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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

I did exclusively pushups and pull ups and I actually thought that was fine (if boring) for building my upper body.

I had done squats and walking lunges for my legs but they interfered with running so I stopped.

I subscribe to the "heavy weight, compound exercise" theory of muscle building, which is why I think pushups and pullups are enough for the upper body unless you're targeting some specific muscle. I'd definitely be interested in hearing criticism though.

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Do you do just regular push ups? They quickly become too easy to provide load, and target very few muscles (low pecks and triceps mainly), so some variety is likely needed. I add dips, diver-bomber and tyson push ups.

The same is probably for pull ups, you can add chin ups at least on every other day.

There are many varieties of push-ups:

Close-grip pushups: To perform close-grip pushups, place your hands closer together than shoulder-width apart. This will increase the challenge on your triceps.

Wide-grip pushups: To perform wide-grip pushups, place your hands further apart than shoulder-width apart. This will increase the challenge on your chest muscles.

Elevated pushups: To perform elevated pushups, place your feet on an elevated surface such as a step or bench. This will increase the difficulty of the exercise.

Plyometric pushups: Plyometric pushups, also known as "clap" pushups, involve pushing up with enough force to lift your hands off the ground and clap them together before returning to the starting position.

One-armed pushups: As the name suggests, one-armed pushups are performed using only one arm. They are an advanced variation that requires a high level of upper body strength.

Knuckle pushups: Knuckle pushups are performed with your hands in a fist position, with your knuckles facing down. They are a more challenging variation that places more of the load on your wrists and forearms.

Diamond pushups: Diamond pushups are performed with your hands placed close together, forming a diamond shape with your index fingers and thumbs. They are a challenging variation that targets the triceps muscles.

Most of your variants mainly target the same muscles: triceps and low peks. Exception is probably wide push ups, but they are not good for shoulder joint health.

They are meant to target same muscles, but offer a progression (beginner to expert). There are other excercises for other upper body muscles, with similar variant/progression principles (Dips, Shoulder presses)

To add to that list, those I found useful to increase difficulty/load once regular pushups become to easy:

- Zombie pushups: Offset hands instead of aligning in a straight line (one upper, one lower) - alternate after a set

- Asymetric pushups: Move one arm/hand farther out than the other, try to go down to the center. Alternate sets. Use as progression to go towards one-arm pushups. Another variant is to go with symetric hand position, but lower your body towards one hand at a time (think "nipple to the thumb").

That being said, I strongly believe they are not healthy for your joints, the one-arm pushup in general feels just bad for the joints given the performed motion.

For the _vast_ majority of people, the benefits are not necessarily in "building muscle" but just getting _some_ exercise.

I would say that push-ups and crunches beat any other exercise combination in terms of unit benefit per unit effort. Distractions and shyness can be practically eliminated as you can work-out from home, you can work-out while travelling as you don't need any equipment, risk of injury is relatively much much lower, warm-up is quick, rapid (sometimes _very_ rapid) progress is almost guaranteed, etc. Combined, this allows almost anyone to get the physiological and psychological benefits of working-out cheaply, safely and rapidly. There is just no substitute for the confidence boost that you can now easily do X amount of push-ups after just a few weeks of training. Best bang for your buck for most people IMO.

Of course, long-term it's probably a good idea to have a more diverse set of exercises =)

> terms of unit benefit per unit effort

I strongly disagree with this. You need progressive overload of muscles to continue growing, meaning you should be in state of doing 12 reps max of given exercises per set and not more (6-10 reps range is better).

Once you start being able to do 12 push ups, muscles growth stimulus becomes low, and it becomes more about suffering than benefits.

To a degree yes, but endurance and power are important for functional strength and for endurance this means doing lots of reps at low intensity or doing easy exercises explosively for power

Push ups and crunches are not efficient for endurance too, they involve very few muscles to overload your cardio-energy systems. Something like squats and burpies will make you breath heavy much faster, or medium distance sprint running is even better.

But the vast, vast majority of people are _never_ going to develop "real" muscle mass in the meaning of the word used by weight lifters. It is much easier to get someone to do a few push-ups/crunches every other day than it is to get them to go to the gym consistently.

The benefits of simple calisthenics for muscle building aren't necessarily that great, but just doing them in the first place is already a big win. You will definitely get "fitter", but maybe not _that_ much stronger/bigger.

I would argue that having relatively heavy pair of dumbbells at home and doing some program like: deadlift, squat, rows, floor press and shoulder press will make bigger impact on overall shape.

Indeed, that's probably the best next step.

The main criticism I can think of is that with pushup/pullup you're constrained by body weight (unless using a machine to assist, I'm not sure if those exist for pushups). Pullups are thus relatively fatiguing compared to a lat-pulldown or similar. Which might be fine, but it's nice to have more control over loading of the movement, particularly if it's hard to get volume in with a reasonable RPE (ie not maxing out every single set, which can end up inhibiting your progress). Given that I think volume (as opposed to absolute load) is a more useful driver of hypertrophy. Sorry if that's missing the point, if you're constrained to bodyweight exercises then they're a good difficult compound option

I started doing pull ups and chin ups under a table, lying at an angle so I was only lifting part of my weight, then once I got strong enough to do the reps I wanted I transitioned to a bar

For a while I was doing them with a backpack full of books as well, but I went back to just trying for really good form.

The assist machine for pushups is called a ramp. A staircase is also a reasonable approximation. Body weight exercise is all about mechanical advantage. It’s just used in the opposite way as it is when doing actual work. You increase your mechanical disadvantage to increase your training stimulus.

To add: You can progress with a ramp/wall all the way to handstand pushups. Simple machines are legit.

For pullups you can use bands to lower resistance and a belt with attached weight (or simply grip a medicine ball / weight with your legs) to add weight.

No need for an expensive machine :)

It's incredible how fast you can progress with just these simple exercises. I suspect a lot of people would be quite surprised at how good they can get at push-ups and crunches if they commit to them for 3-4 weeks. Even starting at 5 each when waking up and before going to bed every other day, your body will get used to the effort very quickly. Make sure to properly warm up!

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