Transcription
Is it possible to build an anime-level chest with just push-ups? It's not, unless you watch this entire video.
Today, you're going to learn three levels of push-up progressions that will increasingly make your chest stronger, bigger, and more aesthetic. Of course, we've got to start at the beginning of the training arc with the easier progressions. But chances are, you are either doing push-ups incorrectly or you're probably too weak to do a single one. My recommendation is starting with elevated push-ups if you find yourself in that second category. But once you are strong enough to move on to the proper floor push-ups, you've got to make sure you do them properly. And here's how you do it.
Start in a straight-arm plank with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width and your feet either together, shoulder-width, or anything in between. Get a nice grip on the ground, forming a claw position with your hands. Twist your arms outward so your inner elbow faces forward and protract your scapula, pushing your shoulders to the ground. It doesn't have to be exaggerated. You just need the intention.
Once that's all set up, you're ready to get your first rep in. First, retract your scapula. Bring your shoulder blades together. Next, lower yourself down to the ground, keeping an external rotation the entire time. So, making sure your elbows are facing forward. From the top view, your body should look like an arrow, and your arms should be around 45°. If your arms look like this, and you're not rotating your arms enough, I will come to your house and I will fight you. Lower yourself down until your chest touches the floor or whatever your mobility allows you. Your hands should be resting just at your nipple line. And then reverse it. Push up from the palms of your hands. Go back up to that top position. Pretend you're squeezing your hands together. Even though they're not going to touch, you've got to pretend. It's all pretend. Then, to finish off, finally, protract your scapula at the top. Very simple exercise, but if your form is whack or you're just not strong enough, the rest of this video is not going to matter. You're not going to get that big anime chest. You're just going to be a sad, flat-chested anime nerd. Very sad.
But once you have mastered the basic push-up, you'll be ready to dominate and get that amazing anime chest with just push-ups. And like any anime story, we need to start with the level-up push-ups. This is like when the anime character just gets his power-up, like Yugi eats a finger or freaking Deku breaks his arms. These are push-ups that you want to start with when you start getting used to and start getting stronger with the normal push-up.
Now, the key to achieving Toji or Baki-level chest aesthetics with just push-ups is to increase one thing: intensity. And one of the best ways to increase the intensity of the push-up is actually the easiest way to increase the intensity of a push-up. If you're somebody who can do 10 push-ups, it means on your 10th push-up, you're probably not going to be able to do another one. And thus, you've successfully trained to failure. And training to failure is the key to muscle growth. But now, as you do more push-ups, you're going to get bigger and stronger. And 10 reps just doesn't bring the same amount of stimulation anymore. Oh no. What?
The solution is a lot simpler than you think. Just do more reps. It's that easy. Oh, but Kevin, if I don't do 8 to 12 reps, won't I be outside of the muscle-building rep range? Listen, just because you're not doing the 8 to 12 reps doesn't mean you're not building muscle. 8 to 12, that range is like just for the sake of efficiency. But if you don't really care about it too much and you don't mind doing a lot of reps, which, quite frankly, doing a lot of reps can be very beneficial for your muscles, then doing 20, 30-plus reps for an exercise isn't a big deal. As long as you're training to failure, you're growing, you're building muscle, you're getting stronger.
And I know there's a lot of information in the fitness space, and it can get pretty confusing, but I simplify everything that I learned and what's worked for me in my Protagonist Method, which you can check out in the description. If you're tired of all the overwhelming info and you just want a simple roadmap to getting that anime physique, you should definitely check it out.
But at some point, once you start getting that elite-level strength, adding reps soon isn't going to cut it anymore. Which is why this next method, it will guarantee chest gains whether you like it or not. It will give you big boobies without your consent. Instead, we're going to be doing what all the cool anime characters do when they want to get stronger. You see it with Goku. You see it with Rock Lee. When they want to get stronger, they just make themselves heavier, whether the gravity chamber or super unreasonably heavy ankle weights. And maybe you could physically bulk up to become heavier. But an easier solution is just taking a backpack, filling it up with whatever you want—books, laptop, house plant, whatever—and strapping it to the front of your body. But having a big bulky thing in front of you might hinder your push-ups. So, what I recommend doing is elevating yourself on top of some chairs or parallettes. That way, you can increase the intensity without sacrificing any of the form.
But one of my favorite ways to up the intensity of the normal push-up allows me to engage muscles that I probably don't normally engage. And you don't need to add any weight or any additional reps. In fact, you're probably going to be doing less reps with this method. And still, we're on the normal push-up. We're not done with it just yet. Imagine performing a push-up. Good job. Now, imagine performing a push-up, but you have chopsticks for hands. You can imagine it's much harder, and you probably need to put more effort not only on the pushing-up action but also on the going-down action. Which is why unstable push-ups are underrated but goat-ated. Quite goat-ated. Using something like rings or anything you can use to make your hands unstable. This forces you to use your chest muscles as stabilizers. This engages the chest far more, which is going to up the intensity, completely deplete all of the muscle fibers in your chest, and you'll reach failure quicker. It's super normal to be very, very, very shaky when you first start these. But as you get more comfortable, as you get stronger, you're going to really start feeling it in your chest as it's working to stabilize the hell out of your body.
Okay, that's all fun and good. But of course, one of the best ways to get the most out of push-ups to make your chest gains pop is by doing different variations of the push-up. Which brings us to the next level, the training arc push-ups. These are going to be new variations of the push-up. With these, you're going to get a much fuller chest, which will help you to finally unlock those chest muscles just like your favorite anime character.
