thomaslowrens
New member
Note: the point of this post is not that diamond pushups are the ultimate chest exercise, but that wide pushups on the floor are overrated and many exercises are better than them for chest growth.
I often see people repeating the broscience (BS) that wide pushups are the best for chest and that diamond pushups only increase tricep activity.
Edit: /@pencin (ThunderThighs) makes a good point here that in this study EMG may give inaccurate results because of significant variations of intensity and scapular position. Based on how most people do wide pushups (in a T shape), they'll still get more chest activation from narrow pushups and less chance of impingement because that T shape takes the load away from the muscles and puts strain on the shoulder joints.
For some more information about impingement, see this thread by /@stephaniethomps and this comment exchange.
Diamond pushups are useful to prepare the elbows for muscle ups as described here, and if you do high rep training they'll be more useful than wide ones. Otherwise they are just a stepping stone to more intense variations (pseudo-planche, rings, unilateral, weighted etc.). Progressive overload is key for strength and size.
If you want to build specifically the chest, chest flyes (rings or floor) are the best isolation, for compound movements consider weighted pushups (to load heavily, even beyond 100% bodyweight added, use a dip belt with hands and feet elevated or a robust backpack placed on the back from an elevated surface). Also band pushups can give similar gains to a bench press if done with similar form, according to this article which also talks about the pros and cons of EMG as a study tool.
Other compound movements with no equipment that challenge the chest are any of the harder pushups mentioned earlier, and also dips with some forward lean (increase lean or add weight), ring dips and with rings turned out if you want more intensity.
The article: (not as reliable as I thought, you can see my original reasoning but it's likely to be wrong)
Here is the full article of a study that examined the muscle activation in 5 pushup variations (shoulder width, double shoulder width, diamond, hands 20cm back (pseudo-planche), hands 20cm forward (sort of a Lalanne pushup, I guess they used a hand placement like this ).
Data was collected using EMG, each participant did 10 repetitions per exercise (after 5 minutes of practice, each pushup variation in random order and 3 minutes rest) using a 2.5 second duration of the repetition (so I guess 1.25 seconds ascent and descent, a metronome was used). I'm not exactly sure how well they maintained the lean in pseudo-planche pushups or how the hands forward pushups looked like, it would have been interesting to have some photos from the study.
Results: this figure shows respectively average muscle activation, ascent (concentric) activation, descent (eccentric) activation for several muscles. The graphs are not very intuitive so here is a better image. If you don't know about some of these muscles or their role look them up here.
I often see people repeating the broscience (BS) that wide pushups are the best for chest and that diamond pushups only increase tricep activity.
Edit: /@pencin (ThunderThighs) makes a good point here that in this study EMG may give inaccurate results because of significant variations of intensity and scapular position. Based on how most people do wide pushups (in a T shape), they'll still get more chest activation from narrow pushups and less chance of impingement because that T shape takes the load away from the muscles and puts strain on the shoulder joints.
For some more information about impingement, see this thread by /@stephaniethomps and this comment exchange.
Diamond pushups are useful to prepare the elbows for muscle ups as described here, and if you do high rep training they'll be more useful than wide ones. Otherwise they are just a stepping stone to more intense variations (pseudo-planche, rings, unilateral, weighted etc.). Progressive overload is key for strength and size.
If you want to build specifically the chest, chest flyes (rings or floor) are the best isolation, for compound movements consider weighted pushups (to load heavily, even beyond 100% bodyweight added, use a dip belt with hands and feet elevated or a robust backpack placed on the back from an elevated surface). Also band pushups can give similar gains to a bench press if done with similar form, according to this article which also talks about the pros and cons of EMG as a study tool.
Other compound movements with no equipment that challenge the chest are any of the harder pushups mentioned earlier, and also dips with some forward lean (increase lean or add weight), ring dips and with rings turned out if you want more intensity.
The article: (not as reliable as I thought, you can see my original reasoning but it's likely to be wrong)
Here is the full article of a study that examined the muscle activation in 5 pushup variations (shoulder width, double shoulder width, diamond, hands 20cm back (pseudo-planche), hands 20cm forward (sort of a Lalanne pushup, I guess they used a hand placement like this ).
Data was collected using EMG, each participant did 10 repetitions per exercise (after 5 minutes of practice, each pushup variation in random order and 3 minutes rest) using a 2.5 second duration of the repetition (so I guess 1.25 seconds ascent and descent, a metronome was used). I'm not exactly sure how well they maintained the lean in pseudo-planche pushups or how the hands forward pushups looked like, it would have been interesting to have some photos from the study.
Results: this figure shows respectively average muscle activation, ascent (concentric) activation, descent (eccentric) activation for several muscles. The graphs are not very intuitive so here is a better image. If you don't know about some of these muscles or their role look them up here.
- Wide pushups are the best for causing shoulder impingement and very overrated for chest development. If you want to isolate the chest, do the chest fly on rings or the floor.
- It was already well known that diamond pushups use more triceps than wide and standard, but they use more chest too.
- Hands forward pushups have the most abdominal activation. It makes sense if you think about how they are similar to an extended plank, and the Lalanne pushup, which is the ultimate version, is similar to the superman plank and an easier version of the ab wheel rollout.
- Pseudo-planche pushups increase the challenge for most muscles, especially the anterior shoulders (deltoids), but have less tricep activation than diamond and hands forward pushups. I expected to see more serratus anterior activation since people talk a lot about protraction in the planche. Also note how the spinal erectors work a lot more than in other pushups since the feet have less weight on them and as you lean forward more they'll eventually "float" thanks to the lower back lifting the legs off the ground. The lats probably work more because of the need for scapular depression. Not sure about why the middle traps worked more (maybe they stabilized the scapula against excessive downward rotation?).