Please comment. Thanks ??
I’m not sure how accurate that study is. About two years ago I stopped going to the gym and just did body weight circuits at home for a year. Okay, I did do push up variations, inclusive of body weight, I weighed about 90kg at the time, a weight jacket (20kg) and resistance band (22kg). First day back in the gym I benched 140kg. According to the study cited at best I was only pushing 64% of total weight. Even if you said with the band at full stretch and loading of 22kg that’s a total load of 132kg – 36% to give 64% giving me an actual load being pushed of 84.48kg. No where near what I lifted first day back in the gym. So, is it the total load that counts or the intensity of effort used for the exercise? I usually went to muscle failure on the last set only. I also did push up variations using a medball and plyo push up variations.
I’m 46yrs old, but admittedly do have a lot of training experience, and a PB of 185kg bench press. Completely PED free. I’ve just started back doing body weight circuits again after another year off.