Push ups doesnt replace bench presses?

[JEDI]

I havent had a chance to goto the gym for a couple of weeks because of snow.

but i;ve been doing 50 pushups at home 2x week.

went to the gym yesterday. i benched 1 fewer per set.

pushups are no substitutes for bench presses? why?

 

[Koing]

The load is different. If you could load weights on to your upperback it would be more similar. I have someone load 20kg and I do sets of 15's. Chest to the floor, arms full lock out.

When you do a regular push up you do about 60-65% of your bodyweight as your legs are not in the line of movement. It also depends how strong your bench press is but if you can bench press 120kg+ for reps you'll need to fit a chunk of weight on to your back. Unloading it is not the safest thing. You either dump it (I don't do that) but have my someone take the weight off my upperback.

If you bench press say 80-90kg then having 20kg on your back if yoru about 65-85kg is somewhat similar.

It's a fairly decent substitute mate. Dips are better for triceps though.

Koing

 

[kalrith]

Like Koing said, the main difference is the amount of weight you're pressing. You said you've been doing 50 push-ups, and I'll assume that that's per set. If you switched from bench pressing 3 sets of 5 reps to 3 sets of 50 reps, then you would have the same reduction in strength as doing push-ups, since heavier weight with fewer reps is what builds strength.

 

[darkxshade]

I'm not positive but I don't think pushups would be the same as bench presses even at the same relative loads. I can probably do up to 120+ consecutive pushups on my first go but I don't think I could do the same if I were benching say 110 which is 65% of my weight(170lbs). I normally bench in the 200's(5x5 205-225).

edit: If they were the same, why would people do pushups at all when they can work towards volume with an adjustable weight. For example, instead of doing 20 pushups, bench 20 reps of 60%bodyweight? If in fact they are the same, then since I'm on the 100 consecutive pushups challenge, should I switch to benching instead? If I can pull off 100 reps of 110 benching, I could actually upgrade to a new goal of 100 reps of 135. My current goal is 150 consecutive pushups but if benching is the same, I'd rather bench since I can set different goals.

 

[kalrith]

I think how you do your push-ups makes a big difference as well. If you do 60 push-ups in a minute, that's a push-up per second. With proper form your won't be doing one rep per second while bench pressing. I would think that if you slow the rate of push-ups down to that of bench pressing (for the sake of argument, let's say 4 seconds per push-up), then I would think that it would be pretty close to bench pressing 65% of your body weight.

The facts that it's easier to let the weight of your body drop quickly than letting a bar drop quickly and that many people don't go as deep in a push-up as a bench press, makes it a much easier exercise than bench pressing 65% of your body weight. Slow the push-ups down to the same rate as the bench press, and I bet it would be pretty comparable.

 

[darkxshade]

I don't know about you but since I normally bench in the 205-225... 65% of my bodyweight = 110 lbs and I can tell you I can do almost a 1rep/sec press with 135 so I think I could do 1rep/sec with 110 easily.


edit: But you're right, I still do pushups faster though but not by a lot is my point.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

I think how you do your push-ups makes a big difference as well. If you do 60 push-ups in a minute, that's a push-up per second. With proper form your won't be doing one rep per second while bench pressing. I would think that if you slow the rate of push-ups down to that of bench pressing (for the sake of argument, let's say 4 seconds per push-up), then I would think that it would be pretty close to bench pressing 65% of your body weight.

The facts that it's easier to let the weight of your body drop quickly than letting a bar drop quickly and that many people don't go as deep in a push-up as a bench press, makes it a much easier exercise than bench pressing 65% of your body weight. Slow the push-ups down to the same rate as the bench press, and I bet it would be pretty comparable.

What? Velocity doesn't change how similar the movement is to bench. Actual utilization of muscles and form in particular are what change that. If you held onto a bar perpendicular to your chest while doing pushups, THEN you'd have a similar movement to bench.

It's not easier to let the weight drop quickly either. Do you know how many people I've seen drop the weight on bench and slowly push it back up each and every time? It's just a psychological safety mechanism for those of us with common sense - with our body, we can just get our knees under us and be done, but with bench, the bar can get pinned on us. That one is common sense. Pushups are easier because you can contort and shift your form to squeeze out more reps. Also, you can "kip" with your hips quite a bit.

 

[kalrith]

If you held onto a bar perpendicular to your chest while doing pushups, THEN you'd have a similar movement to bench.

I don't understand this statement at all. Are you saying that if I place a bar that was parallel to my body length (one end at my head and one at my feet), then it would be similar to a push-up?

And I must've worded that wrong, because I didn't mean that there was no way to do the bench press as fast as a push-up. I meant that there's no way to do that with keeping proper form. I think that when people are cranking out 120 push-ups in 2 minutes or less, they're compromising their form. As long as they extend their arms and touch their chest, they think that's good enough.

I agree about being locked in when bench pressing, but I do my push-ups in much the same locked-in way. I don't contort my body and use my hips, knees, etc. to get out a few more push-ups. I see that as improper form. In that regard it makes it much more simlar to bench presses for me than it might for other people.

