When doing push-ups, what percent of your body are you lifting?
changes…you remember back to High School physics class…levers, fulcrums, etc?
you can for the most part not factor in your legs at all…most of the weight will come from your head and shoulders, and then will percentagely decrease down your torso.
If you want to increase the weight/resistance…try filling a back pack up with two liter soft drink bottles (full of water or the soft drink of course) and using that for resistance…have someone stand on your back…or simply do them one handed.
you can put your feet up on a couch and do them that way too…it will change the mechanics of the press as well to hit the lower pecs more…and will incorporate more weight from the legs.
at least half, depends if your a man or woman on steroids, showing off or in bacic training for either who wants, does, can or is willing, available And able.
So how buff are you? That is the question.
oh hell, i can’t spell let alone do push-ups.
I was a member of the Presidents Club. President Kennedy started the program when I was in public school. You had to be in the top 90% to be in the Presidents Club.
I lost my patch long ago and didn’t know how cool it was til I ran into a fellow member. We are few and far between. Damn.
There were credentials.
You had to do CHIN UPS! Keep your chin up. Well, boys did it with their wrists looking at their face pulling themselves up.
Girls like me turned our wrists around facing the bar. Easier for us gentler folk. Still hard.
Going with the OP , Girls get to bend their Knees. Makes the per ratio to outright pain smooth. Get off your knees, girl. Theres no way you could kill a man with your bare hands.
Do your push ups on a scale, average the weight at the bottom and the top of the movement, then weight yourself.
hmmmm, I tried the scale method.
I weigh 115, I was 80 pounds at the bottom of my push up, and 90 at the top. It spiked up to 100ish when I was going up.
this doesnt seem right to me because when I’m bench pressing 80 I peak out at 30, when doing push ups I can do 50.
I just now measured this using my hands on a scale and feet on the floor.
My weight: 195
legs straight top: 130
legs staight bottom: 145
knees top: 95
knees bottom: 115
That works out to lifting ~ 70% bodyweight with a regular pushup, and ~ 55% doing it on your knees. Of course it depends on how straight you hold your body, how far forward or back you position your hands, where your center of gravity is, and so on. You can see how holding your body different changes the weight on your hands by pulling them 3 inches back, sticking your ass up, and so on.
Don’t try to read the scale while you push up as it will fluctuate. Push slow enough and the scale won’t even register a change; do it really fast and hard and it could jump up 50lbs or more. Doing a bench press will isolate fewer muscles and should tire them out faster than doing a pushup where you use muscles all down your body to hold it straight, meaning pushups are easier to cheat at, and sometimes you don’t realize it.
Do them in a mirror so you can see your body from the side, and notice how your gut sags (or your ass sticks up), your bodyweight shifts back, your form goes down the crapper when you start getting tired, and also notice how you can’t really feel any of it. That’s probably why you can do 2/3 more push ups than bench presses.