Are Pushups Harder With Pushup Bars?
Push-ups are a great exercise for building muscle, strength and endurance in your chest, shoulders, triceps and core muscles. However, regular push-ups can cause a certain amount of discomfort. If this is the case, then you may find push-up bars to be an excellent investment for helping you to do pain free push-ups.
Push-ups are a great exercise for building muscle, strength and endurance in your chest, shoulders, triceps and core muscles. However, regular push-ups can cause a certain amount of discomfort. If this is the case, then you may find push-up bars to be an excellent investment for helping you to do pain free push-ups. However, push-up bars can also make certain parts of the exercise slightly tougher.
Wrist Position
Experiencing wrist pain when performing push-ups is a common problem, and one which can derail your progress, and lead to more serious injuries in the long run. Regular push-ups cause your wrist to bend back, and hyper-extend slightly, putting excess pressure through it. Push-up bars neutralize the angle of your wrists and elbows so that the force of your body is more evenly distributed, and your wrists can be kept straight.
Height
Performing push-ups using bars will bring your hands a few inches from the floor. While this may not seem like much, it adds an extra couple of inches on to your range of motion, as the bars allow you to descend lower in the bottom position. To begin with, this will be tougher, however it will cause your chest, shoulder and triceps muscles to be activated more, which can lead to bigger increases in muscle growth and strength.
Core Stability
Due to the increased distance between your torso and the floor when using push-up bars, and the larger range of movement, your core muscles will have to work harder to stabilize you. Your core muscles should be strong enough so that they do not fail before your upper body muscles, however if your core muscles are weak, you may find using push-up bars harder than regular push-ups.
Are Push-ups with bars tougher?
Push-up bars will only make the exercise easier if you suffer from wrist pain when performing regular push-ups. If you have no issues doing regular push-ups, then bars will make them harder due to the increased range of motion, and demands on your core muscles, although this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Making an exercise harder can recruit more muscle fibers, and help you to make increased improvements in performance and body composition.