Table of Contents
Pushups are traditionally done by people in military training and by personal trainers and athletes alike to improve chest muscles but are also great for working out the shoulders and triceps. This is one of the most traditional workouts, and you don’t have to be in the military or be an athlete to do it.
Your biceps, however, are another concern. Pushups are not typically designed to develop your biceps. With some tweaks and modifications, though, we will give you the best pushups for the biceps that you can add to your routine wherever you may be.
What’s A Pushup?
Pushups are one of the most valuable workouts you should learn because they are easy, yet they target various muscle groups. Pushups are mainly beneficial to your upper body, particularly your chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms.
read more about equipment for your chest workout
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how many reps and how many sets you make if you’re not doing it properly. Let’s review some of the pushup basics.
Do a basic pushup on your hands and toes. Keep your back level with your feet no more than 12 inches apart. In a standard pushup, your hands rest on the floor in line with your shoulders.
Lower your body to the floor as low as you can by bending your arms, then push your body back up to your starting position. Repeat the process anywhere between 4 and 50 times, broken into sets, depending on your strength and fitness level.
What Are Your Biceps?
You hear it so often that you might actually find it ridiculous to wonder which muscles the biceps pertain to. Your biceps refer to the two muscles in your upper arm known as the brachii and the brachialis. These two muscles cover the front of your upper arm as is the muscle responsible for your elbow movements as well as other vital movements required to play sports like tennis.
When a person flexes their biceps, they would typically curl their fist towards their shoulders to emphasize them. Most experts would advise you to work out your biceps by doing curls and pulls, while they would encourage you to work out your triceps and chest by pushing.
Consequently, recommended biceps exercises usually include barbell curls, chin-ups, and hammer curls but, rarely include pushups.
Why Are Your Regular Pushups Not Showing Results?
Regular pushup stances and wide-armed pushups are designed to target your pectorals and triceps, which is why you don’t see your biceps improving.
When it comes to chest exercises, pushups are one of the most effective workouts you can do. It will enable you to work your chest in various ways. Your pushup stance determines how you train the large pectoral muscles in your chest and the triceps at the back of your arm, which will give you different results accordingly.
Specifically, the position of your hand has a particular effect on how your muscles are being worked during a pushup. Likewise, it can also have different effects on your arms when you place them close together to target your biceps.
Focus On Your Biceps
If you’ve been working out for a while, you’ll have to agree that finding the balance between working out your triceps and biceps is a real dilemma. Why? To develop your triceps, you need to make pushing motions, but the biceps require pulling movements to build them.
Rather than placing your hands shoulder-width apart, you should bring your hands closer together as you push yourself off the ground. This will give your biceps an excellent workout.
Pushups For Biceps You Can Do
The usual exercises for the biceps involve curling movements utilizing dumbbells, barbells, or a cable machine. Obviously, these aren’t always the best option if you are training at home. Your biceps muscles have the primary role of enabling you to flex your elbow which you’d notice when performing a biceps curl.
Also, note that these muscles are not one of those parts of your arms that hurt after a strenuous pushup session. It is a challenge to work out your biceps without using different types of equipment, but with the right exercise combination like the pushups for biceps in this article, you can build bigger and stronger biceps at home.
Single-Arm Push-ups
Another pushup variation you can try is a single-arm push-up which can also target your biceps. Other advantages of this pushup are the benefits of also working out your chest, triceps, and shoulders.
To do a single-arm pushup, adopt the usual pushup position by going your hands and toes on the floor. Keep your back and feet level and close together. Take one hand off the floor and place it against your back.
Now, use the one remaining hand on the floor to lower and push yourself up. This hand should rest in between your shoulders, in line with your nose, and this technique works your biceps hard. Unless you are very fit and active, you’ll most likely find this exercise tough. If that’s the case, try modified single-arm pushups. Rather than resting on your feet, rest on your knees.
Doing this will reduce the amount of weight you have to push. Make sure you do the same number of single-hand pushups for both arms. Start by doing ten repetitions at a time with each arm and several sets.
Inside Pushups With Hands Reversed
One of the push-ups you’ll be able to do is known as the inside push-up with hands reversed.
This pushup variation will target your biceps and the muscles in your higher back. Place your hands close to your body, no more than three inches from the line of your waist, reverse your hand’s direction by pointing it downwards rather than upwards, and complete the usual process of lowering yourself to the ground and pushing back up once more.
This pushup variation can make your arms curl more, giving your biceps exercise. If you are unable to feel your biceps straining in the front of your arms, you should bring your hands closer to each other.
Inside push-ups, also known as close-armed pushups, are typically performed with your turn your hands outwards or downwards with your thumbs extended. Do a regular pushup by bending your arms at the elbows to lower your body to the floor, but keep your arms close to your body, keeping your elbows tucked. The inside push-up with hands reversed should be as compact of a maneuver as possible which is the exact opposite of a wide-armed pushup.
Tips For Beginners!
If you’ve never done a push-up before or are not very physically fit, this exercise can be challenging and to some, practically impossible. One of the similarities between wide-armed and close-armed pushups is that they both require good upper-body strength to perform it.
If you aren’t able to do them the first few attempts, you shouldn’t let it discourage you. You can do any pushup in an assisted position. An assisted pushup refers to a pushup done on your knees and not your feet.
Going on your knees instead of your feet will reduce the resistance and weight that your upper body has to support. Make sure that your torso and thighs form a perfect plank in this position. Cross and curl your lower legs upward, then take either a wide-armed or close-armed stance and perform the exercise.
Are You Doing Your Pushups Correctly?
While pushups are primarily an upper-body workout, they also utilize both your lower body and abdominal muscles. Pushups require a synchronization of several muscle groups, not just your arms because they employ your lower body and abdominals to stabilize the movement. If you want to make sure you do get to work out your biceps, here are some tips you should keep in mind:
- Your arms should be close together with your elbows barely pushing out even when you lower yourself down to the floor.
- Reversing the position of your hands changes the muscle being targeted.
- Notice which part of your arms strains the most while doing a pushup.
- Hold your whole-body level.
- Try to do it in front of a mirror if you can to make sure your body is in the correct position.
- You’d notice some people doing a push-up with their ass getting left behind on the floor, making some awkward-looking body wave as they do their pushups.
- This is definitely wrong.
- Do an assisted pushup if you’re having a problem holding your body level.
- You should notice soreness on your biceps rather than any other part of your chest and triceps after your workout.
- The muscle that hurts the most is the one working the hardest.
Make Your Pushups More Challenging!
Once you have built your upper body strength needs more challenge, may it be wide-armed or close-armed pushups carried out on the floor, There are several ways for you to make it more challenging.
You can place your lower legs on an exercise ball to raise your lower body. If you don’t have exercise, just find a stable chair or any elevated platform. Note that an exercise ball is unstable, which will have the added benefit of requiring your muscles to work harder to hold your body’s balance.
Let us know what you think and share tips you think other readers will find useful in the comment section below. Don’t forget to share this article if you find it useful. Thank you for reading!
}
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.