How to Do Kneeling Push-Ups + Benefits and Alternatives

A kneeling push-up is a full-body exercise. In this move, you lift your body by pushing off your arms to extend your elbows, creating a lever motion. This exercise is a variation of the traditional push-up.

Performing this exercise on the knees reduces the intensity of a traditional push-up. You can use kneeling push-ups as an alternative to full push-ups or a push-up progression exercise.

This move helps to improve core and upper body strength. It can also help you build skeletal muscle. When it comes to strength training, this exercise is a body weight workout. Full-body workouts of this style are exercises that target most of your major muscle groups at the same time.

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How-to

Kneel on your hands and knees, lift your arms and place your hands shoulder-width apart on the floor. Make sure your shoulder joints are in line with your hands. Keep your arms straight for your starting position.
Lean forward so that you're resting on the tops of your knees.
Bend at your elbows, bringing your head to your hands.
Push up to fully extend your arms and to return to the starting position.

Muscle Worked

Primary Muscle Groups

Chest

Your chest helps you move your arms across your body and up and down while stabilizing the shoulders

Shoulders

Your shoulders are ball-and-socket joints which connect your arms to your torso

Triceps

The triceps are the muscles on the backs of your upper arms

Secondary Muscle Groups

Abs

"Abs" refers to your abdominal muscles, which sit at the front of your trunk between your ribcage and pelvis

Forearms

The forearms help you grip objects and move your hands, wrists and fingers

Lats

Your latissimus dorsi, also called the "lats," help you to move your arms and keep your shoulders stable.

Pro Tips

Don’t hike your hips up into the air. This prevents you from keeping your body in a straight line.
Similarly, don’t let your hips sag or droop down towards the ground. This puts strain on your hip flexors.
Make sure you can bring your chest as low to the ground as possible. Focus on getting a full range of motion before increasing your number of repetitions.

Benefits

Kneeling push-ups can help you build more upper body strength.
This exercise can help stabilize your core.
By working on kneeling push-ups, you can help get better body harmony and improve your body composition.

Variations

The following exercises target the same primary muscles using the same equipment:

Barbell Clean and Press

What is Decline Push Up?

What is a Downward Dog Stretch?

What is a Pec Stretch?

Alternatives

The following exercises target the same primary muscles using different equipment:

All About the Dumbbell Pullover

Decline Bench Press

How to Do a Single-Arm Lat Pulldown

Master the Standing Dumbbell Tricep Extension

Warm Up & Cool Down

Warm Up

Try a cross-body shoulder stretch to warm up your shoulder muscles for push-ups. This stretch involves pulling the arm laterally across your body to stretch out your shoulders and upper back.

Pull one arm across the body with the other to stretch your shoulder.
Hold for 10 seconds or as needed.
Repeat on the other side.

Cool Down

This cool-down is essential after your workout. If you did kneeling push-ups in your workout try this child’s pose stretch:

Start on all fours, then sit back on your heels with your arms extended in front of you.
Rest your forehead resting on the floor. You can use a yoga mat if this feels more comfortable.
Hold the stretch for 30 seconds or as long as you need.

How to Do Kneeling Push-Ups

How-to