Push Ups vs Weights

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Lots of people keep asking this question, Do push ups build muscle?

Before I can answer this question let me first tell you how muscles are built.

When you lift a heavy weight your muscle fibers get torn down (not all of them of course but some of them) because your body is very intelligent it repairs the fibers once again but with a bigger size in order to prevent this from happening again.

Now what will happen if you lifted the same weight once again? Nothing will happen because the fibers this time won't be torn.

Progressive overload is the only way to build muscle

This means that in order to build muscle you need to keep increasing the weight each time your muscle gets used to it. If you are training using 25 lbs for biceps and you already got used to them to the extent that you can do easily 10 reps then your biceps won't grow until you increase the weight.

Now back to push ups, push ups involves lifting your body using your muscles. The problem with push ups is that the load is never increased on the muscle because you are lifting the same weight each time.

Push ups are going to be very effective for beginners but as soon as you get used to them they won't do you anything.

How can you use push ups to build muscle?

First of all I strongly recommend doing the bench press exercise instead of push ups however if you insist to do them make sure that you:

Do push ups only if you are a beginner

When you get used to push ups start putting weights on your back while doing them. This will increase the load and allow your muscles to grow.

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