Why I Won’t Do “women’s Push-Ups”
It’s incredibly frustrating for a woman to consume fitness content online when most of it seems to be written for men. It’s equally frustrating to try a seemingly simple exercise like push-ups and feel like nothing is working. Some bloggers have proposed a solution to both problems: changing the hand position during push-ups, which supposedly better suits female anatomy. I don’t believe it.
You see, I’ve been around the fitness community (both male-dominated and otherwise) long enough to develop a healthy skepticism about advice and products aimed exclusively at women. There are huge differences in strengths, weaknesses, and body proportions from person to person, and many of the supposed fitness differences between men and women have nothing to do with gender. Rather, they can be explained by factors like body size, muscle mass, and training experience. In short, I have more in common with other people—men or women—who share my body proportions, my strength training experience, or my training goals than I do with the generalized “women’s community.”
With that in mind, I had my doubts about this particular push-up technique for women, but I decided to give it a try before passing judgment. Of course, you can experiment with different hand positions and see which one works best for you. But are there truly anatomical differences that require women to use different hand positions to perform push-ups at a high level?
Why are women advised to change hand positions when doing push-ups?
I see this life hack all over fitness social media. It suggests that women should rotate their arms slightly outward during push-ups (some say 45 degrees). This is usually explained in terms of “elbow angle”—an angle that tends to differ between men and women. (More on what this means below.)
For example, watch this video by Kayla Lee, who calls herself a female anatomy and biomechanics instructor. You’ll notice that it doesn’t clearly link anatomy to the push-up technique; she even points out that the carry angle isn’t a factor in the hand position we use for push-ups, and that her recommended hand position is more related to shoulder rotation. No gender-specific reason for shoulder rotation is given.
The video makes sweeping claims but doesn’t connect them logically. In the caption, Lee mentions the angle of the dumbbells, then says, “Now look at how push-ups are typically trained,” and gives two standard push-up instructions that have nothing to do with hand position. The caption then goes on to say that when we “force women to follow the same pattern,” we injure their bodies and reduce their motivation to exercise.
None of these points seemed to connect with me, and the more examples I found online explaining this technique, the less it made sense. Why does carrying angle affect shoulder or hand position? Why is carrying angle the most important factor when choosing hand position? Is carrying angle really that different between men and women? I needed to dig deeper.
What does “translation angle” actually mean?
All this online talk about the “appearance factor” has reminded me uncomfortably of the criteria that beauty enthusiasts use when studying each other’s faces. I suspect the emphasis on this term stems from a similar desire: the idea that there is something measurable that explains the differences between groups of people, and that this can provide a definitive answer to the question of why life is more difficult for you than for others.
But if you read anatomical articles about the carry angle, you’ll see that it’s not exactly a revelation. When you stand with your arms at your sides, palms facing forward, your forearm and upper arm don’t form a straight line; your forearm is slightly angulated away from your body, and this is called the carry angle. And on average, it’s slightly larger in women than in men. It’s called the carry angle because it was once thought to help women’s forearms avoid touching their thighs when carrying objects. This idea has proven false—it turns out that the reason our hands don’t touch our thighs when carrying groceries is because we intentionally keep our hands away from our bodies.
In fact, when discussing arm swing angle, Kayla Lee cites this article to support her assertions. And it was in this article that I learned the final fact: “It is the abduction of the arm at the shoulder joint, not the arm swing angle, that keeps the upper limbs from swinging away from the pelvis during gait.” This article also doesn’t claim that arm swing angle is determined by gender: “The arm swing angle is greater in short individuals compared to tall individuals… Arm swing angle is not a secondary sexual characteristic.”
Remember how I said that many of the supposed differences between men and women come down to factors like body size, not sex or gender? The hip angle appears to be very similar to the famous Q-angle of the femur: it differs on average between men and women, but is more dependent on height than gender. Here’s the conclusion from one of several papers that examined this issue: “The small difference in Q-angles between men and women may be explained by the fact that men are generally taller.”
