Incline push-up
A push-up with your hands raised — the load is set by the height, which makes it the honest way to scale the movement.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Equipment
- Bench
- Space
- A bench or a seat
- Difficulty
- Foundational
- Load
- Leverage
What it is
Put your hands on something raised: a bench, a step, a kitchen worktop, a wall. Walk your feet back until your body is a straight line from head to heels, and perform a push-up against that surface.
The higher your hands, the easier it is. A wall is very easy; a low step is nearly a full push-up. This gives a continuous dial between the two.
What it demands
Less pressing strength than a full push-up, in a proportion set by the height — and the same trunk demand as a full push-up, because your body is still a straight line supported at two ends.
That is the reason to prefer this over dropping to your knees. Knee push-ups reduce the arm load and remove most of the trunk work at the same time, so they train a different movement. Elevating the hands reduces one and keeps the other.
What usually goes wrong
Feet too close to the surface. The body ends up steeply angled and the movement becomes almost vertical, which is easy but no longer a horizontal press.
Bending at the hips. As in any push-up, the straight line is half the exercise.
Using something unstable. A rolling office chair or an unsecured box is a genuinely bad idea here.
Staying at the same height forever. The whole value is that the height comes down over time.
Where it sits
The entry point to horizontal pressing, and the correct regression from the push-up — better than the knee version for the reason given above.
Because a wall or a worktop is available almost everywhere, this is one of the few pressing movements that genuinely needs nothing. Work the height down until the floor is the surface, at which point you are doing push-ups.