What Percentage Of Your Body Weight Are You Actually Doing During A Push-up?

because if someone that weighs 200 pounds can do push-ups, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can bench press 200 pounds. So I was just wondering.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 16th, 2010 and is filed under your body weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “What Percentage Of Your Body Weight Are You Actually Doing During A Push-up?”

  1. neggandb on January 16th, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    It’s about 75%, depending on form and body type.

  2. suspende on January 17th, 2010 at 12:19 am

    The answer would involve some physics and calculations, it would depend on how tall the person is. The shorter they are, the greater the percentage would be.

  3. Laurence W on January 17th, 2010 at 4:01 am

    Depends if you body weight is evenly distributed or you are heavier in the legs or upper body.
    I’m about even, and its about 2/3. So heavy torso, 75-80%. heavier legs, maybe 50%. Everyone else, somewhere in between. Just put your hands on a scale in a pushup position, or one one hand, and multiply by two for both hands.
    For percent, divide by your bodyweight.

  4. Masho on January 17th, 2010 at 9:07 am

    Best guess, I’d say 50%. To get better results do diamond pushups with your legs elevated on the bed then do wide pushups. Finish off with normal pushups. Then to get it burning, your muscles should be exhuasted by this time, do normal pushups “girl” style with your knees on the ground maxing out your pushups until you can’t take anymore.

  5. drumline on January 17th, 2010 at 10:25 am

    man, thats a really good question. i was thinking about that the other day when i was lifting weights.
    sorry this was sucha useless answer but i thought ig give you credit for a good question.

  6. driftadd on January 17th, 2010 at 1:53 pm

    a formula can be developed thru simple physics to answer that question… but using common sense, you are just pushing up mostly your upper body, so of course not, if you weight 200 lbs doesnt mean you can bench 200
    i weigh 150lbs and i can bench 115lbs as many times as I can do push ups nonstop, so that leads me to conclude that you are lifting between 70-75% of your body weight in a push up :)

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