What muscles does the diamond cobra push-up work?

The press is chest and triceps, and the front of each shoulder holds the position while they work. Your abs hold you together and the muscles along your lower spine are held at the end of their range during the cobra rather than producing it, because in this version your arms create the arch.

Is the cobra part a back exercise?

Not in the version described here. When your arms straighten to lift your chest, the arch is something they impose rather than something your back muscles produce. A cobra done with the elbows bent, where the spinal muscles do the lifting, is a different exercise.

What is the difference between this and a Hindu push-up?

A Hindu push-up sweeps your body forward and down from a high hip position and travels back through the same arc, taking your shoulders overhead. This one stays in place: the hips go down into the arch and come back up without your hands moving.

Should my hips touch the floor?

The steps here say to lower them to the ground, which is what makes the cobra half a cobra rather than a push-up with an arch in it. What matters more is the order: chest to your hands first, hips second.

Is this better than a normal diamond push-up?

For training the press, no. The plain version keeps your trunk still and your arms loaded for the whole set. This one deliberately breaks the position at the bottom, which is a reasonable thing to want and is not the same thing as more pressing work.

Do I need my hands to touch?

No. Leaving a hand-width between your thumbs keeps the hands narrow with less asked of the wrist, and the arch half of the rep is unaffected either way.

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Bodyweight · intermediate · chest

Diamond cobra push up

Also called Cobra push-up, Diamond push-up with cobra, Triangle cobra push-up.

The short answer

The diamond cobra push-up is two exercises inside one rep: a diamond push-up down to the floor, then the hips lowered and the arms straightened into a cobra arch, then back into the bottom of the push-up and press up. Your chest and triceps do the pressing half. The cobra half is not a second muscle group being trained. With your arms straightening to lift your chest, your arms are what put your back into that arch, and your lower back is sitting at the end of its range rather than producing anything.

How to do it

Step oneStart in a push-up position with your hands forming a diamond shape under your chest.
Step twoLower your chest toward your hands, keeping your elbows close to your sides.
Step threeAt the bottom, lower your hips to the ground and extend your arms, arching your back into a cobra stretch.
Step fourReturn your hips upward and bend your elbows to lower back into the bottom of the push-up.
Step fivePush back up to the starting position.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

Your hips reach the floor before your chest reaches your hands.

WhyThe two halves have run together, so you arrive at the cobra without having completed the push-up. The bottom of the press, which is the part the diamond position exists for, gets skipped.

FixTouch your chest to your hands first and only then let the hips down. Two separate arrivals, in the order the catalog steps give them.

You press back up out of the arch instead of out of the bottom of the push-up.

WhyThe return half has been cut. The rep goes down, arches, and comes straight back up, so the press starts from a position your chest and triceps were not in.

FixBring the hips back up and re-bend your elbows into the bottom of the push-up before you press. It is a step people drop because it is the least satisfying part of the rep.

The arch gets deeper with every rep as the set goes on.

WhyThe push-up half is tiring and the cobra half is not, so the arch is where the rep starts to sprawl. We are not making a safety claim about that. It means the position is no longer the one you set out to do.

FixPick the arch you are going to use on the first rep and hold every later rep to it. When the press gets harder and the arch gets bigger, the set is telling you it is over.

Your wrists complain before your arms do.

WhyThe narrow hand position rotates your forearms toward each other under load, and wrists differ a great deal in how much of that they will take.

FixUnstack your hands so your thumbs are no longer touching, keeping them under your chest, and the diamond push-up entry covers how far apart is far enough.

Diamond cobra push-up or plain diamond push-up

A diamond push-up is a press with a trunk that does not move. This adds a spinal movement at the bottom of every rep, and that is the whole difference.

It matters more than it sounds. In a plain diamond, your midsection holds a line for the entire set, and every bit of what happens is your arms moving your body away from the floor. Here the line is deliberately broken at the bottom, your hips touch down, and the press has to be rebuilt from there.

