Pike Pushup Tutorial

Pike Pushups

The pike pushup is a staple exercise for developing bent-arm pushing strength specific to handstand pushups. In this tutorial I draw from my 5 years of experience working with freestanding handstand pushups as a primary pushing strength exercise, to help you get the most possible transfer from this exercise to freestanding handstand pushups.

Of course, this is a great exercise for developing vertical pushing strength generally even if you don’t aspire to do handstand pushups. But the instructions in this video are intended to not only help you build strength with this movement, but also give you a solid strength foundation specific for the handstand pushup skill (or multiple reps thereof) if you choose to go that direction in the future.

I also made this with the intention of offering you something you can work on at home with very minimal equipment. This will be a bigger focus here on the site, as many of you are still restricted from attending gyms. I want to use my experience training exclusively at home for more than three years to provide you all with quality education for great strength work with very basic and inexpensive equipment.

As I mention in the video you can also use the variations here to help work on weak links in the strength curve. Using props in the way I demonstrate can help you target specific points in your ROM that feel weak or are causing sticking points. This is useful even for those who can already do handstand pushups because, well, even the strongest chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Here is a summary of how to use the progressions from easiest for hardest, for your reference:

  1. Isometric pike hold—feet and hands on the floor

  2. Isometric pike hold, feet elevated. Gradually increase feet height until 20-30 sec. feels okay.

  3. Pike scapula shrugs

  4. Feet elevated pike scapula shrugs

  5. Reduced range of motion (book stack) pike pushup—feet and hands on floor

  6. Gradually increase ROM for pike pushup—feet and hands on floor—until nose touches floor.

  7. Feet elevated pike pushup with reduced ROM (book stack), increase ROM until nose comes to hand level.

  8. Hands and feet elevated pike pushup. Now the nose is dropping below the level of the hands.

  9. Full ROM pike pushup

I’ll soon be releasing the “band resisted overhead stick press” video I mentioned in the tutorial. I’ll follow that up with a video on using resistance bands for lateral raises.

Then I’ll release some basic template workouts using only exercises in these videos and others already released in this membership library.

Thanks to you all for your support, and I hope you find this useful. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Devin