Morning Pushups: Benefits Of Doing Push-ups In The Morning

Do you want to do pushups in the morning but not sure if it’s safe or how to get started? Well, you can do pushups in the morning.

In this article, you will know about the benefits of doing pushups in the morning.

This post also covers the following topics in short – the best time for doing pushups in the morning (before or after breakfast?), how many pushups to do? and the difference between doing pushups before breakfast and after breakfast.

Update: If you want to know in detail about what’s the best time to do push-ups for students, with a full-time job or working from home then check this post.

When you do push up it engages many muscles in your body. Till date, push up is one of the most popular compound exercises you can do.

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Benefits Of Morning Push-ups

Pushups can be a great fit for your morning workout session. Because when you do pushups, it engages many muscles at once. It only takes 3 minutes to do 25-30 pushups. Doing pushup in the morning can help you to get your hand, chest & some other upper body muscles pumped before you leave for work or school.

If you are someone who has a busy schedule and managing time for a workout session gets difficult then you can do pushups in the morning plus add some other bodyweight exercises like squats, lunges, situps, burpees, plank etc. and there you have your 10-12 minutes quick morning workout session at home.

The overall impact of doing pushups remains the same no matter when you do it. But when you do it first thing in the morning then it’s most likely that you will do pushups more often. Doing pushups more often and maintaining the consistency will give you better results in terms of muscle building and toning.

Top 5 Physical Benefits Of Push-ups

Push up helps you to build upper body muscles: Benefits of doing compound exercises like pushup is – it works many muscles at once. When someone does push up it helps them to engage their chest, arms, and shoulders muscles. These are also primary muscle groups in the upper body. After doing 20-35 daily push-ups for 30 days you can see improvement in your biceps, triceps, and chest muscle size.

It’s a full-body workout: Push up is good for building upper body strength. But ultimately push up is a full-body workout. When you do pushups, your abs and lower body act as supporting muscle groups.

You can get a strong core by doing pushup: Pushup might not be the best exercise to build abs. But it’s a good exercise to build a strong core. Doing push-ups can help you to strengthen your waist, side of the waist or abdominal section.

Push up helps you to build overall body strength: As its a full-body workout, if you do push-ups daily then your overall body strength will improve. Have you ever wondered why military personnel do pushups in their training drills?

Good for burning calories and boosting metabolism: Doing pushups in the morning can help you to boost your metabolism rate and burn unused calories. Increasing your metabolism rate in the morning by doing exercises is a great way to help your body’s natural fat-burning process.

If you are trying to lower your body fat and gain some muscle mass then exercising before breakfast can be a good strategy. And pushups can be your go-to body-weight exercise to better shape your upper body.

How many Pushups to do in the Morning

If you are just starting to do pushups in the morning then you can do 10-15 pushups in one go. It’s also quite normal for many people to do 5-7 pushups when they start at first. But if you remain consistent and do pushups more often then soon you will be able to do 10-15 pushups.

For someone who has been doing pushups for 1-2 month, you can do 22 – 30 pushups in the morning. And in some good days, you can cross the 35+ mark.

Also, how many pushups you can do in the morning depends on your stamina and body strength. Doing pushups more often will help you gradually improve your body strength & stamina. Increasing your strength and doing pushups more often will naturally increase the number of pushups you can do. One thing to keep in mind while doing more pushups is – you need to skip some days so that your muscles can recover. I would recommend you to do pushups 4-5 days per week and take rest on the other days.

Doing 2-3 sets of pushups in one session can help you to build & tone your muscles faster.

If you already do push-ups, then you can do 25-35 push-ups in the first set, 15 push-ups in the second set and in the third set you can do 5-7 pushups or until failure.

For beginners, you can start by doing 7-10 push-ups in the first set, 4-6 push-ups in the second and third set. After 1-2 weeks, your body strength will improve if you do push-ups 4-5 days per week. From the second week – try to do 15 pushups instead of 10.

Then when you are able to do 15 pushups in one go – you can challenge yourself each week by trying to do 2-5 more pushups than you usually do.

If a person does 3 sets of push-ups 4-5 days per week, then within 40 days they can do 30-40 pushups.

It may vary in some cases but for most people, if they don’t skip their daily pushups they will reach there.

QUICK TIP FOR YOU TO DO MORE PUSHUPS

Before you do pushups in the morning you can do this to improve your performance or the number of pushups you can do in the morning.

Stretch & activate your muscles like this in the morning for 1-2 minutes before you do pushups. Go to push up position and slowly lower your body, let your chest rest on the floor for 10 seconds then go up and repeat it 3-4 times.

This will activate/warm-up all those muscles you need to do push-ups. If you do this before you do pushups then you will do more pushups than your normal days.

I have personally tried this several times and it works like a charm. But if you are just started to do pushups and if this 1-2 minute stretch makes your muscles a little bit tired then you can take 3 minutes rest before you start doing pushups until failure.

Should you do Pushups before breakfast or after breakfast?

Pushups before breakfast

Many people ask if they can do push-ups first thing in the morning.

Here I’ll answer if you can do push up before breakfast?

You can do push up before you eat your breakfast. For students and busy people, it’s better to complete their workout before breakfast. Because later in the day it can become difficult for them to manage time for exercise.

Also, when you get tired from work you might want to skip doing push-ups so in that case, you can do pushups before breakfast.

Pushups after breakfast

Some people wake up late in the morning. So there’s no option to do push up before breakfast. In this case, they can do push up after they eat their breakfast. But they need to wait for some time after eating.

After eating a normal breakfast you can do push-ups after 40 minutes to an hour.

If you don’t want to do push up in an empty stomach then you can eat some light food items 10-15 minutes before you do push-ups. You can have tea, coffee, cookies, bananas etc.

You might like to read this post where I explain in detail about finding the best time to do pushups in a day and how to find a pushup routine and some Q & A related to doing pushups.

Is there any major difference between doing pushups before breakfast and after breakfast?

There are no major differences between doing pushups before breakfast vs after breakfast. But in some cases doing push-ups before breakfast can be a better option. Here’s why:

One set of pushups can be done within 2-3 minutes. If you do more sets of pushups (let’s say 3) it can be completed within 10 minutes.

Now, most people can complete 3 sets of pushups before breakfast. Or if they do it after drinking tea/ coffee, that’s also fine.

But one disadvantage of doing push-ups after breakfast is – you have to wait for 40 minutes to one hour.

Now, in the morning for a lot of people, it might be difficult to wait 40 minutes every day to do push-ups. That’s why doing push-ups before breakfast is ideal.

What do you prefer? Push up before breakfast or after breakfast?

Let me know in the comment section.

If you are interested in pushups and bodyweight exercises then you might like to read some of my other posts as well. I have picked 3 for you. You can explore more posts on fitness here.