If the reason you came was the press, the plain version is the one that keeps your trunk still and the load on your arms for longer. The evidence about what narrow hands do to the balance between chest and triceps sits on that page and applies to the pressing half of this one.

If you came for the arch, it is worth knowing what that arch is doing, which is the section below.

Diamond cobra push-up or Hindu push-up

They belong to the same family and get searched interchangeably, which is worth clearing up since the movements are different.

A Hindu push-up starts with the hips high and sweeps your chest forward and down close to the floor before the hips come back up, and it gets grouped with the dive bomber, though the two are usually told apart by how the lifter returns. It moves you through space.

This one stays where it is. The hands do not travel, the hips go down and come back, and the arch happens on the spot. It is closer to a push-up with something added than to a flowing movement.

The practical difference is the shoulders. The Hindu version takes your shoulders overhead on the way in and out; this one does not, so if overhead positions are the awkward part for you, this is the one that avoids them.

What the cobra half is, and what it is not

There are two ways to arrive at the position the steps describe, and they are different exercises wearing the same shape.

In one, the elbows stay bent and carry very little, and the muscles along your spine produce the arch. Those muscles are working. In the other, the arms straighten and lift your chest away from a pelvis resting on the floor, so the arms produce the arch and your back arrives at the end of its range because they put it there. The steps here describe the second one: hips down, arms extended.

That is why the muscles alongside your lower spine belong with the parts of you being held or moved rather than with the part doing the job. They are being taken somewhere, not driving anything. It is an unusual split and it is the reason this page exists.

The one measurement anyone appears to have taken sits alongside this. In a study of 8 trained yoga practitioners moving through a 12 pose sequence, the cobra was where the large muscle down the side of the back read highest, at 37 percent of a maximal contraction, which is an arm and shoulder muscle. The muscles either side of the spine peaked somewhere else entirely, in a standing forward fold. They were still working in the cobra, which the paper lists among the muscles holding that position, but it was not where they worked hardest. The same paper noted that every muscle they recorded was more active moving between poses than holding them, which is worth knowing about an exercise that is almost entirely transitions. That cobra was performed with bent elbows, so it does not map straight onto the straight arm version described here, and 8 people is a small study.

What we are not going to tell you is whether repeatedly taking your back to the end of its extension under part of your bodyweight is good for you or bad for you. Both are asserted confidently across the internet and neither has been measured for this movement or its close relatives. If something hurts and keeps hurting, that is a question for a physiotherapist.

What it is for

The diamond cobra push up combines a close-grip diamond push-up with a cobra extension at the bottom of each rep. It targets the pectorals and triceps during the pressing phase while stretching the lower back and core through the cobra movement.

Questions people ask

What muscles does the diamond cobra push-up work?: The press is chest and triceps, and the front of each shoulder holds the position while they work. Your abs hold you together and the muscles along your lower spine are held at the end of their range during the cobra rather than producing it, because in this version your arms create the arch.
Is the cobra part a back exercise?: Not in the version described here. When your arms straighten to lift your chest, the arch is something they impose rather than something your back muscles produce. A cobra done with the elbows bent, where the spinal muscles do the lifting, is a different exercise.
What is the difference between this and a Hindu push-up?: A Hindu push-up sweeps your body forward and down from a high hip position and travels back through the same arc, taking your shoulders overhead. This one stays in place: the hips go down into the arch and come back up without your hands moving.
Should my hips touch the floor?: The steps here say to lower them to the ground, which is what makes the cobra half a cobra rather than a push-up with an arch in it. What matters more is the order: chest to your hands first, hips second.
Is this better than a normal diamond push-up?: For training the press, no. The plain version keeps your trunk still and your arms loaded for the whole set. This one deliberately breaks the position at the bottom, which is a reasonable thing to want and is not the same thing as more pressing work.
Do I need my hands to touch?: No. Leaving a hand-width between your thumbs keeps the hands narrow with less asked of the wrist, and the arch half of the rep is unaffected either way.