If you're looking to build explosive upper body strength and power, then take note and get after these 5 explosive push-up variations I'm about to walk through.

After 17+ years as a functional strength coach, I can tell you that most people are leaving serious gains on the table when it comes to upper body power development. These five variations have been game-changers for many of my clients, and if you follow my Functional Pump workouts on the JTM Fit app, you know we build these into our programming very often.

In this blog post, we'll cover five explosive push-up variations that will help you develop explosive strength and power in your upper body. These exercises have been adapted from my latest YouTube video entitled: 5 EXPLOSIVE Push Ups that build explosive STRENGTH and POWER.

Why Explosive Push-Up Training Works

Before we jump into the variations, let's talk about why explosive training is so effective. When you train explosively, you're not just building strength — you're building power. Power is about the ability to generate force quickly, and that's what separates functional athletes from people who just look strong.

Power is essential for self defense, athletics, everyday functioning, and emergency situations. Put simply, it’s critical to train for power.

These explosive push-up variations target your fast-twitch muscle fibers, improve your rate of force development, and build the kind of upper body power that transfers to real-world activities. Whether you're an athlete looking to improve performance or someone who wants to build serious functional strength, these movements will take your training to the next level.

Equipment You'll Need

The beauty of these variations is that you don't need a gym full of equipment. Here's what you'll need:

• A sturdy kettlebell
• Weight plates (start low, work up)
• Exercise mat (recommended for wrist comfort)
• Workout bench or plyometric box (for modification)

The 5 Explosive Push-Up Variations

1. Explosive Plate Push-Ups

This push-up variation focuses on building upper body explosive strength and power. If you follow my functional pump workouts on the JTM fit app, you know we build these into our programming very often.

Setup and Technique:

• Set up plates about 18 inches apart
• Start in a strong push-up position, shoulders over wrists
• Lower with control, lightly touch your chest to the ground
• Explode up onto the plates, focusing on using your upper body strength, not your hips

Key Coaching Points: First things first, you always want to start really low and then work your way up. Don't just try to jump onto really high plates. Make sure you start very low, master the technique, and then start increasing that height if you choose to do so.

What we're going to focus on the most is a slow descent into the bottom of that push-up, lightly touch the chest, and explode up onto the plates fast and with power. In a strong push-up position, glutes are tight, abs are tucked, everything's locked in, shoulders over the wrist. From here, elbows tight to the body, lower with control, touch, explode up quick and with power to the plates.

Things You Want to Avoid: The biggest mistake I see is using your hips. You want to focus on the upper body, so try your best not to let your hips extend and use hip extension to drive you up onto the plates. Try to put all the focus onto the chest so it's just an upper body movement as opposed to using those hips to help you jump up onto the plates.

2. Explosive Push-Up to Single Arm Plank

This advanced variation works on coordination, explosiveness, core stability, and shoulder stability. This is a very advanced variation, so make sure that your explosive push-up game is pretty strong before attempting this one.

Setup and Technique:

• Start with a sturdy kettlebell in push-up position
• Lower your chest to the ground, then explode up into a single-arm plank with one hand on the kettlebell
• Keep your core tight and hips parallel to the floor
• Step down, reset, and repeat on the other side

Detailed Breakdown: We have a lot going on with this movement. We have the explosive push-up component, which is going to help build that explosive strength and power, but we also have that single arm plank or single arm stab which is going to help work coordination, more explosiveness, hip core stability, as well as shoulder stability.

Start off with the kettlebell. Make sure the kettlebell is nice and sturdy. We're going to be over the kettlebell in push-up position, core is tight, glutes are turned on, shoulders over the wrist.

We're going to lower our chest until it lightly touches, we're going to explode up quick to that single arm plank, shoulder over the wrist, core is braced tight, try and keep those hips parallel with the floor.

To be fast and explosive, think of it as a stab or coming up boom - almost punching the kettlebell.

3. Superman Push-Up

This advanced exercise builds explosive strength and power while focusing on proper form. Also a very advanced exercise, but it's going to build a lot of explosive strength and power.

Setup and Technique:

• Start in a strong push-up position, shoulders over wrists
• Lower down, extending your arms out as you go
• Be explosive, shooting your arms out and pulling them back under your body quickly
• Avoid using your hips and focus on keeping your core tight

Equipment Note: First things first, let's talk about the setup. I want you using a mat of some sort just to take a little bit of the stress off the wrist when you're performing this exercise.

Technique Focus: Super key that we're being explosive - shooting those arms out, pulling them back under the body as fast as possible. And also, just like the explosive plate push-up and all of our push-up variations, we do not want to use our hips.

If you're lacking the strength, it's going to be just natural for you to want to use hip extension - so that worming effect — and also lifting your butt up in the air to get the hands off the ground and get them back underneath. I want you to avoid that as much as possible. Do not do that. Keep the core tight, keep the glutes tight, keep all the focus on the upper body.

Progressions for the Superman Push-Up:

• Regular explosive push-up - Just getting as high up off the ground as possible, no hip extension. Remember, in all these progressions make sure you're building the strength to do these movements without using hip extension.
• Clap push-up - Lower down and hit that clap.
• Chest tap push-up - Instead of doing the clap, we need to come a little higher up so we start to get comfortable with really getting our hands up and off the ground and back underneath our body quickly.
• Partial range of motion Superman push-up - Start to extend the arms out but not all the way, so just minimal range of motion just to start getting comfortable with the movement and the speed that's required to get the hands back underneath the body. If you get to that fourth progression, slowly start inching those arms out a little bit further until you achieve full range of motion.

