why we don’t do knee push ups (and what to do instead)

Doing push ups on your knees is fine when you’re low on equipment, or from time to time to modify a workout to get it done.

Long term, however, knee push ups are limited and leave no room for progress.

By dropping to your knees to perform a push up, you’re shortening the lever and lightening the load you’re lifting - which is a great if you can’t do a push up on your toes. The jump from knee push ups to toes push ups is challenging though, and nearly impossible to accomplish by only training push ups from your knees.

Instead, we do hands-elevated push ups using a barbell in a squat rack. With this system we have a clear method of progress. Lowering the bar lessens your angle to the floor, thus increasing the load you’re lifting. Much like adding weight to a deadlift, you can think of this as adding weight to your push up.

There is no in-between with knee push ups, there’s on the knees, and on the toes. The hands elevated method allows for much more nuance to get the right amount of perceived exertion. Also, by elevating the hands, we still get to train the plank position in a longer-lever, something that will pay off if you’re goal is to get a couple of push ups from your toes.

If you don’t have a barbell and squat rack, a bench, box, counter top or stairs work well too, however, keep in mind, what make the barbell and squat rack the perfect push up tool is the adjustability - you can be precise and lower or raise the bar by a inch, customizing the right amount of difficulty and always having a way to progress.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain