Desire A Massively Muscular Chest? Watch This (Bench Press 🤝 Push ups)

Desire a Massively Muscular Chest? Watch This (Bench Press 🤝 Push Ups)

When it comes to building a muscular chest, what is the better exercise? The bench press or push-ups? Now you might think it’s total BS even having this conversation as the answer is obvious but isn’t as black and white as you might think.

To properly answer this, we must set aside preconceived ideas about the push-up. With the bench press, it’s easy to see how we’d progressively overload it, which is fundamental to muscle growth. We simply add weight once we’ve reached the upper end of our target rep range.

We’ll look at two ways to progressively overload push-ups and a couple of studies that back up the effectiveness of each method.

When it comes to cool factor, guys like to brag about how much they can bench, and it isn’t unusual when someone finds out you lift for them to ask.

That being said, how cool would it be to rep out a few one-arm push-ups at a party? A little awkward bringing weights and a bench to show them your new PR.

Which do you think would be more impressive to the ladies, hearing about your new bench record or seeing you rep out a few one-arm push-ups?

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Both these movements are compound exercises working the chest, triceps and front delts. After that, there’re some pretty substantial differences. Push-ups are a closed chain exercise where your hands are fixed against the ground.

The bench press is an open chain exercise where your hands are not fixed in one place and move through space—making the push-up the more stable exercise.

A couple of years ago, I injured my shoulder, and it hurt to bench. The pain came from stabilizing the weight as I pressed.

So I switched to push-ups, and I could do them pain-free using a weighted backpack for resistance, keeping the repetitions slow and deliberate with a pause at the top and bottom to eliminate any momentum.

This allowed me to continue to progress while my shoulder healed up.

Now, was I really progressing or were the resisted push-ups just helping me maintain my muscle mass?

To find out, let’s look at a study where they used lifters who had at least one year of lifting experience, and they compared strength gains between bench press and push-ups.

To make sure they’re comparing the two as evenly as possible, they had them do the same volume, rest between sets, exercise tempo and intensity.

To match intensity, they had both groups training at their 6 rep max. To find this, they tested them at the beginning of the program for both 1 and 6 repetition maximums on the bench press and resistance band push-ups, increasing either the thickness or number of bands they were using until they couldn’t do more than six reps.

They did five sets with 4 minutes rest in between, 2 times a week for 5 weeks. The result being both groups had significant increases in strength.

They did another study comparing bench presses to bodyweight push-up progressions.

There were 10 progressions, with 4 being easier than a full range of motion push-up and 5 being more challenging. The most difficult was the one-arm push-up.

I’m someone who likes to train with a variety of different methods, and I don’t exclude push-ups from my training. A great way to use them is as a drop set after benching. As soon as you finish your last set, go straight to the floor and rep out push-ups to failure, rest a minute and then do it again. Because they’re a closed chain exercise, they’re safer to bring to total failure, and you don’t need a spotter to help you re-rack the bar.

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2015/01000/Bench_Press_and_Push_up_at_Comparable_Levels_of.31.aspx

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2018/03000/Effect_of_Progressive_Calisthenic_Push_up_Training.9.aspx