Do press ups work? Find out why this simple exercise is important

October, 2024

These days you can easily join a gym and have access to all the fancy equipment you need for a full body workout.

This is ideal to keep your exercise routine varied and to target different muscle groups. However, what about press-ups? It’s one of those things that we associate with punishment for bad behaviour but press-ups can actually be very beneficial if you want to achieve your fitness goals.

For my update this month, I’m going to look at this fairly simple exercise and show you why it is important, especially if you want to build upper body strength.

Press-up benefits

The main benefit to regular press-ups is increasing your upper body strength. This exercise particularly targets your chest, arms and shoulders and given how rapid it can be, most people often see results fairly quickly. In fact, press-ups work your stomach and legs too.

Building strength and muscle aren’t the only benefits to press-ups. Like any type of exercise, press-ups will help you to burn calories which can be invaluable for losing weight. Improved flexibility and also enhancing your balance and posture are all benefits of press-up exercises.

The great thing about this exercise is that you don’t need to join a gym to do it, you can easily do press-ups at home.

Are there any drawbacks?

One downside to press-ups that I have seen people complain about is that you can hit a plateau relatively quickly.If you go hard and fast at press-ups over a short period of time, you will probably start to see your gains and strength building slow down. This is natural to doing any type of exercise but there is a way around it. Press-ups are very easy to modify and you can make them harder if you want.

You can begin by adding resistance bands or even weights on your back. This will make the exercise more challenging and also help you overcome the plateau I spoke about above. Alternatively, you can make press-ups a bit easier in the beginning which will help you to build your strength.

A potential drawback with this type of exercise is if you have suffered a wrist injury in the past as it does put stress on this area of your body.

Sometimes the simple exercises work best

Press-ups absolutely work to help you build your upper body strength especially with your chest, arms, and shoulders. I like this exercise because it also targets your stomach and lower body too.

While I know that some people can have issues initially with press-ups, you can tailor this exercise to be a little less demanding at the start. This will help you to build up your strength and you can easily make press-ups harder to overcome a fitness plateau.

So, do press-ups work? Absolutely and, while I would say exercise a certain degree of caution especially if you are only beginning to use this exercise as part of your wider fitness routine, press-ups can produce some fantastic results.

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