4. Blast Off Push-Ups

This variation is great for building upper body strength, power, and explosiveness, as well as eccentric loading. This is also one of my favorite variations - if you follow the functional pump and my training programs, we work this variation pretty often to build that upper body strength, power and explosiveness.

What Makes This Special: One of the cool things about this exercise is the eccentric loading portion. We're going to be blasting off into the push-up which puts even more force on the body and forces the body to absorb even more force, putting more tension on the chest, triceps and shoulders, as well as still working the explosive component coming back out of that push-up. This is all around a killer upper body power and strength bodyweight exercise.

Setup and Technique:

• Start in a bear plank position, shoulders over wrists and knees hovering off the ground
• Blast off into the push-up, lowering down with control
• Absorb the force, then explode out of the bottom of the push-up back to the starting position

Detailed Instructions: We start off in the bear plank position, so shoulders over the wrists, knees are going to be hovering off the floor about two to three inches off the floor, knees are going to be right under the hips, core is braced tight. From here we're going to blast off into the push-up, lower down with control, and then blast back. So blast off, lower down so you absorb that force going slowly to the bottom, and then exploding out of the bottom of the push-up back to that starting position.

5. Spider Knee to Explosive Push-Up

This exercise works on core strength and stability, as well as upper body explosiveness and power. I love this variation - we just did this variation last week in the functional pump.

Why This Exercise Works: This is a great exercise because we're building a lot of time under tension, we're also working core strength and stability and building that upper body explosiveness and power.

Setup and Technique:

• Start in a strong push-up position
• Lower down to about an inch or two from the floor
• Bring one knee out to the side towards your elbow, then back
• Explode up from the bottom, lowering back down and repeating with the other knee

Coaching Cues: Strong push-up position, we're going to lower down to about an inch or two from the floor, keep tension in the shoulders, triceps and chest. From here we're going to bring one knee out to the side towards that elbow, bring it back, and then explode up from the bottom, lowering right back down, we hit a spider knee on the other side.

We're really working that explosive power out of the bottom, really making sure you keep constant tension on the shoulders and chest. Really pausing in the bottom is going to create more time under tension to deliver more of a pump with this exercise, as well as force us to really build that power and strength out of the bottom.

Make sure you're working both sides with that spider knee on every single rep and remember - do not use your hips, no hip extension, focus and isolate that upper body.

Bonus: Explosive Dumbbell Push-Up to Renegade Row

I had to throw in a bonus for good measure. This dual-move dumbbell push-up variation combines explosive upper body power with serious core stability and back strength.

Setup and Technique:

• Start with your hands gripping dumbbell handles in push-up position
• Lower down with control, then explode up getting as much air as you can
• Land with your hands back on the dumbbells, absorbing the impact
• Press back up to the top position
• From here, perform a heavy dumbbell renegade row on each arm - right arm, then left arm
• That's one complete rep

Key Coaching Points: Make sure your dumbbells are heavy enough that they won't roll or shift when you land on them. You need that stability for the explosive component and especially for the renegade rows.

Keep your core locked in tight throughout the entire movement. The transition from explosive push-up to renegade row will challenge your stability like nothing else.

This movement hits everything from explosive power and core stability to upper body strength and back development. It's a complete upper body destroyer.

Only try this variation if you can already perform clean explosive push-ups and heavy renegade rows separately. This combines two advanced movements, so master each component first.

Programming These Explosive Push-Up Variations

Now that you know how to perform these movements, let's talk about how to program them effectively. Based on my 17+ years of coaching experience, here's how I recommend incorporating these into your training:

Frequency: 2-3 times per week maximum. These are high-intensity movements that require full recovery between sessions.

Sets and Reps: Start with 3-4 sets of 3-5 reps. Focus on quality over quantity. These aren't conditioning exercises - they're power and strength builders.

Placement in Workout: Always perform these at the beginning of your workout when you're fresh. Explosive training requires maximum effort and focus.

Progression: Master one variation before moving to the next. Don't rush the process. Building explosive power takes time and consistent practice. Before moving into explosive push-ups, be sure to master the standard plyometric pushup. As you progress, it will get easier to propel your hands higher and higher off the ground.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

After working with thousands of clients, I see the same mistakes over and over again. Here's what you need to avoid:

Using Hip Extension: This is the biggest mistake. Remember, we want to isolate the upper body. If you're using your hips to generate power, you're missing the point of the exercise.

Rushing the Progressions: Don't try to jump to the advanced variations before you're ready. Master the basics first.

Poor Landing Mechanics: When coming down from explosive movements, control the descent. Don't just crash down.

Inconsistent Hand Placement: Keep your hands in the same position throughout the movement. Shifting hand placement changes the exercise entirely.

Modifications for All Levels

No excuses. Even if you're more of a beginner, you can still start getting after these exercises and you can still start building that explosive strength and power.

If you're not quite at the level to perform these variations as they are (and they are pretty advanced), what you can do is modify all these variations by using an elevated surface - something that's sturdy that's going to hold your body weight and it's not going to shift around, like a workout bench or plyometric box.

The higher the surface is, the easier the exercise or variation is going to be. So pick a height off the ground that allows you to maintain good technique on all these variations.

Final Thoughts

These five explosive push-up variations will transform your upper body power if you commit to mastering them. Remember, this isn't about how many reps you can do - it's about the quality of each explosive movement.

If you want to take your functional training to the next level, these variations are essential. They're the same movements I use in my Functional Pump program, and they've helped thousands of people build the kind of upper body power that actually transfers to real life.

Give these explosive push-up variations a try and start building that unmatched strength and power in your upper body today!

Ready to take your training to the next level?

Unlock your strongest functional physique yet inside The JTM FIT App. Get your first 7 days FREE and access the complete Functional Pump program where these variations are programmed for maximum results.