DB Floor Presses or Weighted Push-ups

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

Hey, Im new to the forum. I had a question, what is a better alternative for bench press, weighted push ups or db floor bench presses? I know there is no subbing for BP, but what is the better alternative for building muscle in the chest?

The problems Im facing is, I know push ups add strength and endurance, but I thought if adding a weight vest( 75 lb weight vest ) and slowly increasing the weight might add muscle, not sure. Secondly, with db floor presses, your elbows hit the floor, thus limiting full range of motion.
What do you think is better…

—A side note-

  • I use to lift and do BP,deads, SDLs,ect. However,had abb surgery( tore them )…I also have limited space to lift, college now! So a smith machine is out, and I have no spotter to hand me the dbs( on a bench ). Thanks
2

Nothing wrong with weighted pushups.

3

I have a few questions.

  1. Why did you tear your abs?
  2. Why do you want an alternative to bench

I think both floor press and weighted pushups are great. Floor press will probably be easier to increase the weight and do heavier sets, while weighted pushups might be better for moderate-high reps.

4

[quote]bitty wrote:
I have no spotter to hand me the dbs( on a bench ). Thanks[/quote]

pick the dumbells up yourself.

i use 120’s for 3x10.

i’ve seen people use much more weight than myself.

everyone’s seen the video of ronnie coleman with 200lb dumbells.

5

[quote]Ghost22 wrote:
Nothing wrong with weighted pushups.[/quote]

Do you think they would be okay for building muscle over floor press?

6

Bitty,

Heavy weight is heavy weight, so as long as there is a sufficient load for the weighted push-up, there is no problem and no reason why it can’t build strength/mass ( there is a limit though to how much you can load on your back, which is where heavy bench pressing comes in :slight_smile: ). Bench pressing can also be an endurance lift if you do 20 reps of it. Lastly, I think people need to do more push-ups in general for shoulder health (assuming you are doing correct form) in lieu of bench pressing.

How to perform the push-up properly (from Hartman’s/Robertson’s “Push-ups, Face pulls, and Shrugs” article):

"To correctly perform a push-up, lay face down on the floor with your toes pointed, hands and elbows at a 90 degree angle to the shoulders, and stomach tight. Press up to the starting position, making sure to keep the stomach tight throughout, and then lower under control to a point where the chest touches the ground. As you’re lowering, tuck the elbows such that the angle between your upper arm and torso is approximately 45 degrees.

One aspect that we can’t emphasize enough is to use a full range of motion. Be sure to lower under control, and at the top think of pushing your body as far away from the floor as possible. This extra “push” at the end will emphasize proper serratus function."

Also: Don’t let your hips sag, and imagine pulling yourself to the floor when going down in the push-up.

7

[quote]dankid wrote:
I have a few questions.

  1. Why did you tear your abs?
  2. Why do you want an alternative to bench

I think both floor press and weighted pushups are great. Floor press will probably be easier to increase the weight and do heavier sets, while weighted pushups might be better for moderate-high reps.[/quote]

My abbs, I tore them playin sports and lifting probably made it worse. My abbs will only be 70% of what they use to. So hernia is a factor.
Bench, for the reasons I stated, I dont have enough room for a smith machine or spotter cage. Plus with my abdominal injury, I dont want to lift the dbs up in position on a bench. You will be surprised how much you use abbs on workouts, like weighted chins.

I agree that floor presses are prob good and weighted push ups. I was going to buy a 75lb weight vest. Its a short vest, so it sits up on your upper body. So mainly the weight is on your upper back and shoulders, not abbs and lower back…That way the weight is more directed on chest. However, didnt know if I should invest in that or not and if floor presses were better. With floor presses, I thought it might be an alernatibe to reg. BP. However, since your elbows would hit the floor, it limits your full range of motion. So Im Not sure.
Thanks for replying

8

[quote]bitty wrote:

Plus with my abdominal injury, I dont want to lift the dbs up in position on a bench. You will be surprised how much you use abbs on workouts, like weighted chins.

