One Arm PushupA bench press is a bodybuilding and weightlifting exercise where the person doing the bench press (known as the lifter) lies on a bench placing their feet on the floor. Then they raise and lower a weight with both arms. This is the most common exercise for those who are looking to build up muscle, especially the chest area.
This exercise works the pectoral muscles, and the shoulder, chest and arm muscles. Generally, a barbell is used to lift the weight, but sometimes people use two dumbbells in their place. Because this exercise is performed while the lifter is lying down there is much potential for injury. If you are feeling wary of performing such exercises because of this risk, or if you can’t perform a bench press because of an existing condition, there are other home exercises to lose weight quickly that you can do which are equivalent to the bench press.
One of the best types of the best Bench Press Body Weight Equivalent exercises is the push-up. When you think about what someone looks like while doing a bench press, and flip the image so they are facing the floor, you have a push-up. It’s the same principle, except you are pushing the weight of your body off the floor, instead of pushing a weight above your body.
To perform a proper push-up, get onto all fours on the ground. Your hands should be slightly further apart than shoulder width. There are variations on this, but you should just start off with this, and move on to more advanced things once you are feeling more comfortable. Stretch your legs out behind you so they are straight and just your toes are resting on the floor. Your back should be straight so as not to cause injury. Bend your elbows so that your nose just touches the floor – remember to keep your whole body straight. Next, extend your elbows, pushing your body back up to its original position then repeat as much as you can.
Some variations on this are lowering your body slowly and then coming up really fast. So you lower your body to the count of three, and then raise it to one. You can also reverse this, so you are going down to the floor fast and coming back up slowly. This works the same muscles as a bench press, and doing the slow/fast variation puts more pressure on your muscles so they work harder.
Once you have mastered with the standard push up, you can move on to slightly more advanced methods as part of your best body weight workouts. One of these is the clap push up. This is when, as you push your body back up, you move your hands from the floor and clap them together. Obviously, you have to do this quickly so as not to fall flat on your face! But please wait until you are confident with the regular push up first, so as not to cause injury to yourself.
