Correct pushup hand placement is simple: hands flat on the floor just outside shoulder width, stacked under your mid-chest rather than under your shoulders or your face, with your fingers pointing forward or turned slightly out. That one setup keeps your forearms close to vertical at the bottom, keeps your wrists at a tolerable angle, and helps stop your elbows from flaring wide — one of the more common contributors to sore shoulders after pushups.
How wide should your hands be for pushups?
Just outside shoulder width — roughly a hand's width beyond each shoulder. Measured hand to hand, that usually lands a little wider than you'd guess and a lot narrower than the sprawled position most people default to. Ignore any precise ratio you see quoted for this; body proportions vary too much for one number to hold, and the forearm check below is more reliable anyway.
Width matters because it decides what your elbows do. Too wide and your upper arms get pushed out toward 90 degrees from your torso; too narrow and they pin to your ribs while your wrists absorb the difference. The just-outside-shoulder-width setup is the one that tends to let your elbows track back at roughly 45 degrees, which is the angle most coaches teach for exactly this reason — see elbows in or out for the full breakdown.
The 10-second width test
- Set up in a plank with your hands directly under your shoulders.
- Slide each hand out about one hand-width. That's your starting guess.
- Lower halfway and freeze. Look down at your forearms: they should be close to vertical, wrist stacked under elbow.
- If your forearms angle inward (elbows outside your wrists), you're too wide. Bring your hands in an inch or two.
- If your forearms angle outward (elbows inside your wrists, brushing your ribs), you're too narrow. Move out an inch or two.
The vertical-forearm check beats any fixed measurement, because arm length, shoulder breadth, and torso width all shift the number. Someone with long arms and narrow shoulders will end up in a visibly different position than someone built the opposite way, and both can be correct.
Should your hands be under your shoulders or under your chest?
Under your chest. Specifically, the heels of your hands should line up with your mid-chest — roughly nipple line — not with your shoulders, and definitely not up by your head. It's one of the most common setup errors, and it's the one that quietly makes pushups feel like a shoulder exercise.
Here's the logic. The closest comparison to a pushup is an upside-down bench press, and in a bench press the bar touches the mid-sternum, not the collarbone. If your hands sit up level with your shoulders, then at the bottom of the rep your upper arms get pushed forward and out, which crowds the front of the shoulder and shortens how far you can comfortably descend. Slide the hands down to mid-chest and the same descent puts your elbows behind your wrists, your shoulders in a more neutral position, and your chest in line to do the work.
The easiest way to nail it is to build the position from the floor rather than from a plank: lie face down, place your palms flat with your thumbs roughly in line with the middle of your chest and your hands just outside your shoulders, tuck your toes, then press up. Whatever position you press up out of is the position you'll come back down into.
One qualifier: the "under the chest" cue refers to where your hands sit relative to your torso, not to narrowing them. Hands under your chest and just outside shoulder width is the target. Hands under your chest and pulled together is a diamond pushup, which is a different exercise.
Which way should your fingers point during a pushup?
Straight forward, or turned out slightly — up to roughly 30 degrees. Both are correct; pick whichever lets your wrist sit comfortably. Many people find a slight outward turn easier on the shoulder, because it pairs naturally with the cue to "screw" your hands into the floor — an outward twisting pressure that externally rotates your shoulders and tends to pull your elbows into the 45-degree tuck without you having to think about your elbows at all.
What to avoid as a default is pointing your fingers inward, toward each other. It's a legitimate variation for people chasing a particular triceps or wrist-mobility stimulus, but it adds rotational stress at the wrist and elbow, and it's a poor place to be doing high-rep sets.
Whichever direction you choose, spread your fingers and grip the floor. Press through the whole hand — especially the base of the index finger and the heel of the palm — instead of letting your bodyweight collapse into the wrist crease. If your wrists complain anyway, the fix is usually the angle, not the direction: elevate your hands, make fists on a firm surface, or use handles or dumbbells so the wrist stays neutral. There's more on that in wrist pain during pushups. Stop the set if you feel sharp joint pain rather than muscle fatigue, and if you're working around an existing shoulder or wrist injury, or pain that keeps coming back, get it looked at by a clinician instead of hunting for a hand position that hides it.
