Difficulty: Easy
Impact Level: Low
Target Body Parts: biceps, upper back, chest, shoulders
How to do Wall Push-ups
Back to ExercisesInstructions
Find a solid wall that is as high as your shoulders as a minimum and make sure it can take your weight if you lean against it. Stand up facing the wall so that you are really close to it. Place your hands on the wall at chest height and at shoulder width.
Taking your weight into your hands and keeping you arms bent, step your feet back away from the wall, one at a time until you are leaning at about a 30 degree angle towards the wall. Keep your body rigid by activating your legs, glutes and core. Then start to push your hands into the wall and straighten your arms to push your body away from the wall to almost upright.
Once at the top of the wall push-up position, bend your elbows and lower yourself back towards the wall with control, making sure you don’t hit your head. Repeat the push-up and lowering phases of this exercise for the allotted time.
A common mistake with wall push-ups is to place your hands too high on the wall, remember they should be at chest height. Also, keep your head lifted to look at the wall so that it doesn’t get in the way of the movement.
How to make Wall Push-ups easier
Vary the intensity of the exercise by changing how far your step back away from the wall. Stand more upright to make it easier. Also, check out our Chest Expander exercise as an entry level exercise and warm up for wall push-ups.
How to make Wall Push-ups more challenging
As you get stronger with wall push-ups, you can start to step back further away from the wall so that you lean further forward to do your push-up. A 45 degree angle is about the maximum possible angle, unless you can find a wall that is about waist height. Then you can lean further because your head can travel forwards over the top of the wall. You can also use a sturdy railing to do this, or the back of a park bench.
Then progress to our Push-Up and Push-Up on Knees exercises.
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