Pushup Bar vs Regular Pushup: Should I Use Them?

You’ve probably heard of a pushup bar or pushup grip before and you’ve probably wondered what all the hype was about. What are they? How can you use them to reach your fitness goals? Are pushup bars more effective than regular pushups?

Here’s the good, the bad and the how-to on using a pushup bar.

What is a Pushup Bar?

A pushup bar or pushup grip is simply a handle that you hold when doing pushups.

How to Use a Pushup Bar?

You can use them to perform most pushup variations. Simply place them on the floor where you would normally place your hands, grip them with your wrist in a straight position and do your pushups as usual.

What are the Benefits of using Pushup Bars?

There are a lot of reasons to use a pushup bar. These include:

1. Pushup Bars help you avoid touching the Ground

Maybe you’re a clean freak or a germophobe. Or maybe you’re uncomfortable placing your hands on rough surfaces like asphalt or concrete when you’re doing pushups. Either way, pushup bars provide an alternative place to put your hands when you’re doing pushups.

2. Better Wrist Health

You’ve probably noticed that regular pushups put your wrists in an uncomfortable position. This is because your wrists are cocked back during the entire movement. This places a lot of pressure on the joint and ligaments and often times this can be very painful.

However, when you use a pushup bar it places your wrist in a more neutral position.

This position puts a lot less pressure on the wrist joint and its surrounding ligaments, so it can help you to avoid painful inflammation of the wrists.

3. A Pushup Bar Increases Range of Motion

With a regular pushup, the movement stops when your chest hits the floor. There is a limit to how low you can go and how much you can stretch your chest muscles. Therefore, you might be missing out on some additional muscle stimulation.

Pushup bars elevate your hands so you can lower you chest much deeper between them. Hence, they can actually help you to grow your muscles better than regular pushups.

4. A Pushup Bar adds Variety to Workouts

You can use them to do pushups. Sure, it’s in the name, but that isn’t all they can be used for. A pushup grip can also double as callisthenic parallette. Therefore, you can use them for all sorts of other exercises.

From pushups to dips to planches, there are endless number of bodyweight exercises you can perform using pushup bars.

5. Pushup Bars Isolate the Chest

Pushup bars have been shown to reduce the use of the triceps and shoulder muscles during pushups, and increase the use of the pectoralis major. This is big news if you’re looking to engage your chest with pushups to grow your chest muscles.

6. Some Pushup Bars Rotate

The regular pushup places your hands in a static position. This places a limit on how much muscle we can stimulate. The rotation aspect of some pushup bars can help take your pushup through a more full range of motion, leading to greater stimulation off the chest muscles.

Additionally, this rotation also trains the stabilizer muscles which can help prevent injuries in the long term. Overall, this leads to more overall muscle growth.

What are the Disadvantages of using Pushup Bars?

Pushup bars help give you a better overall workout. However, there are some disadvantages you need to be made aware of.

1. Pushups are Harder to Do

Because of the increased range of motion of the exercise, it poses a greater challenge. This can be seen as a disadvantage for a beginner. However, this can be mitigated by limiting how far you allow yourself to lower your chest.

2. You may hurt your Shoulders

This also stems from the increased range of motion, as if you allow your arms to go too far behind, you may hurt your shoulder joint and rotator cuff muscles. It is important to understand your own level of flexibility and perform the pushup with proper form to avoid irritating your shoulders.

3. Pushup Bars are Less Effective for Triceps

Pushup bars have been shown to stimulate less activity in the triceps muscles than during a regular pushup. If growing your triceps is a goal it will be more effective to use narrow or diamond pushups. Check out these pushup variations for bigger arms.

Pushup Bar vs Regular Pushup

Are pushup bars more effective than regular pushups? Yes they are, but not by much. They can help you avoid a lot of wrist pain, lead to slightly more muscle growth, and can give your workouts some variety but that’s about it. There aren’t much disadvantages of using them that can’t be avoided.

So should you use them? It’s really up to you if the benefits of using a pushup bar are good enough to include them in your workout program. Try using a pushup bar in this home chest workout.

References:

Youdas, James W; Budach, Brian D; Ellerbusch, Jay V; Stucky, Craig M; Wait, Kevin R; Hollman, John H Comparison of Muscle-Activation Patterns During the Conventional Push-Up and Perfect· Pushup™ Exercises, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: December 2010 – Volume 24 – Issue 12 – p 3352-3362 doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181cc23b0

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

Masataka Majima, Emiko Horii, Hiroshi Matsuki, Hitoshi Hirata, Eiichi Genda, Load Transmission Through the Wrist in the Extended Position, The Journal of Hand Surgery, Volume 33, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 182-188, ISSN 0363-5023