Build Upper

Looking to build stronger arms without any equipment? The sphinx push-up is a body-weight exercise that hones in on your triceps and core muscles and can provide a challenge for even the most experienced exercisers.

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Read on to learn more about how to do a proper sphinx push-up, muscles worked, benefits, form tips and variations.

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Regular push-ups recruit your triceps in a secondary role to assist your chest and shoulder muscles. Sphinx push-ups reverse this and primarily target your triceps. This makes sphinx push-ups one of the best body-weight exercises for building bigger, stronger triceps.

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Strong triceps help keep your shoulders and elbows healthy. They're also essential if you want to increase your strength on other pressing movements like overhead shoulder presses or bench presses.

If you want more defined arms, it's important to train your triceps using exercises like sphinx push-ups. Many people primarily focus on their biceps and neglect the backs of their arms.

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You might be familiar with other push-up variations that are designed to target your triceps, like diamond push-ups or military push-ups. Although these exercises emphasize your triceps, they also require a high degree of shoulder mobility. This can make it difficult for people with a history of shoulder pain or injuries to perform them.

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Sphinx push-ups don't require the same degree of shoulder internal rotation as diamond push-ups, making them much more shoulder-friendly. Placing your hands farther out in front of your body than military push-ups also tends to feel better on cranky shoulders.

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All push-ups help you strengthen your core muscles, which control the position of your spine and pelvis during the exercise. The sphinx push-up is especially good at targeting these muscles because when your arms are farther out in front of your body, your core muscles have to work harder to prevent your low back from arching or your hips sagging to the ground.

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Sphinx push-ups don't require any equipment. This means you can do them no matter where you train. People who work out at home, on the road or outside can use sphinx push-ups to build strength and muscle without worrying about access to special equipment.

When you perform a regular push-up, you lead with your chest on the way down. But for a sphinx push-up, you should lead with your elbows to ensure your triceps stay in control. This means your chest won't actually touch the ground in between reps like it would with a standard push-up. Only your elbows and forearms should be on the ground.

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Keeping your arms in the right position ensures you effectively hit your triceps without putting too much stress on your shoulders.

This begins when you set up for the movement. Place your hands out in front of your head, directly in front of your shoulders. You don't want your hands to be too close together or too far apart.

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Throughout the movement, try to keep your elbows in line with your hands. Don't let your elbows flare out to the sides. If this is happening a lot, it's a sign that you need to strengthen your triceps more before progressing to sphinx push-ups.

It's important to keep your pelvis, back and shoulders in alignment while performing the sphinx push-up. You don't want a large arch in your lower back, and you don't want your hips to sag toward the floor. The longer body position of the sphinx push-up means your core muscles actually have to work harder than they do for regular push-ups.

Pointing an imaginary belt buckle toward your chin is a helpful cue to prompt core engagement. This helps tilt your pelvis backward, which turns on the right muscles and prevents you from arching your low back.

Performing standing sphinx push-ups against a wall takes most of the load off your core and triceps. It's a great way to get used to the movement and gradually increase the challenge of it. Play around with your body angle to find the right degree of difficulty — choose a more upright body angle to make the exercise easier and a steeper body angle to make it harder.

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How to Do Wall Push-Ups (and the 5 Best Variations) for a Stronger Upper Body

This exercise helps you build the triceps strength you'll need to eventually perform sphinx push-ups. You can perform these with your hands elevated on a Smith machine or barbell in a power rack at the gym, a sturdy ledge or table if you train at home or even on the back of a park bench outside.

You can reduce the difficulty of sphinx push-ups by performing them from your knees. This position is more challenging than using a wall, but it still reduces some of the load on your arms and core.

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The 24 Best Push-Up Variations for Every Fitness Level

Muscles are stronger when they are relaxing or lengthening (eccentric action) than when they are contracting (concentric action). You can take advantage of this by using negative reps that emphasize the eccentric action and reduce or remove the concentric action.

The easier way to do this with sphinx push-ups is to only lower yourself down to the ground, then place your legs on the floor and use one arm at a time to return to the starting position.

A harder variation is to lower yourself to the ground with legs extended, then drop to your knees and push yourself back up from the kneeling position with both arms.

The easiest way to make your sphinx push-ups harder to is to change your hand position. Moving your elbows back underneath your shoulders even more than you would in a traditional sphinx push-up can dramatically increase the stress on your triceps. This progression may not work for you if you have a history of elbow pain or injuries.

You can also make sphinx push-ups more challenging by adding external load, like wearing a weighted vest, for example. Get creative and use whatever you have available, as long as it doesn't feel uncomfortable. If you use an object like a weight plate or sandbag, make sure to position it on top of your upper back — not on your lower back.

Unless you're an advanced exerciser, it will likely take some time for you to work up to full sphinx push-ups.

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First, make sure you can confidently perform multiple sets of 10 body-weight push-ups from the floor. While you're working on this goal, you can also try to build triceps strength using wall sphinx push-ups and/or body-weight tricep extensions (above).

Next, start practicing knee and eccentric sphinx push-ups (above). Work your way up up to multiple sets of 8 to 10 reps of these exercises before attempting full sphinx push-ups.

Once you're able to do full sphinx push-ups, it makes sense to put the move earlier in your workout when your arms are fresh. You'll have a much harder time getting in your reps if your triceps are already tired from other exercises.

When you first start doing full sphinx push-ups, you'll likely only be able to do a few reps at a time. You can always do more volume by sprinkling short sets of 1 to 3 reps throughout the first part of your workout. With time and practice, you'll be able to do more reps in a row.

Once you can knock out sets of 8 to 10 sphinx push-ups without much trouble, you can move them toward the middle or end of your workouts to give your triceps an added challenge.

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