Is a push-up basically a bench press with your own bodyweight?

The muscles doing the pushing are the same, and the load is very different, and there is one extra component in the push-up that the bench press does not have.

The load is not your bodyweight. In a standard push-up your feet carry a substantial share and your hands carry roughly two thirds of you, give or take depending on proportions and hand position. So a push-up is closer to a bench press with about 65% of your bodyweight than with all of it. For most people that is a light bench press.

A push-up also trains the trunk. You are holding a rigid plank while pressing, so the abdominals and the muscles around the hips are working isometrically the whole time. That is genuine work the bench press does not ask for — and it is also the reason a push-up often fails at the middle rather than at the arms.

The shoulder blades move differently. On a bench they are pinned against the bench; in a push-up they are free. That makes the push-up arguably a more natural movement and a less isolated one.

On whether variations close the gap: yes, quite well, and the ladder is worth knowing.

Feet elevated shifts more of your weight onto your hands. A modest elevation takes you from roughly two thirds of bodyweight towards three quarters and beyond; the steeper it gets, the more it becomes a shoulder press instead, which is a different exercise.

Weighted push-ups are the real answer for progression. A vest or a plate on the upper back lets you add load in small increments indefinitely, which is exactly what a barbell provides.

Ring or suspension push-ups add instability, which makes a light load feel much harder and trains the stabilisers heavily. Useful, though the limiting factor becomes control rather than strength.

With weight added, a push-up is a perfectly adequate substitute for a bench press for general strength and size. Where it cannot compete is at very heavy loads — a strong lifter presses well over their bodyweight, and hanging that much off your back is impractical.

Training without a bench for years, the honest summary is: the push-up is not a compromise until you are quite strong, and then it becomes one.

For the first year or two, weighted push-ups and their harder variations will take you as far as you want to go, and the trunk work is a genuine bonus rather than a consolation.

The point where it starts to matter is when you need real load in small controllable increments to keep progressing, because that is what a barbell is uniquely good at. Adding two and a half kilos to a bar is trivial; adding two and a half kilos to a vest that is already heavy and shifting around is not.

Until then, the equipment is not what is limiting you.

One measurement worth doing, since it turns this from an estimate into your own number: set up in a push-up position with your hands on a bathroom scale and read it.

That gives you the actual load your arms carry, for your body, at your hand position. Repeat with your feet on a chair and read it again. It takes two minutes and it makes the whole progression concrete rather than theoretical.