If you want to learn how to Perform Diamond Push Ups, and understand the muscles worked and benefits, then this post is for you.
Diamond push ups are a variation of the regular push up.
All you do is make a slight adjustment in hand position to create a totally new exercises.
The diamond push up offers unique benefits for any trainer.
Diamond push ups are perfect for chest development, building round shoulders, adding tricep size, and creating complete upper body definition.
This makes Diamond push ups excellent for building the beach muscles.
You’ll immediately notice a difference compared to regular push ups when you try diamonds.
A slight change in hand position results in significant muscle gains, especially in the upper body.
Diamond Push Ups Muscles Worked
Diamond push ups train your entire upper body and especially target your chest, shoulder, and triceps.
In fact, diamond push ups are one of the best tricep exercises.
If you want thick upper arms complete with bulging triceps, diamond push ups will help get you there.
Depending on how you perform the diamond push up, you will activate muscles differently.
Diamond Push Ups for Tricep Activation
A cue to activate your tricep muscles during diamond push ups is to imagine straightening your arms.
Rather than pushing your palms into the ground, think about fully extending your arms. So your upper arm and forearm are in a straight line from shoulder to wrist, at the top of the movement.
This will activate your tricep muscles to the maximum. Triceps are a muscle group that responds exceptionally well to FULL contraction.
The difference between 99% and 100% contraction makes a difference. That last 1% creates 25% of the benefit.
Don’t short arm your reps.
Diamond Push Ups for Chest Activation
If you want to activate your chest, imagine squeezing your elbows together while pushing your palms away from you (into the floor).
Pretend there’s a big rubber band around your arms at the elbow. Imagine the rubber band stretching out while you’re at the bottom part of the movement.
Now imagine that rubber band wants to snap back, pulling your elbows together.
This cue will naturally activate your chest muscles. It will also engage your front delts of your shoulders as an added bonus.
Other Muscles Worked with Diamond Push Ups
Diamond push ups train much more than your chest, shoulder and triceps.
The nature of the diamond push up recruits a host of muscles:
- Abs and Obliques
- Lats and Lower Back
- Quads
- Glutes
- and Core
Your Abs and obliques keep your body in a straight line while you’re propped up on your hands and toes.
They will also be working hard to keep you balanced. This fires up the many stabilizers of your core. Very important for posture and energy transfer.
Staying on your toes is hard work! Even my legs and back feel sore after pushup workout. You quads engage to keep your legs straight.
As the set of diamond pushups goes on and muscles weaken, other muscles must compensate. The tension is necessary to transfer energy into the movement. If there’s slack anywhere in your body you will lose power and the exercises will be less effective.
The perfect push up requires you flex your entire body throughout the entire set.
You want to maintain a rigid, plank-like, body position throughout the entire push up motion.
Flexing in the manner is called ‘bracing’. Bracing is a little trick gym veterans use to squeeze every ounce of benefit out of each exercise.
You want to ‘tense’ your entire body as hard as you can. This gives you move power through energy transfer and trains your body as a unit resulting in balance and symmetry.
In this video, you can see my chest, shoulders and tricep muscles engaged! (You’ll also see how challenging diamond push ups can be)
Diamond Push Ups Vs. Regular Push Ups
The most obvious difference between regular and diamond push ups is hand position.
Hands are shoulder width apart with regular push ups and the hands are touching with Diamond push ups.
Diamond Push ups train your muscles differently than regular push ups.
Think of it this way:
Regular push ups widen your shoulders and elongate your chest muscles.
At the top of the regular push up, your chest muscles won’t be fully contracted. There will be chest muscle tension, but the contraction will not be as intense as with diamond push ups.
The primary job of the chest muscle is to move the elbows in, toward the sternum. The closer the elbows are to the middle plain of the sternum, the tighter the contraction.
Tighter contractions = more muscle building potential, increased muscle density, and overall improved shredded-ness.
Regular push ups primary target your chest with support from shoulders and triceps.
While diamond push ups target your triceps with support from your chest and shoulders. However, you’re getting greater engagement from the supporting muscles with diamond push ups compared to regular push ups.
Diamond Push Ups Benefits
Chest muscles can be stubborn and resist growth.
Diamond pushups are the best tool in your arsenal to build not only chiseled chest muscles but carve out a great looking upper body.
Ripped Chest
When it comes to getting a smooth, solid slab of muscle that stretches across your rib cage, diamond push ups are the tool to chisel your chest.
They are also insanely effective because they allow you to squeeze your chest muscles tight. Muscle contraction (the squeeze) is an important factor of muscle growth.
Build the Inner Chest
Compared to other push up variations and pressing motions, the diamond push up is the best for growing your middle and inner chest.
Since the focal point of force exerted is closer to the sternum (referring to your hands close together on the ground), the inner chest gets a much better workout with diamond push ups.
Placing your hands close together allows you to squeeze and contract your chest muscles fully to put more tension on your inner and middle chest.
Strong Shoulders
Diamond push ups work the majority of the front and side deltoid muscles.
You can see in the photo above that my shoulders are engaged during this exercise. The targeted tension builds big, round, defined shoulders.