Edit: And I apologize if I'm completely wrong here. I'm by no means an expert on everything pertaining to push-ups and bench pressing

 

[SociallyChallenged]

I don't understand this statement at all. Are you saying that if I place a bar that was parallel to my body length (one end at my head and one at my feet), then it would be similar to a push-up?

And I must've worded that wrong, because I didn't mean that there was no way to do the bench press as fast as a push-up. I meant that there's no way to do that with keeping proper form. I think that when people are cranking out 120 push-ups in 2 minutes or less, they're compromising their form. As long as they extend their arms and touch their chest, they think that's good enough.

I agree about being locked in when bench pressing, but I do my push-ups in much the same locked-in way. I don't contort my body and use my hips, knees, etc. to get out a few more push-ups. I see that as improper form. In that regard it makes it much more simlar to bench presses for me than it might for other people.

Huh? I said perpendicular to your chest - like a normal bench press.

Just like you can keep form with a pushup, you can keep form with bench. You can actually train bench as a high velocity lift to utilize more muscle fibers and stimulate hypertrophy. It's not dangerous at all if you've trained up to it.

Even though you're keeping everything tight and slow, it's still not quite like the bench. Pushups don't require a tight upper back (flexed traps, rhomboids, lats for stabilization) like bench does. You also need to think about balance. On bench, you don't have to worry about balancing your body weight. On push ups, you definitely do - you actually position your arms either closer to your side or further abducted. The proper bench goes to your sternum, near the nipple. You can't localize weightbearing like that to stress the pecs in push ups. Human biomechanics just don't allow it.

 

[kalrith]

Huh? I said perpendicular to your chest - like a normal bench press.

Reading fail! I thought you were talking about bench presses, so I thought you must've meant something different since that's how you do a normal bench press. Now that I see you were talking about push-ups, I totally see what you're getting at. I've done push-ups like that with my hands on dumbbells, and I'd say it simulates bench pressing pretty well.

Now that I think about it, there definitely was a difference in weight distribution between bench pressing and push-ups even with my hands on the dumbbells, so I see what you're getting at with that comment as well.

 

[brikis98]

Push-ups and bench press are similar, but not identical. Here are some of the things that account for the differences:

* Range of motion. Although proper ROM for both exercises is to go from full lockout to touching the bar/floor to the chest, most people shorten the ROM considerably on push-ups by not touching the floor and not going to full lockout.

* Technique. There are many different arm/elbow positions that you can use on the bench press and push-up and not everyone uses the same for the two exercises. I often see people do bench press with a wide grip but push-ups with a narrow stance. Others do push-ups with their elbows flared real high for some reason. Some people even adjust hand position during the set. This distributes the load differently between muscles and modifies the ROM. For benching, there will also be differences in how much of an arch you use and if you let your hips/ass shoot off the bench with each rep. For push-ups, doing anything to modify your body angle (such as letting your stomach sag) or kipping with your hips can affect things too.

* Loading. Push-ups are obviously done with some fraction of your body weight, with the exact percentage depending on your technique and ROM. Bench press obviously allows any loading. If you could figure out the exact amount of weight your upper body lifts on the push-up and loaded that onto the bench press, the number of reps you could do would be closer.

 

[gramboh]

Related: anyone else suck at push-ups? I think my max reps first set is barely over 30 (proper form, chest touches ground, proper hip positioning). My best bench is 265 @ 200#. I know it's strength/endurance which I just need to work on, but I still feel like I should be able to crank out 50.

 

[brikis98]

Related: anyone else suck at push-ups? I think my max reps first set is barely over 30 (proper form, chest touches ground, proper hip positioning). My best bench is 265 @ 200#. I know it's strength/endurance which I just need to work on, but I still feel like I should be able to crank out 50.

Max strength does not help muscular endurance much. If you couldn't do a single push-up, getting your bench press up would obviously help. But since you can do 30 push-ups, even adding 100lbs to your bench press won't add too many reps. If you want to be able to do more push-ups, just work on muscular endurance using something like GTG.

 

[Koing]

Max strength does not help muscular endurance much. If you couldn't do a single push-up, getting your bench press up would obviously help. But since you can do 30 push-ups, even adding 100lbs to your bench press won't add too many reps. If you want to be able to do more push-ups, just work on muscular endurance using something like GTG.

Actually max strength helps your endurance a lot, if you don't train it...if you train endurance you can lift a higher % of your 1RM relative to someone that is stronger and doesn't train endurance.

If you have two guys that weigh the same that don't train endurance the guy with a bigger 1RM will be able to do more reps at any given % usually.

BUT the dude that trains endurance will usually spank them both. It's a lot harder working at a higher % of your 1RM but you can train to do it.

I can bench press just about 300lbs and I can get 55 strict paused push ups, chest to the floor, full arm lock out.

I've rarely seen any mofo do 100 'strict' full chest to the floor, full arm lock out. Post a video! Most are dynamic reps with no chest to the floor and/ or no arm lock out so they are shortening the range a lot.

