How to Feel your Chest during Pushups?

So you’ve been doing set after set of pushups but you can’t seem to feel your chest during the exercise. What makes it worse is that you can feel it in your arms and shoulders. Now you’re worried if pushups can even build your chest like you wanted. They can, but you’ll need to engage your chest when you’re doing pushups.

I’ve struggled with this before, during the lockdown in 2020 when all the gyms were closed. That was the first time I did a pushup since P.E. class. I didn’t know what I was doing then and I certainly didn’t feel it in my chest.

But when I learned to engage my chest muscles, my chest grew like it never did before. Here’s how.

What Movements Engage Chest Muscles?

In order to feel our chest during pushups, we need to understand how the purpose of the chest muscles. That is how they work and what movements they are responsible for. This way we can consciously emphasize these movements when we do pushups to properly stimulate the chest muscles.

This chest muscle functions to adduct the upper arm at the shoulder. This means it brings the upper arm from the side of the body to the front of the body.

Therefore, in order to optimally work your chest muscles during pushups you need to make sure this movement is occurring. However, even if this movement occurs, some minor mistakes can still prevent you from feeling your chest during pushups. Rather, you’ll feel it elsewhere in your body.

Why do I feel Pushups in my Arms and Shoulders?

Pushups are compound movements, taking place across multiple joints and involving multiple muscle groups, not just the chest. Your body does not know it is doing a chest exercise. It simply needs to lift a load, your bodyweight, so it will use as much muscle as possible to lift the load.

Therefore, the work of doing a pushup is divided between all of the muscles. This work isn’t shared equally. It depends on leverages and joint positions so that you efficiently perform the movement. So if done incorrectly, the pushup will work your arms and shoulders more than your chest.

So how can we adjust our joint positions and leverages to feel our chest during pushups? That’s right, we fix our form.

Pushup Form Fixes to feel Chest

Make these changes to the way you are doing your pushups and you’ll engage your chest more during the exercise.

1. Adjust Hand Position to Feel Chest during Pushups

If you place your hands too far in front of you during a pushup, most of the movement will occur through the elbows, working your triceps. The remaining movement at the shoulder will be flexion (upwards) not adduction (side to front) using the deltoid muscles.

Placing your hands too low puts your wrists in an awkward position where the force will not be transmitted efficiently to the pectoral muscles.

A too narrow hand width also results in excessive elbow movement and shoulder flexion, leaving your chest out of the movement. However, an excessively wide hand position reduces the range of motion of the chest muscles so much that the muscle is not stimulated fully.

The best hand placement to really feel your chest during a pushup is just outside shoulder width apart and just underneath the level of the shoulder. That way the force of the pushup is in line with the chest muscles and the chest muscles go through a full range of motion.

2. Adjust your Shoulders to Feel Chest during Pushups

If you allow your shoulders to roll forwards then they will get in the way of your chest when you are performing pushups. Therefore most of the adducting movement will occur due to the shoulder muscles and not the pectoral muscles.

To fix this, pull your shoulder blades back during pushups. Try to pinch something between your scapulae and pull the floor backwards when you are lowering. This will help to reset your shoulders and scapulae between reps of pushups.

3. Adjust your Elbows to Feel Chest during Pushups

Your elbows can either be tucked in, very near to your body, or all the way out to your sides when you do a pushup.

If your elbows are too close to your body, most of the movement through your shoulder will be flexion. This involves the deltoid muscle more than the chest.

However, if your elbows are all the way flared out, at 90⁰ to your body then this will restrict your range of motion and also put too much unnecessary strain on the shoulder joint and rotator cuff muscles. This can possibly lead to injury.

A good place to keep your elbows to focus on engaging your chest muscles during pushups is at an approximately 45⁰ angle to your body.

4. Straighten your Body during Pushups

If your body isn’t in a straight position then the load on the chest muscles is reduced. This is also unsafe to perform.

If you allow your hips and abdomen to drop, then this shifts your body’s center of gravity away from the chest. Therefore the work the chest has to perform during a pushup is reduced.

