Most people aren’t aware that you don’t need fancy gym equipment to build muscle — in fact, simple bodyweight exercises like pushups can be effectively used to build muscle up.

It’s easy to underestimate how effective pushups can be at getting results. Pushups might appear plain and boring on the surface: up down, up down, up down — that’s it. And that’s true to a certain extent. But many people outside of the fitness circles are only familiar with the standard pushups that they were taught in their high school phys ed classes.

There are many kinds of pushups that you can use to focus on different muscle groups, but we’re going to concentrate on five types in this article. These are not necessarily the best five for all people, but they will make you aware of the variety available in simple functional exercises.

Military pushups: military pushups are a very close cousin to standard pushups, except that your goal with military pushups is to isolate your triceps. You do this by tucking your elbows to your sides and moving your hands directly underneath the outer part of your chest.

Fist pushups: Sometimes referred to as “knuckle” pushups, require the use of your fists, instead of the palms of your hands, to bear your body weight during the pushup. Fist pushups are beneficial because they target different areas of your body than traditional pushups, and may actually increase the effectiveness of your workout.

Divebombers: also referred to as “yogi pushups,” you start the pushup in the yoga down dog position, and then in one motion, graze your nose, chin, chest, abdomen to the ground, lifting your chest in the air as you straighten your arms. The motion is similar to trying to squeeze underneath a fence while keeping your feet rooted. These pushups isolate your shoulders and will also increase the range of motion in your shoulders.

Decline pushups: Instead of placing your feet on the floor, or using your knees, place your feet on a platform so that your head is lower than your feet. You can use a chair, a stepstool, or a bench — pretty much anything that will allow you to raise your feet up so that they are higher than your head. These types of pushups work your upper chest muscles.

Deep pushups: If you are working out at home, you can perform raised pushups with the help of three sturdy chairs. By placing each of your hands on an opposite chair, and your feet on the third chair, you can increase the depth of your pushup and thereby increase the effectiveness of your workout routine. A similar, but less intense, movement can be performed with pushup stands. The “Perfect Pushup” bars work wonders.

Here is a more detailed listing of styles you can consider to achieve muscle weight gain: fly, wide, military, diamond, fist, yogi, incline, decline, deep, stacked, inchworm, and prison cell pushups.

Tips to increase the effectiveness of your pushup workouts: remember to add some weight once the pushups begin to get easy. You don’t want to push out 50 easy repetitions. Rather, struggle with 20 or 30. Also be sure to add variety by varying your hand position for each of the above types of pushups.

Push ups are a great way to strengthen your upper body and exercise, build muscle at the same time. If you keep it interesting by mixing up your hand positions and trying a few different styles of pushups you can increase the effectiveness of your at-home exercising and relieve the boredom!