Too wide vs too narrow: what each one actually costs
Both errors are usually accidental. Wide feels stable and lets you cut the range of motion, so it creeps in as you fatigue. Narrow feels strict, so people over-correct into it. Here's what each position does:
| Hand position | What it feels like | What it loads | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very wide (around double shoulder width) | Stable, shallow, easy-feeling reps | Elbows near 90 degrees of flare; more load through the front and top of the shoulder | Avoid as a default; commonly reported as a source of front-of-shoulder pain |
| Just outside shoulder width | Full depth available, chest and triceps both working | Elbows near 45 degrees, forearms vertical, load shared across chest, shoulders and triceps | The default for almost everyone |
| Shoulder width or slightly inside | Harder, longer range, triceps burn | More triceps demand; more wrist extension, since your bodyweight sits over a smaller base | Fine as a progression; add the volume gradually rather than switching overnight |
| Diamond (hands close together) | Much harder, wrists loaded | Heavy triceps emphasis, the most wrist extension of the four | A separate exercise, not a form fix |
The wide-position problem is worth understanding rather than just memorizing. When your arms flare out near 90 degrees under load, the shoulder is abducted and internally rotated at the same time — the position usually described as leaving the least room at the top of the joint. That explanation is a simplification and the underlying mechanics are still argued over, but the practical pattern is consistent enough to train around: high-rep sets in that position are the ones that tend to produce the classic pinch at the front or top of the shoulder (Yanai et al., 2006). The narrow-position problem is different: nothing is pinched, but your wrists are bent further back and holding a bigger share of your bodyweight, which is why people who switch abruptly to narrow pushups often get sore wrists before sore triceps.
Does hand placement change which muscles pushups work?
Yes, but it shifts emphasis rather than switching muscles. Every standard pushup works the pecs, front delts, triceps, and your whole trunk. Moving your hands changes the ratio: narrower hands lengthen the range of motion and increase triceps demand, wider hands shorten the range and put the pecs in a more stretched position. The research that exists generally points to smaller differences than people expect, with narrow positions still showing plenty of chest involvement — so a wide pushup isn't purely a chest exercise and a narrow one isn't purely a triceps exercise (Cogley et al., 2005).
What hand placement almost certainly cannot do is reshape a muscle. Bringing your hands together won't build an "inner chest" and spreading them won't build an "outer chest"; pec shape is largely down to genetics and where the muscle attaches. If you want the deeper comparison, diamond vs wide pushups covers what each variation is actually good for.
Practically: use the just-outside-shoulder-width setup as your bread-and-butter position, and treat narrow and wide as variations you rotate in deliberately — not as things that happen to you halfway through a hard set.
The pushup hand placement checklist (and the part a camera notices)
Run this before every set until it's automatic:
- Hands just outside shoulder width, heels of the hands level with your mid-chest.
- Fingers forward or slightly out, spread, gripping the floor.
- Screw your hands outward into the ground without moving them — your elbows should settle into a 45-degree tuck.
- Forearms vertical at the bottom, wrists stacked under elbows.
- Chest leads down, not your chin, so you hit consistent depth on every rep.
- Same marks every set — pick a floor tile, seam, or mat edge and reset to it.
That last one is where most people leak quality. Hand placement isn't a one-time decision; it drifts. Set three looks nothing like set one, and because you can't see yourself mid-rep, you never find out. It's also the hidden reason camera-based rep counting gets flaky: inconsistent hands mean an inconsistent body angle, and a rep that half-counts. Pushup RPG, the free iOS and Android app, only registers full-range reps, so a rep that half-counts is one you did not finish rather than one it missed. It will not police where your hands go — placement does not change whether a rep registers — but consistent hands make your own depth comparable session to session.
Get the setup right once and it stops being something you think about. Hands just outside your shoulders, under your chest, fingers forward. Then the only thing left to manage is how far you go down — and how low you should go is a much easier problem when your hands are already in the right place.
