Atlas pushups are pretty similar to traditional pushups the only difference is that there is a bit of an incline angle and a better stretch of your chest.

What that means is that instead of targeting the chest muscle as a whole, you are specifically targeting the upper chest. And at the same time you are applying more stress on the muscle – specifically with a better eccentric contraction.

How to:

Same directions as the traditional pushup as given above. The difference here is that you would want to have two elevated surfaces where you are going to rest your arms.

If you’re at the gym then you can easily find one of those steppers laying around and place both of them parallel to each other. Make sure that they are placed comfortably so that you can position your palms at chest level and at shoulder width.

If you’re doing this exercise at home you might want to place a pair of chairs that need to be placed parallel with the sitting portion point towards each other.

I know, not the best quality but it gives an idea what you’re striving to achieve.

Place your palms on the the chairs and lower yourself to the point where your elbows just barely pass the 90 degree angle. Your goal is to lower your chest to the point where it just passes your hands. This is what really stretches your chest muscle.

Unlike the way the dude from the video above shows you, you don’t want to dip too far as that will apply a lot of unnecessary stress on your shoulders.