[/quote]

gotcha, although u might be underestimating how much you would use your abs when doing pushups with a 75lb vest on…

9

[quote]PB Andy wrote:
Bitty,

Heavy weight is heavy weight, so as long as there is a sufficient load for the weighted push-up, there is no problem and no reason why it can’t build strength/mass ( there is a limit though to how much you can load on your back, which is where heavy bench pressing comes in :slight_smile: ). Bench pressing can also be an endurance lift if you do 20 reps of it. Lastly, I think people need to do more push-ups in general for shoulder health (assuming you are doing correct form) in lieu of bench pressing.

How to perform the push-up properly (from Hartman’s/Robertson’s “Push-ups, Face pulls, and Shrugs” article):

"To correctly perform a push-up, lay face down on the floor with your toes pointed, hands and elbows at a 90 degree angle to the shoulders, and stomach tight. Press up to the starting position, making sure to keep the stomach tight throughout, and then lower under control to a point where the chest touches the ground. As you’re lowering, tuck the elbows such that the angle between your upper arm and torso is approximately 45 degrees.

One aspect that we can’t emphasize enough is to use a full range of motion. Be sure to lower under control, and at the top think of pushing your body as far away from the floor as possible. This extra “push” at the end will emphasize proper serratus function."

Also: Don’t let your hips sag, and imagine pulling yourself to the floor when going down in the push-up.[/quote]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I use to use regular bench, had a cage. However, I moved and have not much room for a smith machine or the likes. So I am trying to come up with a way to have an alternative to BP, like the floor pres or weighted push up. I already will be doing dips. The weighted push ups would be with a weighted vest, up to 75 lbs( if I did those ). Then I figured if I out grew the vest, just throw a power block on my upper back. The vest is a short vest, it sits on your upper shoulders and covers ur chest, not your lowe back or abbs.

I know chest pressing looks good, but the limited range of motion…elbows hitting floor, didnt know which of the two are better.

Your right weight is weight. As long as you can eventually keep adding to the resistance, but didnt know which exercise is better for mass.

10

[quote]HolyMacaroni wrote:
bitty wrote:

Plus with my abdominal injury, I dont want to lift the dbs up in position on a bench. You will be surprised how much you use abbs on workouts, like weighted chins.

gotcha, although u might be underestimating how much you would use your abs when doing pushups with a 75lb vest on…[/quote]

True. You know what it really is, is you know when you lift the dbs onto your legs to get into postion doing dbs for bench? Then you jolt back on the bench with the weights, thats what Im talking about. Plus when I do that I feel it also limits the strength, cause your practically jerking the weight before you begin.However, I have to go out and buy power blocks, to save room. Im kinda new to this type of lifting( floor presses, weghted push ups ) cause I had all the equipment I needed and my abbs at 100%. Its not that it will hurt, I just dont want to risk them too much.

Yeah, I miss my parents house in highschool man, I had a Power cage, cable machine, two treadmills, and free weights. I moved( college ) and got diddly poo for room.

11

If you can I would do a combination of both.

Push ups are great for scapula health and obviously the ROM is greater, but floor presses are a great exe too and a bit of variety will help you make progress rather than just hammering one movement. It’s nice mentally to have some new stimulus from time to time too.

You could also rotate both exes? Doing one per session or doing them one after the other (maybe start with push ups while your core is fresh to hold you tight, then move onto floor presses to finish with your core supported).

If you are already limited by what moves you can do, I wouldn’t limit yourself further by making it an either/or choice. There are benefits to both and you will make the best progress by using all of the benefits avaliable to you.

12

[quote]bitty wrote:

Yeah, I miss my parents house in highschool man, I had a Power cage, cable machine, two treadmills, and free weights. I moved( college ) and got diddly poo for room.
[/quote]

does your college not have a rec center?

13

[quote]HolyMacaroni wrote:
bitty wrote:

Yeah, I miss my parents house in highschool man, I had a Power cage, cable machine, two treadmills, and free weights. I moved( college ) and got diddly poo for room.

does your college not have a rec center?[/quote]

Nope…lol. I had to go to one of their regional campus for my major:(. I assume the main has one, but its a far drive from where Im at.

