Pushups are used in military training and fitness testing. Being that these are body weight exercises, you need little in the way of equipment to perform them. When it comes to making your chest bigger, free-weight exercises like bench presses, flys and pullovers are often utilized. If you are trying to use pushups to bulk up your chest, it is a good idea to know whether they are effective before doing them regularly.
Identification
The chest muscles are known in anatomical terms as the pectorals. The main functions of the "pecs" are to move the upper arms toward the center of the body and to shrug the shoulders forward. Pushups cause both of these motions, so they do in fact make the chest muscles bigger. Being that you bend your elbows and shoulders while doing pushups, you actually work more than one muscle at the same time. This makes pushups a compound exercise.
Types
You perform a standard pushup on the floor. This exercise primarily targets the middle part of your chest. To ensure you maximize your workouts, perform decline and incline pushups as well. Decline pushups place more emphasis on your upper chest and incline pushups shift the emphasis to your lower chest.
Function
Executing proper form is very important when you are doing pushups. The better your form, the more likely you will be to develop bigger chest muscles. Take the standard pushup for example. Start out lying on your stomach with your hands on the floor slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Keep your feet together and push yourself off the floor until your arms are fully extended. Contract your abdominal muscles and maintain a straight line from shoulders to heels as you bend your elbows and lower yourself toward the floor. Stop when your chest is within a fist-width of the floor and push yourself back up. Follow these same points with your decline and incline pushups. To perform decline pushups, place your feet on a chair or weight bench and your hands on the floor. Perform incline pushups with your hands on a bench or chair and your feet on the floor.
Effects
The weight of your body is fine for building muscle, but you may get to a point where your pushups become easy and you will not make any more progress. Consider wearing a weighted vest to increase the resistance. You can also have a training partner sit next to you and hold a weight plate on your back as you perform pushups. Weight plates range in weight all the way up to 45 lb.
Potential
Pushups not only build up your chest muscles, but they also improve your muscular endurance. This is the ability to do a high amount of reps for an extended amount of time. Muscular endurance comes in handy when playing sports where you are constantly in contact with people or are constantly pushing yourself off the ground.
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