When people start to think about working out, trying to get stronger and build a little muscle, one of the first options that comes to mind is to start doing push-ups and pull-ups. These cost-free exercises are a great way to get started in resistance training and can have a big impact on how you look, so you’ll want to learn more about them. So, what’s the difference between push-ups and pull-ups, and which is better?
Both push-ups and pull-ups are multi joint, compound exercises. Push-ups are a Push exercise, so they primarily work and develop the chest, shoulders and triceps (back of the upper arms). Pull-ups (and chin-ups) are a Pull exercise that will build and stimulate the back, shoulders, biceps, and forearms. Both exercises will involve other supporting muscles as well but to a much lesser degree. While both exercises are tremendous strength and muscle building exercises, the pull-up is much harder for most people to do. That is, the average person can do far more pushups than they can do pull-ups.
There are a lot of differences between these two exercises, and they can be used in varied ways to utilize these differences. Let’s continue.
Do push-ups and pull-ups use the same muscles?
Push-ups and pull-ups will have some overlap in the muscles that are trained, but it is minimal. These two exercises are basically opposing movements on different planes of motion. While the push-up uses the pectoral muscles in the chest, the front deltoids, and the triceps to push the body up, the lats (in the back), and the abs and core are also involved in providing rigidity in the torso. Even the legs are exerting themselves to hold the body straight.
In addition to thoroughly training the lats, biceps, and forearms, pull-ups also use the entire core to hold your body in place while performing this movement. There is zero lower-body involvement in this exercise, but the chest is slightly engaged at the very top of the pull-up. Pull-ups work the rear deltoids, at the back of the shoulder. Push-ups work the front deltoid, in the front of the shoulder.
With consistent use, push-ups will broaden your shoulders and thicken the chest and arms. Pull-ups will widen your back and also help your arms grow bigger. So, both exercises will gradually change the way you look and make you more muscular.
Is it okay to do push-ups everyday?
Absolutely! It is a good idea to do push-ups daily, or close to it. As a bodyweight exercise, it would be quite difficult to overtrain with push-ups, and getting the blood pumping through the chest, shoulders, and arms daily is a good way to feed your muscles the nutrients they need and give them the stimulus for growth and strength gains.
Once you reach a certain capacity, probably around 200 per day, it has little effect on muscle gain, and your results will probably start to peak. Even going beyond this is fine – if you’re used to it, but it’s pretty unnecessary.
If you are new to push-ups but want to do them daily, or if you have very little time to devote to exercise, try the one-minute challenge.
This approach will have you doing one set to failure, or close to it, every single day. The intensity is high, but the volume (total amount) of push-ups is low enough for quick recovery.
What muscles do push-ups work?
Push-ups engage many muscle groups by forcing them to hold your body rigid and maintaining balance during the exercise, but the primary emphasis is on the following:
- Chest (pectoralis)
- Arms (triceps)
- Shoulders (front deltoids)
The way you perform the push-ups will affect how much of the work each of these muscle groups does. For example, wider hand spacing will cause the chest to do most of the work, whereas a narrower stance will direct more of the work to the triceps.
There are a number of ways to alter your push-ups to change the focus and train your body in a different way.
What muscles do pull-ups work?
The core is involved in pull-ups, but overall they don’t work as many muscle groups as push-ups. This is because your body is hanging so gravity does some of the stabilization work for you.
Primarily pull-ups will train your:
- Back (latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius)
- Shoulders (rear deltoid)
- Arms (biceps)
Switching your hand position will make a great deal of difference in the emphasis of the exercise. A wider hand spacing will make your lats do most of the work, A narrower grip will put more of the stress on your biceps.
There are a ton of variations, including over and underhand, parallel, uneven, wide, narrow, shoulder-width, thick bar, and others. All of them will work the same muscles a little differently.
What’s the difference between pullups and chin-ups?
Chin-ups and pull-ups are often two terms that are used interchangeably in casual conversation. The truth is that there is actually a key difference between them. The simple difference between chin-ups and pull-ups is that chin-ups use an underhand grip on the bar, and pull-ups use an overhand grip. This is a common cause of confusion to those who are new to resistance training. For the sake of this post, we can treat them the same. After all, a chin-up is just as different from a push-up as a pull-up would be.