A simple fix for this is to tighten your abs and glutes during pushups. This will keep your body in one straight position. If core strength is an issue, you can try easier pushup variations until your core strength is strong enough to do a pushup with proper form.

5. Adjust Pushup Range of Motion

If you aren’t doing a full pushup then you won’t be stimulating the chest as effectively. The simple fix is to go all the way down and go all the way up during a pushup.

A more advanced way to really engage your chest during pushups is to avoid locking your elbows at the top. This very last part of a pushup is entirely triceps, and after lockout all of the force is transmitted through the bones. By avoiding lockout you can keep all of the tension on the pectoral muscles during the pushup.

6. Try an Easier Pushup Variation to Feel Chest more

If a pushup is already too hard then it will be difficult to focus on correct form. An easier variation will allow you to build your chest strength with proper form until you are strong enough to perform regular pushups.

7. Try a Harder Pushup Variation to Feel Chest more

Perhaps pushups are too easy for you and you can do hundreds of them without breaking a sweat. A harder variation will allow you to continue to challenge yourself and give your chest a greater stimulus for growth.

8. Focus on the Eccentric to Feel Chest more

The eccentric or lowering phase of the pushup is the phase where most of the muscle damage responsible for growth occurs. If you are doing your pushups too fast then you’ll ignore the eccentric phase of the pushup and feel your chest less.

Fix this by slowing down your pushup speed so you can focus on your form and chest contractions better.

What if I still can’t feel my Chest during Pushups?

If you followed all of these tips and still can’t feel your chest during pushups then the problem might be that you don’t know how to feel your chest. You can work on this by developing a stronger mind-muscle connection.

This is where your mind an your muscles are in sync so much that you can tell when they are contracting. Consequently, you can control how much they contract during exercises so that you stimulate more muscle growth.

How to Develop a Mind-Muscle Connection with your Chest

Here is an exercise to help you build your mind-muscle connection:

1. Place one hand on your chest.
2. Place the other hand stretched out to the side, with your palm facing forwards.
3. Move your arm across from the side to the front slowly, until your palm is facing the opposite side.
4. Feel your chest muscle contract as your arm moves across.
5. Repeat this movement while focusing on squeezing a harder contraction in your chest, while continuing to gauge the level of contraction with the other hand.
6. Keep doing this on both sides until you can subconsciously tell if you are contracting your chest without your hand being on your chest.

Using a Mind-Muscle Connection during Pushups

1. Before Pushups

Warm up as usual. Perform the mind-muscle connection exercise to remember what a chest contraction feels like. Then perform a few low repetition sets of incline pushups and focus on feeling your chest contractions.

2. During Pushups

Using your mind-muscle connection, focus on contracting your chest muscles during your sets of pushups. Remember the movement pattern of your chest muscles and visualize dragging your hands together through the floor to really squeeze your chest muscles.

Put all of these tips together and you’ll be sure to feel your chest during pushups and you won’t have any problems building your chest from pushups.

References:

Calatayud, J., Vinstrup, J., Jakobsen, M.D. et al. Importance of mind-muscle connection during progressive resistance training. Eur J Appl Physiol 116, 527–533 (2016)

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Hsiu-Hao Hsu, et al. Effect of Push-up Speed on Upper Extremity Training until Fatigue. (2010). Journal Of Medical And Biological Engineering, 31(4), 289-293.

Cogley, Robert M ; Archambault, Teasha A ; Fibeger, Jon F ; Koverman, Mandy M ; et al . Comparison of Muscle Activation using Various Hand Positions during the Pushup Exercise. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research ; Champaign  Volume 19, No. 3,  (Aug 2005): 628-33. DOI: 10.1519 / 00124278-200508000-00024

Paul Pei-Hsi Chou, et al. Effect of Pushup Speed on Elbow Joint Loading. (2010). Journal Of Medical And Biological Engineering, 31(4), 289-293.

Adams, G., Cheng, D., Haddad, F. and Baldwin, K., 2004. Skeletal muscle hypertrophy in response to isometric, lengthening, and shortening training bouts of equivalent duration. Journal of Applied Physiology, 96(5), pp.1613-1618.

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