So, the first one we're going to look at is the simplest. By just widening our hands and having our fingers face outwards, we get wide push-ups. Because of the wider grip, less weight is stacked on your arms, and a lot more of it is being focused onto that chest. It's one of the easiest variations that you can implement that helps with getting that chest width and really focusing on those middle chest muscle fibers.
Another simple but highly effective way to blow up your chest is to actually increase the range of motion on your push-ups, which is why deficit push-ups are next on the list. This works because, one, you're getting more of that stretch on the bottom, which allows more muscle fibers to get damaged, thus more muscle fibers are going to grow. But having more range of motion to play with allows you to get stronger in that position. You can literally use anything to elevate your hands, but of course, parallettes will never fail. Main thing you want to focus on is that stretch at the bottom. Going as deep as you possibly can, 'cause that's where gains are made, baby. And if you really wanted to, you could combine wide push-ups with deficit push-ups, and that's going to be a really nice stretch.
But enough about stretching. You guys came here to get some big, strong chesticles. And if you don't have any weights, how does one get big, strong chesticles like Baky? Well, if one wants to look like Baky, one must train like Baky. Baky is a fighter through and through. And one thing fighters are known for is explosive power by increasing the speed in which you apply a force. Naturally, you're going to use more muscle fibers, more deep muscle fibers, which is going to help increase both strength and size. That's why the next variation you're going to learn is explosive push-ups. I recommend always pushing with full force the entire set. Even if you're at the end of the set and can barely make it off the ground, the point is just to push as fast as you can, using all of your energy for those reps. That way, you can use more strength without adding any additional weight.
Now, strength is always amazing, but some people don't care about that. They want aesthetics. Almost every cool anime character is aesthetic. Almost. But here's a pop quiz. Which part of the chest is probably the most aesthetic? That's right. It's the upper chest. It ain't your mom who picked your mom. Enter one of my favorite push-up variations, the decline push-up. Everything about this leads to more gains. Elevate feet, make push-up harder, more gains. Higher pushing angle, target upper chest, more aesthetics, more gains. The math is simple, guys. Decline push-ups equal more gains.
But if I were to do a push-up variation that could produce even more gains than the decline push-up, is that even possible? Not only that, but produce gains indefinitely, it would probably be the next exercise. Everybody knows that the basic push-up is the easiest variation of all push-ups. It does help that your feet are touching the floor. But then what would the hardest variation of the push-up be? Well, it would probably be the one where your feet are not touching the floor at all. PLCH push-ups. Now, I don't expect any of you to do these just yet, but the next best thing is doing something in between: pseudo PLCH push-ups. I love these because you can adjust the difficulty to however you want. If you're a complete beginner, you don't need to lean that far. And if you're a little more advanced, you can have your hands closer to your waist. And the closer your hands are to your waist, the more effort it's going to take to not only keep yourself up but push up. Which is why I always recommend doing these for not only size but also superhuman strength.
But one of the best ways to achieve superhuman chest strength and unlock that full anime chest is going to be the next level of push-ups, the limit breaker push-ups. These exercises, like in the name, will push you to your limit to finally break through and get that chest you've always wanted. And one of the best ways to get stronger in any movement is to make one arm do more work than the other one. Get into the regular push-up position, but have some form of object raise one of your arms, like one of our handy-dandy parallettes. Now, magically, your elevated hand is going to be doing less work, and a lot more of that effort is going to be directed to that other hand or other chest. This is called uneven push-ups. These are amazing for progressively overloading the chest, of course, but it's also awesome for getting rid of any muscle imbalances. Since you're only working one arm at a time, you can focus on the smaller side or weaker side because nobody wants to walk around with lopsided boobies, especially not me. This is one of the best introductions for unilateral training and a great progression for the next exercise.
Once you start getting stronger at pushing from one side, what you'll want to do next is this. Get into a wide push-up position with your hands facing outwards. Only this time, go even wider. Like part the Red Sea with them hands. Okay. Then when you lower down for a push-up, keep one arm straight the entire time while the other one is doing all of the work. Now you have archer push-ups. These not only feel amazing, they look really cool, and are significantly harder than regular push-ups. But if you find them too difficult, you can always bend the other arm to some degree. Whichever way you do it, you want to focus all of the effort on that working arm. The straight arm, the support arm, is just that. It's a support arm like the Speedwagon to your JoJo. It's not meant to do any of that fighting effort. It's just there to keep your balance and offer support.
But eventually, you're going to get strong enough where you don't even need the supporting arm. At that point, you're going to be doing the next exercise: one-arm push-ups, the king of all push-ups, and of course, done by all of the anime dudes. But you've got to do it with the right form. First, get into the push-up position, but align one leg to the side. Then, with the arm on the same side of the leg you moved, put it behind your back or next to your leg. Next, as you lower down to the floor, aim to have your working shoulder touch the ground. This is going to keep your body nice and parallel so that there's no cheating, there's no form breakdown. Then drive your hand downwards into the ground, and you'll have performed the one-arm push-up, thus cementing your chest gains for the rest of your life.
Now, another one-arm push-up might be a difficult move for some of you guys, but with enough effort and consistency, I know all of you can get there. But maybe some of you struggle with achieving consistency. You're constantly putting off your workouts or not working out hard enough. Luckily, I have the perfect video to help you guys out right.