Some people feel that chin-ups are easier than pull-ups, and depending on the individual that may be true. However, when comparing either of them to a push-up, these pulling exercises, which involve lifting your entire body weight, will be much harder.
Which should I do: push-ups or pull-ups?
A choice like this is no choice at all! Do both! Between just these two powerful exercises, you can build a powerful upper body.
You can have wider shoulders and a more muscular chest and back, along with thicker, more toned and strong arms. All it will take is a few sets of push-ups and pull-ups each day. You can do 1-2 sets a day of each, or alternate days performing 3-4 sets of each exercise, every other day.
Find what works for you, but shoot for at least 50-100 push-ups and 30-50 pull-ups per session, depending on your ability.
Can push-ups and pull-ups make you bigger?
You can certainly get bigger from doing push-ups and pull-ups. Just one of them will certainly help you get bigger, but doing both is even better! Read more about how push-ups can get you bigger here.
These are powerful anaerobic exercises here that will recruit large amounts of multiple muscle groups. The more muscle groups are involved, the more growth hormone your body produces during a workout, so this will also help you stay anabolic and your muscles growing.
If your main goal is to get bigger (more muscular) you’ll need to increase the volume (total number of sets and reps). 100 push-ups per day is a minimum for a healthy guy who wants to bulk up. The pull-ups will require about 50 per day, or more, to really get your lats and biceps growing.
As long as you are pushing yourself and eating plenty of protein, while getting enough rest to allow you to grow, you’ll get bigger and more muscular.
You can also try timed sets instead of counting reps.
Can push-ups and pull-ups get you ripped?
While these exercises are anaerobic in nature, and not like cardio in any way, they can be done in a way to burn maximum calories. When combined with caloric reduction and things like intermittent fasting, push-ups and pull-ups can certainly help you lose fat and get ripped. It’s not the easiest way, however, but it can be done.
Remember to exercise your legs too, as these are the biggest muscles and will raise your metabolism the most. Try bodyweight squats and calf raises. But if you just want to do push-ups and pull-ups, try breaking your total number up into a higher number and of total sets.
Try 15-20 sets of 10 on push-ups, and 10 sets of 2-5 pull-ups to keep the energy high and pace yourself over a longer period of time to keep the blood pumping and keep your metabolism revved up.
Pull-ups are one of the hardest calisthenic exercises you can do, and you can really build some upper body muscle while using up quite a bit of energy.
Push-ups are a tried and true way to pump up your chest and arms while getting your heart rate going hard and working secondary muscular groups.
Neither of these exercises cost any money or require any equipment except a bar, but there’s always the playground or park. There’s no excuses for missing these types of workouts. Even as little as 1 minute a day can get you results! Get out there and do both of these exercises, and get the results you deserve!!
Related Posts:
How Can I Fix Uneven Push Ups? Here’s A Plan To Get You Back On Track.
So you start doing push-ups, but find that your form is uneven. One side lags behind the other, or you can’t keep your shoulders parallel to the ground. You have a weak area in the chain. Push-ups are a compound exercise, that is, they involve more than one joint. So you need to figure out where you weak point is, and train to correct it. Uneven push-ups can be corrected by doing a number of things, including smaller sets, or partial (range) reps, amongst others.
What’s The Best Way To Do 200 push-ups?
I call it PPM (Push-ups per minute). Place a clock or timer near you. You could watch a movie or TV show and have the timer running. Listen to music, whatever. Every minute, on the minute, do 10 push-ups as fast as you can, then rest and stretch for the rest of the minute. Continue this for 20 minutes. You will notice that at first this is really easy, but once you’ve got a few sets under your belt, it’ll start to take a little bit longer. As the sets take longer, your rest periods become shorter, providing less recuperation for the following set. Your heart rate will be elevated for the entire 20 minutes, and for a few minutes afterwards. Providing a workout with a steadily increasing difficulty from warm up to final set.
