Pushing it in the gym is a great way to level up your fitness and make daily life easier too. And we mean that literally: By incorporating pushing exercises into your workout routine, you can reap some pretty awesome benefits that’ll have you moving better in all sorts of scenarios—whether that’s swinging a pickleball racket, strolling with a heavy shopping cart, or picking yourself up off the ground.
So yeah, pushing exercises are really functional, meaning they have a lot of direct carryover to your everyday movements. And there are a bunch of different ways you can incorporate this type of exercise into your existing workouts.
Here, we cover all the perks of prioritizing the push, plus 10 examples to try today.
What are pushing exercises, and which muscles do they fire up?
The term is pretty descriptive: Pushing exercises are any movement pattern where you’re pushing weight away from the center of your body, Susie Reiner, PhD, CSCS, an assistant professor in the exercise science department at Seton Hall University, tells SELF.
Pushing exercises can encompass both upper- and lower-body moves; a leg press, for instance, is an example of the latter. In this article, though, we’re focusing on just upper-body ones. And when you’re doing those, you typically spotlight your frontside muscles, such as the chest (which includes the pectoralis major and minor) and shoulders (known as deltoids), Dr. Reiner says. You also often fire up the triceps (muscles on the backs of your upper arms), she adds, since those assist your pecs in completing the pushing motion.
A number of traditional strength moves fall into the pushing category–including the chest press, overhead press, and push-up–plus some other ones too. We’ll dig into all that in just a sec. But first, let’s get clear on why these types of exercises are worth your while in the first place.
Doing more pushing moves can make you better in the gym—and in everyday life.
In the gym, push movements are a great way to improve your power, since they are typically exercises where it’s easy to quickly generate force, Dr. Reiner explains. Take the chest press and overhead press, for example—those are moves that, once you’ve nailed good form and built your strength safely, you pick up weights and swiftly push them away from you. Of course, you can perform pulling exercises, like lat pull downs or rows, explosively, “but it’s not as natural of a movement,” Dr. Reiner explains.
And building up your power through pushing moves can bolster your performance in a number of different sports. From racket sports like pickleball and tennis, to ball sports including softball, baseball, and basketball, there are lots of athletic settings in which it pays to be able to powerfully throw an object, or swing a racket or a bat. “Even having push and pull power within the upper-body helps with running economy,” Dr. Reiner says. That’s because being able to explosively pump your arms helps propel you forward when you’re sprinting, she explains.