Koing

 

[Koing]

Related: anyone else suck at push-ups? I think my max reps first set is barely over 30 (proper form, chest touches ground, proper hip positioning). My best bench is 265 @ 200#. I know it's strength/endurance which I just need to work on, but I still feel like I should be able to crank out 50.

Increase your 1RM that will do it but it's more down to muscular endurance.

People think because I do weightlifting that it automatically makes me good at push ups...wrong! I'd be p!ss poor if I didn't do some training as you don't do the push up movement in weightlifting at all, and defintely not for reps!

Koing

 

[angminas]

This might be useful:

http://stronglifts.com/how-many-reps-should-you-do/

 

[Herbot]

I can do 110 pushups in two minutes, but I'm also going in the military so I specifically train for them. My 1RM bench is around 335 right now; there's absolutely no correlation between bench ability and pushups. I only could manage about 40 when I started. A buddy of mine is at NAVSOC and he told me that he's seen SEALs do several hundred pushups in a row without stopping.

There are plenty of websites with a "100 pushups" training program. Even if you totally suck at them, it only takes 6-8 weeks.

 

[Koing]

I can do 110 pushups in two minutes, but I'm also going in the military so I specifically train for them. My 1RM bench is around 335 right now; there's absolutely no correlation between bench ability and pushups. I only could manage about 40 when I started. A buddy of mine is at NAVSOC and he told me that he's seen SEALs do several hundred pushups in a row without stopping.

There are plenty of websites with a "100 pushups" training program. Even if you totally suck at them, it only takes 6-8 weeks.

I'm not saving it's impossible, just that I have rarely seen anyone or a video of anyone doing 100 'strict' push ups, not 100 pretty good form push ups.

Are yours chest to the floor, paused at the top with arms fully locked?

Koing

 

[Herbot]

Are yours chest to the floor, paused at the top with arms fully locked

They're standard military PT pushups which means arms must be fully extended at the top and upper arms at least parallel to the ground at the bottom. Most of the time you won't get credit unless your chest at least brushes the ground. So, yeah, they're pretty close to what you're talking about.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

I can do 110 pushups in two minutes, but I'm also going in the military so I specifically train for them. My 1RM bench is around 335 right now; there's absolutely no correlation between bench ability and pushups. I only could manage about 40 when I started. A buddy of mine is at NAVSOC and he told me that he's seen SEALs do several hundred pushups in a row without stopping.

There are plenty of websites with a "100 pushups" training program. Even if you totally suck at them, it only takes 6-8 weeks.

Ehhh, let's not go too far there. Bench and push ups have their differences, but there is most certainly a correlation between bench ability and push ups. If you dealt with a group who never trained push ups, but did bench frequently, you'd see some sort of correlation between % of BW able to be benched and number of max push ups. I'm not saying it would be a strong correlation, but they do utilize similar muscles. On top of that, as your 1RM goes up, your 10RM, 5RM, 3RM, etc go up as well. Those will transfer to some extent to push ups via strength and motor learning.

 

[darkxshade]

Other than doing it for the challenge, is there any real usefulness to 100 consecutive pushups? Is there a good way to add weight to pushups? Since I'm able to do 100 now, it's still incorporated into the end of my workouts. The next logical step is 100 with more weight but without someone putting a plate on my back, my only other recourse is to aim for 150. I quite like this challenge though and is why I haven't stopped. I never though I'd get this far and am quite proud of it and plan on continuing my improvements to see how far I could go.

As far as the pushups --> benching debate... I'll say that before I began the challenge, I could do about 4x20 pushups and benched 5x5 215, now I can do like 4x70 and bench about the same 5x5 215. I initially thought being able to achieve the 100 pushup challenge might give me a small boost in my strength but I didn't really get stronger. It left me a bit disappointed.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

you could be like herschel walker with all those pushups.

 

[Herbot]

Other than doing it for the challenge, is there any real usefulness to 100 consecutive pushups?

Muscle endurance is probably more useful than strength in Real Life after a certain point. Being able to do physical activity for long lengths of time without fatiguing is pretty useful. The most ideal thing, of course, would be to have both extreme endurance and strength, but there's always going to be somewhat of a trade-off. That said, professional athletes and olympians are mutants who are bad comparisons to normal people. I was friends with one of the star football players in college and while he didn't look that physically impressive, he could destroy anyone in the weight room and never got tired. Ever. Definitely a humbling experience.

 

[Herbot]

but there is most certainly a correlation between bench ability and push ups.

If you're talking about novices, then yes. Accomplished weight lifters, the correlation is minimal. I was on the powerlifting team in college; if you want to be good at bench, you bench. If you want to be good at pushups, do pushups.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Related: anyone else suck at push-ups? I think my max reps first set is barely over 30 (proper form, chest touches ground, proper hip positioning). My best bench is 265 @ 200#. I know it's strength/endurance which I just need to work on, but I still feel like I should be able to crank out 50.

lol I suck bad at pushups, I have trouble doing 10 lol. Then again I'm not benching 100+ pounds like everyone here. I doubt I will ever get to that, I'm not training to be a body builder or anything mind you.