That’s a bit of an odd title, I know, but I’m not sure how else to word it. Given the recent fascination with pushups, I got to wondering about how much weight you’re actually moving when you do a pushup.
Asked another way:
What’s the bench press equivalent of a pushup?
Of course, these are rather different exercises, and the weight distribution changes as you move through the pushup motion, so it’s not possible to directly compare the two in a particularly meaningful way. Nonetheless, I’m curious about how much weight you’re moving up and down when you do a pushup.
Armed with nothing more than my curiosity and a scale, I set out to answer this question.
The data
I started by weight myself — 236.6 pounds. I then dropped into a fully-extended pushup position with my hands on the scale (albeit with my hands closer together than normal). The reading on the scale? 154 pounds. I then moved to the ‘bottom’ position of the pushup (again, with my hands close enough together to get them on the scale) and took another reading — 178 pounds.
The bottom line
Based on the numbers above, it appears that you’re moving approximately 65% of your body weight at full extension, whereas this number goes up to roughly 75% when you drop to the bottom position.
Of course, these numbers depend on a variety of factors — for example, arm placement, how far you drop during the pushup motion, and the distribution of weight over your body (if you’re “top heavy,” you’ll be pushing proportionally more weight). Nonetheless, it appears that you are moving roughly 70% of your body weight when doing pushups.
What about knee pushups?
A common way for people to start out when doing pushups is to do “knee pushups.” How much easier are these than regular pushups? I explored that, too, though only for the fully extended position. In this case, I was at roughly 116 pounds in the fully extended position, which is roughly 50% of my body weight or 75% of the “regular” pushup load.
So there you have it… When doing “normal” pushups, you’re moving somewhere in the ballpark of 70% of your body weight, whereas this decreases to just over 50% of your body weight with knee pushups.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
It never even occurred to me to test this, but very fascinating results. If you wanted something more accurate for the standard pushup position, you could place a board across the scale and weigh yourself with the board, and that would then allow you to place your arms farther apart.
Thanks for the numbers. Now I’m going to have to test this myself…
The Flying Pig Marathon, etc… has a “Pump and Run” which uses 75% of body weight for a 19-39 yr old male
I’ve often wondered about this. One of the instructors at my gym told me about 45% of bodyweight but I suspect he made that statistic up.
Readings will change with elevation. Also if you were using a calibrated medical weight machine vs. a home digital/dial the readings will be more accurate on the medical device. You are very close in your observations, however you can’t “actually” weigh a press-up, because your body weight would be shifting to find equilibrium and thus prove it impossible to get a full fledged answer.
That’s very interesting, actually, and something I’d never really considered before – I would have assumed it was around 60 per cent or so. Basically the body minus the legs.
Having said all that the current near-obsession around the Internets with the 100-pushup plan continues to bemuse me!
Interesting study. I quit my gym contract and instead do a daily office workout every 2 hours with different exercises using my own body weight, which is getting me better results.
What I don’t quite understand is that supposing a push up is 70% of my bodyweight; how come I can do twice as many push ups in contrast to bench presses using the same weight?
Agreed with Alex, I can do over 100 pushups but could definitely not approach that number on bench press. I believe the reason could be that although you are “moving” 75% of your body weight, most of your body’s muscles are involved in the moment. I am thinking maybe it is possible that 50% of the “weight” in a pushup is supported by the other muscles in your body – core, legs etc. That would explain why it is so much easier than the equivalent weight on the bench.
I agree with anon regarding the supporting muscle groups. Shoulders are a biggie too!
Alex: Bench presses isolate a smaller number of muscles, so they are not quite the same thing. Perhaps the larger number of muscles involved in a pushup makes them easier? Also, the range of motion is a bit different — bench presses are “deeper” than a typical pushup which arguably makes it more difficult.
I had often wondered about this but never thought of this ridiculously simple way to measure it. Cheers!
I never actually measured this. If you don’t know, the Nintendo Wii fit works by using this principle.
This is why, in order to have the best pushups is to go down as far as possible.
Also, it’s why putting your legs up higher than your hands (I do it on a chair) makes them much more difficult. You push up much more weight. Until, eventually, you’re straight up and down handstand-style and you’re pushing 100% of your weight.
when you talk about weight, you are really talking about the force that you and the earth exert against each other due to gravity. But this force is the product of mass and acceleration. The faster you push yourself up, the more the push up with ‘weigh’. If you move at a slow, steady speed, the ‘weight’ will approach that of when you are stopped in a pushup position.
I’d like to believe that a pushup is 65% because that would mean that at 82.5kg bodyweight and with a 30kg weight on my back I am doing (82.5 x .65 + 30) = 83.5kg
Hurrah! I can press my own body weight (8 times!)
However since the most I have ever done is 75kg in the bench I would have to say it is nearer 45-50% which would mean I am pressing the equivalent of about 68kg which actually feels far more realistic to me.
Hope this helps anyone interested in the matter.
all of you guys have your points and combining them, i came up with…..some of yo guys will be making perfect sense until you say, “yea so when i do a push-up i BENCH…” its exactly your retard mistake, its a PUSHUP…not a BENCH PRESS. you cant switch from one to the other, they are the equivalent of saying a calf press is the same as a squat. but if you really wanted the best estimate around where how much you “bench” when doing a push-up, you’d have to weigh your pushup, weigh your bench and find the right percentage displacement from one to the other. id say around 48 percent, but since you are using more muscles its hard to find an equality between benches and pushed ups.
I was really hoping to find it was like 3 or 4 times your body weight. Guess this is one good thing about being a little over weight though – more to push up.
Why would you want to do a silly thing such as the 100 pushup challenge? Once you’re able to do 50 pushups, they’re not making you any stronger, sure it’s good for endurance, but you should utilize most of your time towards body weight strength training. How do you get stronger when the weight stays the same? That’s easy. When you decrease the leverage, you increase the resistance of an exercise. For example, the regular pushup. How do you make it more difficult? Put your hands as close to your hips as possible without falling forward. In a regular pushup, you only support only about 65% of your body weight. When you put it closer to your hips, your arms now support more weight, maybe about 75% now. People should strive for doing a 100% body weight pushup aka planche pushup. How do you get that last 25%? There are numerous tutorials that describe the exercises required to achieve such a seemingly impossible pushup. That’s what people should work towards.
the equivalent of a bench press of the pushup is the planche pushup. 100% body weight pushup.
Just to point out the apparently not so obvious, the planche and other ‘handstand’ pushups etc. are not actually 100% of your body weight. Why? Because you are not pressing your hands, they remain firmly on the floor, and also you aren’t pressing your forearms. So while the Planche and Handstand push ups are the hardest body weight push up (and they are bloody hard!) you are actually pushing probably ~95%
Since the posting of this question a couple of studies have been conducted on this topic to include the percentage of bodyweight supported during the incline and decline pushup positions. As a way to add constructive value to this discussion, I have written on the topic, posted video demonstrations, and provided the references for further investigation.
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