Classic Push-Up

The classic push-up is the foundational bodyweight chest exercise, and it needs no equipment at all. From a plank position you lower and raise your own bodyweight, which trains the chest, shoulders, and triceps together while your core works hard to keep your body rigid in a straight line. Because it's scalable, it fits every level: raise your hands onto a bench to make it easier while you build strength, or elevate your feet and slow the tempo to make it genuinely challenging for advanced lifters. It's the perfect chest movement for training at home, while travelling, or as a warm-up before heavier pressing, and it doubles as a core exercise thanks to the plank hold. Moving through a full range — chest close to the floor, arms locking out at the top — is what makes them effective, not rushing through half-reps. As a measure of relative upper-body strength and endurance the humble push-up is hard to beat, and it carries over directly to every other pressing movement you'll do in the gym.