Understanding the hidden mechanics of push and pull strength

One thing many beginners struggle to understand when training with weights is why some exercises feel easier than others, even when the load is nearly the same. For example, you might be able to bench press 50kg with ease, but performing an inverted row with the same weight can feel twice as difficult. This difference shows up across many exercises and becomes clearer as you try different gym splits—the most common being push, pull and legs.

So if you’ve ever wondered why you can do 10 push-ups in a row but take weeks to conquer a single pull-up, it helps to understand why, and how you can bring your pushing and pulling strength closer together. In fact, one widely cited study had 180 “recreationally active” participants go through a couple of tests using two popular exercises done in three sets of 15 seconds with a 45-second rest period between each set.

“The push-up to modified pull-up ratio for males was 1.57:1, while females demonstrated a ratio of 2.72:1. The results suggest that, in this group of healthy, recreationally active subjects, the upper-body ‘pushing’ musculature is approximately 1.5–2.7 times stronger than the musculature involved in pulling,” notes the paper, Upper Body Push and Pull Strength Ratio in Recreationally Active Adults, published in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.

So that’s the most basic biomechanical explanation—it’s simply how the body is built. But other factors can also explain why you might be better at, or prefer, certain exercises over others. The first is the muscles recruited and their size. The chest and shoulders are huge movers of mass, and when you add the ability to lodge your feet into the ground as leverage to push something forward, then it’s clear why pushing is easier. Pulling involves the back and a lot of the posterior chain. The back is susceptible to injury and the body tries to protect the spine, affecting how much load you can put on it without the risk of getting hurt.

And yet, a lot of people feel that they can pull more than they can push. They can argue that the muscles incorporated in pulling are larger, but one must take their relative body position into account before concluding where their strength lies. “As you perform a horizontal pushing exercise, you gain a mechanical advantage over the load. In a horizontal pulling exercise, however, you get weaker as the weight increases because the lever arm gets longer,” notes a piece on Strength Zone Training titled Push to Pull Strength Ratio: Should You Pull Double What You Press?

Understanding anatomy also means recognising how the body compensates. Think about it, when you’re doing a lat pull-down or a cable row, your form halfway through the rep is perfect before the body uses a short burst of strength to pull the cable all the way down for full range of motion. The article mentioned above uses a sailing analogy to explain this: “At the bottom (start) of the horizontal pull (when your arms are extended) your large pulling muscles have a mechanical advantage over the load. So, they’re able to create a lot of power on the initial burst to initiate the pull, which can create momentum to carry the load through the top portion of the range where you’re weaker.”

Which brings us to whether you can actually get as strong at pulling as you are at pushing. You might come across advice to “double” your pulling sets. Don’t let that advice confuse you to double the weight; instead, try increasing the number of reps you perform at the same load during your pull workouts. Build up gradually—add a few reps, then move to 1.5x, and eventually, even double them before increasing the weight. You may still not reach full parity with your pushing strength, but this approach can help reduce imbalances. In my own case, I initially found I could lift more with my triceps than my biceps. I began ending every workout with a biceps exercise, and my pulling strength improved steadily over the next few months.

Overall, this push-pull strength difference isn’t something to worry about. It’s more useful to understand that there are other physiological patterns which determine the difference and that you can use them as an advantage. Calisthenics-focused website, calisteniapp.com, says that longer arms could lead to better pushing abilities, and a longer torso (compared to the legs) could mean better pulling abilities. “Factors like the length of your arms relative to your torso, the ratio of your torso to your legs, and the location of your center of gravity likely play a significant role,” says the piece titled Push vs. Pull in Calisthenics: Which Should You Prioritize?