Everything You Need To Know About The Diamond Pushups
What is a Diamond Push-Up?
The diamond push up is an advanced variation to the wide grip push up, needing you to put both hands together to form a diamond shape, as the name suggests. The diamond push-up is a compound exercise that simultaneously works your glutes, quads, triceps, shoulders, core, and chest. They also go by the name of diamond press-up, triangle push-up, and diamond push-ups. You perform a diamond push-up by keeping your back straight while placing your feet and hands on the floor, with opposite hands and feet touching, using your arm muscles and chest to lift and lower your body off the floor.
A diamond push-up will target your triceps first, and your triceps work with your biceps in turn to help you extend and retract your forearm. The exercise also work your chest and shoulder muscles, but they are secondary, only needed for providing stability. The triangle push-up is a lot more challenging to perform than a traditional push-up because your hands are so close together. This position forces you to balance yourself on only a small base of support. Not to mention, keeping your feet together requires more balance than is needed in a classic push-up, and works to engage your core, especially your external and internal obliques.
How To Correctly Perform A Diamond Pushup?
The diamond push up is quite similar to the standard and wide grip push-ups but has its own differences. The thing that makes diamond pushups so unique is the angle at which the hands are placed on the ground. If you a beginner, here is a step-by-step guide to do the diamond push-up correctly.
Get into a plank position, as you do for standard and wide grip pushups: lay low, stretch out the body and keep your back into a straight line from the torso down to the feet, with your hands touching just under your pectoral muscle. Make a diamond shape with your hands by placing your thumbs and index fingers together so they touch. Straighten out your elbows and lock out your triceps to form a straight diagonal line from your feet to your head. Lower your chest to the same level as your hands slowly, using your abdominal muscles for stability, and stretch back up quickly. This emphasis placed on lowering your bodyweight slowly is to make your shoulders and chest muscles feel and bear the weight of your body.
If you are having difficulty performing diamond push-ups in the beginning, start with regular pushups and slowly bring your hands closer and closer gradually with every workout, until you can perform a diamond pushup perfectly with your hands pressed together. Similarly, if you are having difficulty with form, we advise you to put your hands on a bench and change your incline while keeping your feet on the floor to ease some of the weight off of your arms.
Benefits Of Diamond Push ups
They Strengthen The Core
Even though it is a commonly held notion that diamond pushups only tone the arms, the fact is that this bodyweight exercise variation serves to engage all the muscles of your core. While performing this body weight exercise, all the major muscle groups of your body, including the triceps, anterior deltoids, biceps, and core muscles, work together to execute each movement, which allows you to reap all the benefits that come from a strengthened core, it. Since this exercise trains the most important muscles in your body, it is quite agonizing to perform.
Diamond Push Ups Supercharge Your Triceps
If you are trying to grow your triceps but are continually seeing disheartening growth in your muscle mass, it is time to add an exercise that is deemed great for triceps activation to your workout regime. The American Council of Exercise has labeled the Diamond pushups, the best way to grow the triceps. This is because during a diamond push up workout schedule, your hands take up a central position, which transfers more of the body weight on the triceps. This helps your triceps grow stronger, one rise and descent at a time.
This makes them a top choice for people who want to strengthen their triceps or bring more definition to them. Even though some people compare their triceps activation ability against dips, we say they are better than dips, since diamond push-ups put less emphasis on your shoulders and more activation on the triceps. So, you don’t need to have strong shoulders to perform dips.
They’re Great Push-Ups for Shoulders
While the use of shoulder is the foundation of push-ups, this body weight exercise exerts extra pressure on the shoulder joints due to the difficult angle at which the hands are placed while performing this exercise. This helps to challenge your anterior deltoid and contributes to increased shoulder strength over a shorter period. Strengthening the shoulders also prevents severe rotator cuff injury.
Boost Your Metabolism
Diamond pushups push your body towards a total physical exertion. While this exercise is agonizing to perform, the benefit is that it forces your heart to work harder. This is because your body muscles need more and more oxygen to sustain you through this exercise, your blood needs to be pumped harder to fulfil this increased demand. This boosts your metabolic rate, resulting in burned calories.
Improve Posture
Diamond pushups help increase your core strength, which averts age-related health complications and improves your body posture. A super strong core supports your whole body in whatever position it is in.
Muscle Stretching
What most people tend to overlook about the diamond pushups is the amount of stretching it offers to your biceps and back muscles. The constant repetitive motion of lowering your body helps stretch your back muscles, while your biceps receive a full stretch at the time of pushing yourself to the original starting position. By increasing your body’s flexibility, diamond pushups prevent workout related injuries in the long run. Last but not the least, well-stretched muscles are attractive and feature a robust visage.
Greater Balance Requirement
The narrow position of the hands and feet while performing a diamond pushup, forms a smaller base of support. This is an exercise that has a big balance component. Therefore, it will work your internal and external obliques more. The diamond pushup trains the muscle fibers, which play a major role in keeping your entire body stabilized and balanced. The more you perform this exercise, the better your overall stability becomes, leading to better speed and body balance.
Types of Diamond Push-Up Variations
Even though diamond push-ups are great on their own to build a coveted upper body, there are some amazing push-up variations that benefit different experience levels and target different muscle groups, Here are some of the best push-up variations:
Countertop Push-Ups
In order to perform a countertop pushup, face towards a countertop or a stable piece of furniture as tall as your waist and stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Stand at arm’s length and lean forward, placing your hands on the counter as you do so. Lower your body towards the counter gradually and bend your elbows. When you’re about a few inches away from the counter, spring back to starting position.
Biceps Push-Ups
This amazing push-up variation works your biceps muscles. To begin, start in the regular push-up position and place your hands with your fingers pointing towards your feet and in line with the middle of your back. Bend your elbows and tuck them towards your body. Once you have lowered your body towards the floor, spring back into starting position and repeat.
Negative Push-Ups
If you’re not ready for a regular push-up just yet, this is a great alternative that works all the muscles simultaneously. Start in a regular push-up position and place your hands directly beneath your shoulders and place your feet hip width apart. Keeping your back in a straight line, slowly unbend your elbows and lower yourself to the floor. Count to five and spring back up into starting position. Allow your knees to bear most of the weight od your body and complete the repetition.
Wall Push-Up
Wall push-ups target your arms, shoulders, back and chest like regular pushups, but with much less resistance. To perform a wall pushup, keep your face towards a wall and stand a little more than arm’s length away. Keeping your feet shoulder width apart, lean forward and place your hands flat on the wall shoulder width apart. Bending your elbows, inch your body closer to the wall and pause at the bottom. Unbend your elbows to push yourself away from the wall and back to starting position