Train Triceps
Triceps make a HUGE difference in your physique. Triceps give size and shape to your arms along with the appearance of strength.
Diamond Push Ups are a Home Workout
Diamond pushups can be done anywhere at anytime. Even at home right in your living room or as part of your travel workout.
No Weights Required
The world is your gym. You can spring out of bed and knock out 20 push ups first thing in the morning.
Then take the kids to the park and knock out 20 more.
You can do diamond push ups on your lunch break or in between classes.
Incorporating diamond push ups into your daily routine is a great way to get fit.
That’s the beauty of bodyweight exercises. You can do them anywhere and reap the benefits!
Allows for Targeted Muscle Building
Diamond push ups are also called close-grip, and triangle push ups. Just an FYI incase you see those names in the future.
Diamond Push ups can be quite challenging at first.
Are insanely difficult at first.
The change in hand position shifts the tension and creates a more intense and muscles-specific workout.
How to Perform Diamond Push ups
Now, let’s walk through the diamond push up form.
Diamond Push up Starting Position:
Place your index fingers and thumbs together and make a diamond shape between them.
Now, assume the ‘plank’ position with your legs and torso straight inline with each other.
Elevate yourself with straight arms. Just your palms, fingers and toes should be in contact with the ground.
Your hands should be in position in this way: your finger tips should be below your collar bone and your thumb should be about in line with your solar plexus.
Once you are balanced, lower yourself down by bending your elbows.
Keep your bodyweight evenly distributed across both hands. You want to avoid muscle imbalances, unnecessary tendon strain, or injury.
(feet can be close or wide, it doesn’t matter. Wide feet position may improve your balance)
In the bottom position, you can lightly touch you chest to the back of your hands, if you’re flexible enough, pause for a moment while keeping tension on the muscles, then push yourself back up by flexing your chest and arms.
When at the top of the motion, you want to imagine pinching a grape between your man cleavage. Seriously visualize this (try not to laugh) and it will make every rep better.
PRO TIP:
Do not relax your muscles in any part of your body!
If you lose tension in your muscles you will not get the benefits of the exercises. Be sure to keep your core, chest, back and legs flexed. You will automatically keep everything flexed by keeping good form!
Diamond Push Up Workout
A simple workout is to do 25 diamond pushups in as few sets as possible.
If you can’t yet do many diamond pushups don’t fret!
If you can do three push ups in a row. Fine. Do as many sets as it takes until you complete 25. Even if you can only do one at a time.
If you can’t do 1 or two in a row, then do diamond push ups from your knees. There’s no shame in building strength this way.
Eventually you’ll be strong enough to rep out 10,20,30,40 even 50+ push ups at will. It just takes practice. You gotta start somewhere. And the sooner you get started, the faster you’ll get where you want to be
When 25 total push ups becomes easy, increase the total amount per workout to 30 push ups, then 35, then 45, 50 + .
At one point I was doing 100 pushups a day in less than 4 sets. I saw great results in my arms, shoulders and chest after 30 days of push ups.
Diamond pushups are harder than regular pushups and will feel awkward at first.
You may notice that you favor one side over the other. Like your body is leaning either left or right. This will take time to correct.
Really concentrate on balance and evenly distributing your weight on both hands. You can achieve balance easier by engaging your core and being aware of your body position.
Sometimes it helps to do push ups in front of a mirror to analyze your set-up and form. Better yet, video tape yourself and watch it after finishing the set.
When I first started training with diamond push ups, I could do less than half the reps I could do with regular push ups.
Stick to it though and strength will come quickly!
How to Make Progress with Diamond Pushups
As diamond pushups get easier to do, you’ll want to mix things up in order to continue to see progress. Here are a few ways you can do that:
Slow and Controlled Reps
Keep the tension strong! Every muscle in your body should be flexed hard through out the entire set. Slow and controlled movement keep more tension the your muscles longer. this makes the workout more intense.
Full Range of Motion
Different angles work different muscle fibers. You want to train in full range of motion if you want complete chest development.
Pause at the Top of Each Rep
Pause at the top of each rep for a second or two and squeeze your chest muscles together as hard as you can.
Increase Workout Intensity
Make diamond pushups more challenging by putting your feet up on a stable table, chair or plyometric box.
(This tip is for the superhuman freaks out there.)
Diamond Push ups for Triceps
Move your hand position up. Your hands should be in front of your face and flare your elbows out to the sides when lowering yourself. touch your nose to your finger tips like you’re going to pick each nostril with your pointy finger.
Diamond push ups for Inner Chest
Move your hand position down as far as you can.
Keep your elbows tight to your sides through the range of motion, up and down.
This will keep tension on your inner chest muscles.
If you want to get fancy, use a kettle bell or medicine ball for added challenge.
This will engage your muscle more because you’ll need more stability while performing the exercises.
Final Thoughts on Diamond Pushups
Pushups, and especially diamond pushups should be part of every trainers workout routine.
They are simple but be sure you don’t over look them our you’ll miss out on all the benefits.
Diamond push ups and squats can fix skinny fat