Why You Don’t Really Need a Push-Up Hack “For Women”
Two other points make me even more dubious about this method. First, the carry angle only becomes noticeable when your hands are supinated (palms up), which is not the hand position used for push-ups. When you turn your hand palm down—as you do in push-ups—the carry angle decreases significantly and often disappears.
Another significant problem is that, even though women generally have a larger load-shifting angle, there is significant overlap between the load-shifting angles of men and women. Here’s a graph from a 2005 paper that measured the right and left arms of 1,275 people:
As you can see, the average weight transfer angle for women is slightly higher than for men, but this doesn’t mean that all men have low angles and all women have high angles. Rather, both men and women have a similar range of weight transfer angles, including both high and low ones. If the “standard” push-up recommendations applied only to the average man, many men and women would not meet them.
This raises the question of what constitutes “standard” push-up advice. I was taught how to do push-ups, and I advise others to do them this way: find a hand position that feels comfortable and strong. It’s different for everyone, and I think most trainers already know this.
What Women Really Need to Do to Get Better at Push-Ups
To distill this knowledge into concrete advice, I reached out to Diana Jordan, a physical therapist and weightlifting coach at the Pittsburgh Fitness Project . She confirmed that the carry angle is a real thing, and that the average carry angle varies between men and women. She then offered the following:
“There are many other possible anatomical variations that can influence the choice of a comfortable push-up position, such as chest and shoulder width, humerus-to-forearm ratio, pectoral and triceps strength, and shoulder mobility and stability. In my opinion, choosing a specific push-up position based on one typical variation found in both men and women (and note that the shoulder angle also partially overlaps between men and women, at about 10 degrees) seems absurd.”
You might find it easier to do push-ups with your hands slightly forward, or you might not! Social media is full of women trying this push-up hack and finding it doesn’t work—though sometimes it does. I’ve tried this hack, and there’s a simple reason I won’t use it for my own push-ups: it’s not particularly comfortable for me. I feel stronger with my fingers slightly forward.
In short, instead of looking for answers in gender-specific advice, we all need to find positions that suit us. Jordan recommends choosing positions or variations based on factors such as what feels most comfortable, what allows for a full range of motion, what provides greater stability, and, most importantly, what you personally enjoy.
The problem with fitness life hacks for women.
I constantly see gender-biased exercise advice like this on social media, and often the complexity Jordan was describing comes down to the assumption that one specific approach will work for every woman. As a trainer, I’ve personally explained to people how to find the right foot position for squats, for example—I’ve suggested they try a wider stance, a narrower stance, straight feet, or an angled foot position, and figure out what works best for them. Personally, a narrow stance with a slight foot angle works best for me, but there are people online who claim that women “should” squat with a wide stance and toes pointed out. This is simply not true.
There are so many different exercises and so many ways to perform them that each of us can find several options that suit us. Returning to push-ups, let’s not forget that there are many variations of hand positions: diamond push-ups, wide-grip push-ups, triceps push-ups, and plank push-ups. Focusing on one position means ignoring all the variety. Variety is beneficial!
When I see some influencer insisting I need to use “women’s” techniques, I feel like I’ve walked into a store full of clothes of all shapes, sizes, and styles, only to be immediately pulled aside and told that none of them suit me, and that I can only wear a certain, universal, feminine outfit. I feel this way even though I know that most strength training content is tailored to men’s needs, and that there’s less research on women than on men. However, this doesn’t mean we should reject everything we know about exercise, especially if we discard scientific knowledge and replace it with pseudoscience or simply illusions.
“It’s tough,” says Jordan, “because it’s very fashionable right now to criticize the lack of research with women and to criticize organizations that are designed for men (and I get it!)… [But] there’s a lot of research showing that women and men respond similarly to strength and aerobic training.”
If we truly want more women to benefit from strength training, the answer lies not in small changes to exercise technique, but in recognizing much larger social and societal barriers . Jordan says, “Messages like ‘you should only do push-ups this way’ or ‘you should rest during certain weeks of your menstrual cycle’ perpetuate the idea of female fragility and increase barriers to even [starting an exercise program].”