Pike Push Ups are Good and You Should Probably Do Them, Maybe

The pike push up is THE de-facto movement for building shoulders using bodyweight. But, for the longest time, I just didn’t get on with it. It felt awkward to perform and I never felt like I was getting the right stimulus for it.

This has changed and now I see the light: pike push ups are goated. Let me show you why – and how a variation of this one movement has done more for my calisthenics than anything else I’ve tried!

How to Perform the Pike Push Up

Essentially, a pike push up is like a more vertical push up. You’re going to fold your body at your waist, place your hands on the floor, and then start performing push ups heading as vertically down as you wish. The more vertical you are, the more you’ll be targeting the shoulders – although this can also be a great tool for training the upper pecs or even just making a regular push up more challenging.

One reason I used to find this awkward, was due to mobility limitations. You’ll find it’s difficult to get into this position with your feet flat on the ground if you have tight hamstrings. And you’ll find that it’s tricky to get your shoulders into position if your shoulder mobility is a limiting factor. But don’t worry too much about this: you actually don’t need to keep your feet flat on the floor. As this isn’t primarily a hamstring exercise, it’s perfectly fine to come up on your toes. And, in fact, that will help to shift more of your weight onto your hands!

Likewise, you should simply go as vertical with your arms overhead as you can – and try not to worry about it. The good news is that this exercise can actually improve your mobility while also working on your shoulders!

The key thing to focus on is the position of the arms. Specifically, you should be keeping your forearms vertical. This will give you more support and ensure you’re targeting the shoulders. As your head comes down at a slight incline, it should effective form a right angle triangle with your arms.

You also want to avoid flaring the elbows and you should try to protract your scapula as you push yourself up and down. It’s okay to round your back if it helps you to come at a more vertical angle. Try and keep your legs straight and together. Splay your fingers out to give yourself a good base of support.

Now lower yourself down and then push yourself back up. What you might find, is that your head gets in the way a little. You may want to consider getting that surgically removed. Sure, it’s useful for eating and talking and it’s a useful place to keep a hat. But if you want the optimal pike push up technique… it’s a worthy sacrifice.

If you’re not willing to do that though, make sure the head is coming forward past that hands – don’t tuck your chin to move it out the way. A useful cue I got from Minus The Gym is to look at your toes. Looking at the floor isn’t the end of the world but it can cause neck strain. When I remember, it’s always better to look at the toes.

As you come down, focus on the shoulders and try to transfer as much of your weight as possible onto the hands. Then, when you push back up, ensure that you depress the scapula as though trying to push the ground away from you. This important cue will really help with developing the handstand push up.

Why This is Excellent

So, what’s so good about this movement? Well, for starters, it’s one of the best movements for targeting the shoulders and upper pecs with bodyweight. That means you can train shoulders anywhere you are, no equipment required. It’s great for developing your strength-to-weight ratio, it’s great for building strength endurance, and it’s even pretty good for hypertrophy – targeting all three heads of the delts and even the upper chest. Since doing lots of pike push ups, my delts AND upper chest have improved, significantly.

While the pike push up targets the shoulders, it also teaches scapula control at the same time. It also builds mobility in the shoulders, as we have seen, and keeps the core engaged. During an overhead press it’s easy to find yourself looking up at the sky and arching the back – that can’t happen here. You can’t cheat the mobility and it’s very safe.

This lends itself perfectly to calisthenics skills such as the handstand and handstand push up. All the elements are there: taking your weight onto your hands, protracting through the scapula at the top of the movement, bracing the core. Even less-obvious movements like the

It’s also easy to progress: to make it easier, you just go more horizontal and/or place your hands on something raise – like a yoga block. To make it harder, conversely, you can simply increase the angle to make it steeper and steeper.

Another option is elevating your feet onto something higher such as a bench or a sofa. You can, alternatively, pike push up off the edge of something. This will allow you to experience a deeper range of motion. You can achieve something similar using push up stands.

You guys may recall I’ve occasionally done this using steps – though I do advise using the bottom step just in case you slip. Performing the pike push up on steps means you’ll have your feet elevated and you’ll be able to experience a fuller range of motion by going past the ground. This becomes a very big movement that really challenges the shoulders, pecs, and triceps.

Getting the Most From Pike Push Ups

There are two more ways you can tweak pike push ups to get even more value. The first is to turn this into a mobility exercise. You can do this by combining the push up with a hamstring stretch – either by keeping the heels on the floor, or by performing an elephant walk. Here, you keep one heel on the floor, but alternate as though you’re walking on the spot. You’ll feel this really stretching out the hamstrings as you do.

Something to keep in mind during these movements, is to ensure that you are truly stretching the hamstrings and not bending the lower back. To do that, you need to ensure you’re maintaining a neutral pelvis. It’s all too common to see people force themselves to reach the floor but compromise their biomechanics to do so. Not only is this an inferior stretch, it could lead to injury.

The other way to supercharge the pike push up is with a pike lift-off. I think I got this movement watching FitnessFAQs and I’ve not stopped doing it since.

Essentially, you lower yourself to the bottom of the pike push up and then raise your legs as though doing a handstand. Then you place them back down in a controlled fashion.

This is amazing for improving your handstand push up technique, as it teaches you to control yourself when at risk of under-balancing (that means falling towards the ground). It’s also an excellent isometric hold for the shoulders and chest, significantly increasing the challenge.

The emphasis on the front delts has also had a direct positive impact on my planche training.

But what I’ve not heard a lot of people mention, is that it’s also a glute challenge! You’ll be engaging the glutes to lift the legs and this is essentially the best way to perform a reverse hyper-extension using bodyweight. Sure, the strength curve is a little unusual. But it can engage the glutes and protect the back in the meantime.

Think the pike lift-off is to hard? Then don’t focus on lifting the legs just yet. Instead, focus on moving as much weight onto your hands as possible. When you’re able to, try letting your toes lift off the ground for just a second before returning them to the ground. This might just be your first step towards defying gravity!

So, yeah, the pike push up is amazing and it’s this variation that has done wonders for my physique and my calisthenics performance. Let me know what you think and bye for now!

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