14

[quote]HolyMacaroni wrote:
bitty wrote:

Yeah, I miss my parents house in highschool man, I had a Power cage, cable machine, two treadmills, and free weights. I moved( college ) and got diddly poo for room.

does your college not have a rec center?[/quote]

See this also screws up my leg day, along with upper body. I was going to do a three day split:

Day 1

Floor press/or weighted push ups
Dips
DB French curls

Day 2

db Bent rows
db Upright rows
db Bicep curls/switching to hammers for variation

Day 3

-Squats----Forced to go with dbs at my side:(
-Then IDK what else I can do for legs with just power block dbs!Lunges…lol. Maybe a sumo squat with the db.

15

I’d do a four day split, honestly. Two upper, two lower.

Since you seem to have limited equipment, I’d actually recommend that you have a little more volume in your workouts to get the most out of it, including chest/back on both upper days. This way, you can hit your whole torso 2x a week instead of half of it (chest or back) 1x a week.

So on one upper day, you can do A1) Weighted push-ups, then A2) Bent-over DB rows. Then B1) Chin-ups (be creative, you can find something…), B2) Standing DB Press. Then C1) Bicep work, C2) Tricep work.

For another upper day, you can do A1) Floor presses, A2) One arm DB row. B1) Pull-ups, B2) Standing one-arm DB push press. C1) Bis, C2) Tris.

For leg days, I’d do squat-oriented and deadlift-oriented lifts, and then followed by single-leg work.

Examples: DB Squats with arms at side, DB Front Squats (supporting DBs on your clavicles), Suitcase deadlift, Romanian Deadlift with DBs, DB Bulgarian split squat, Walking DB lunges, DB Swings, DB Reverse Lunge (also, with front foot elevated), DB Step-up, Single-leg squat to box. You can change strides on the variations of DB lunges to focus on hip or quad-dominant (longer stride = hip dominant, shorter stride = quad dominant)

Just make sure you balance the legs each leg day, for example: A1) Squat-oriented DB lift, A2) Deadlift-oriented DB lift. B1) Quad-dominant DB single-leg lift, B2) Hip-dominant DB single-leg lift.

These are just my recommendations, hope I was of some help.

16

I don’t know man…you apparently suffered a pretty serious abdominal injury…your abs are used in a variety of situations for stabilization. I just don’t think a bunch of people over the internet should be where you are getting advice from.

I doubt many people here have experienced an injury similar to yours and have had to train around it.

17

[quote]That One Guy wrote:
I don’t know man…you apparently suffered a pretty serious abdominal injury…your abs are used in a variety of situations for stabilization. I just don’t think a bunch of people over the internet should be where you are getting advice from.

I doubt many people here have experienced an injury similar to yours and have had to train around it.

[/quote]

That’s a very good point… Your abs have to be tight and should stabilize you in every lift, there used IMMENSELY in push-ups, especially weighted. So… yeah, it’s all up to how they feel.

18

Weighted pushups put a lot of pressure and strain on your midsection and abs. Its good that the weight is over your chest butr you are still supporting yourself with your hands and feet with your midsection as the hinge holding it together. You will also be able to use more weight and progressively overload your muscles more with floor presses. Don’t worry about the range of motion.

I have gotten good strength gains from floor presses that transfered over to increased full ROM flat pressing gains. Getting heavy dumbells into position for a floor press can, however, also be difficult and cause strain. You will have to know what you can do and can’t do. I would take the money for the vest and buy more weights. Then follow something like Andy outlined above.

19

In my opinion pushups are good for maintenance or good if you are a beginner. When I was in jail and on house arrest I did 500-600 pushups a day, but I dont care what anyone says and how much they try to hype bodyweight only training, their is no substitute for the iron!!! 500 pushups a day kept me from losing strength until I could get to the gym, but they were nothing compared to a set of heavy dumbbell bench presses.

20

I could go for weighted dips more