Steps, a workout bench or riser, create a decline. Instead, increase your range of motion gradually and reduce the deficit if your shoulders start to hurt. To increase the load on your muscles, you can add weight in the form of a weight vest, but this can harm your joints, particularly the shoulders, as we . Deficit Push-Ups - Muscles Worked, How-To, Benefits, and Alternatives Hi, Im Nick! You need to really get deep into your warm-up to prepare your shoulders to handle the potential stressors of intense push-up sets, and youve also got to get your lats and serratus anterior ready to take a beating while helping you stabilize. You can create a sustainable calorie deficit by first figuring out how many calories your body burns to maintain your current weight (aka your maintenance calories). 8 Fantastic Push-Up Variations for Strength, Power, and Size! The 20 Best Push-Up Variations Ranked From Easiest to Hardest 2023 Dotdash Media, Inc. All rights reserved. You elevate your legs on a surface that's usually 12 to 20 inches off the floor and place your hands on the floor, by your armpits and slightly wider than shoulder-distance apart. doi:10.2147/OAJSM.S36646. By doing both pushups and pullups, you can evenly workout the muscles in your upper torso and arms. (2016). You can also do the incline bench press, which involves the same muscles. Brace your core and pull your shoulders down and back. 2. Consider taking the push-up test to find out how your upper body strength measures up. With incline push-ups, brace both hands on a bench, a stable bar (perhaps in a Smith machine), bumper plates, or a step platform. Try your best to throw your body up explosively but in a straight line, avoid piking upwards and sticking your butt up into the air. 2. Take your body weight upper body workout to another level with deficit push-ups. The humble push-up is an equal opportunities exercise; it doesnt matter what who you are, or you are training for, doing plenty of push-ups is bound to help your cause!