Push-Ups vs Bench Presses For Building Muscle

Heres a big topic that everyone talks about. As a retired weightlifter myself who once trained under Tommy Kono for the Olympics in Olympic Weightlifting, I did the snatch and clean and jerk, I never really practiced bench pressing. I still don’t to this day. I did practice that in high school since everyone did it for athletics such as American Football. As a coach and the founder of HPLL Fitness, I’m not big on bench pressing. Here’s why. Its very limited in what it does. Yes, you can build your pectoral muscles faster by bench pressing, because you can add load to a barbell to increase stress to the muscle which forces it to respond to the adaptation to the stress that put on it. Here’s the problem that comes with it. You’re lying on a bench to press the weight. Well, that puts stress on the shoulders and elbows. The heavier the weight is, the more strain that the joints are put under. That’s where the injuries happen. With a push-up, you actually work more muscles. The abdominal muscles get engaged as well when executing that movement. More muscles worked at one, versus a few on the bench press, well you do the math. Save the time, we don’t have all day to isolate muscle groups. We at HPLL Fitness say, do push-ups instead of doing a bench press. More muscles being worked at once and its way more functional than a bench press.