The pike push-up is one of the first bodyweight overhead pushing exercises you will learn. It is the bodyweight equivalent to the shoulder or military press, as you may know from the gym, and the most beginner-friendly progression of the handstand push-up.

Anatomy

The pike push-up, being an overhead push exercise, primarily focuses on developing your shoulders, upper chest, triceps, and serratus anterior. The pike push-up, like all handstand push-up progressions, requires flexion of the shoulders to bring the hands overhead. This requires shoulder mobility and lat flexibility. If your lats are tight, you will have to fight your body weight against gravity in combination with the resistance inside your own body created by the lack of mobility in your shoulders.

Due to the nature of the pike push-up, some hamstring mobility is needed as well, but the setup can be adjusted. By bending the knees, most pressure can be taken off the hamstrings. Lastly, the wrists have to bend when the hands are on the floor, which can cause discomfort for novice handstand athletes. Make sure to increase time under tension slowly over time and train on parallettes whenever possible.

Benefits & Why You Should Learn It

Besides building size through hypertrophy, you will also develop raw strength and a profound understanding of how to use your upper body pushing muscles in combination to extend your arms while stabilizing your body position. All strength developed in the pike push-up transfers directly to your handstand control. By getting stronger in your overhead bodyweight pushing progression, you will be able to rely less on balance and instead demand that your handstand stays up.

Getting better at pike push-ups is also an essential step in many other calisthenics progressions, such as the crow, the crane, the bent-arm press, and the planche. Training pike push-ups will help you build stronger scapula elevation and protraction.

On a technical level, the pike push-up is fairly simple. By following a few precise cues, you should be able to develop clean reps without running into any issues besides the initial lack of strength.

Technique and Form

Place your hands shoulder-width apart on the floor. In your starting position, your shoulders are directly above the center of your hands with your elbows fully locked. Look at the spot on the floor between your hands, elevate your scapula, and push your fingertips into the floor, taking control.

As you bend your arms, lean your shoulders forward. Keep your elbows directly above your wrists. If your elbows point backward, you are not leaning enough and therefore not loading your shoulders sufficiently. While your scapula should start elevated, you can allow your shoulders to move out of elevation freely as your elbows bend. The more you lean forward, the more your shoulders must slide into protraction. Do not allow your back to arch or your shoulder blades to stick out behind your back.

Avoid flaring your elbows during the pike push-up. Aim to keep your elbows no more than 45 degrees outward. Based on your particular scapula anatomy, keeping the elbows in might help prevent shoulder impingement. Additionally, all advanced upper body push progressions require narrow elbows, so we might as well prepare for this right away.

The way back to your starting position must follow the same path as when you moved into the pike push-up. Push your shoulders up slightly before then pushing up and back at the same time. Finish with your shoulders directly above the center of your hands.

Whenever we do anything, mistakes can and will happen. The more you train, the more mistakes you will discover and be forced to overcome.

Arched Back

The most common mistake I see in athletes starting with pike push-ups is an arched back. A lack of shoulder strength is usually the issue here. Focus on keeping your upper back rounded. Focus on protraction and regress while building additional strength.

Shoulder Lockout

It has become a big trend on the internet to push the shoulders toward the feet during the lockout position at the end of each rep. I am not sure if this is to take advantage of a quick hamstring stretch or to sneak a short break. Either way, it should be avoided. Finish with your shoulders directly above the hands in each rep to build healthy habits and keep tension in the shoulders constant.

Insufficient Lean / Head Between Hands

Lastly, not bringing the face far enough forward as the arms bend is also a problem I see quite frequently. A lack of strength is once again the main catalyst here. Place a yoga block or a similar obstacle between your hands that you are forced to clear with your head in each rep. Alternatively, you can also place blocks behind your hands, blocking the elbows from sticking backward. If you apply the second hack, just make sure you do not allow your elbows to flare out to avoid touching the obstacle.

To progress towards the pike push-up, use progressions and accessory exercises to build the needed strength. The training described in the following section should be a consistent part of your weekly routine.

Progressions

A great way to progress towards and beyond the pike push-up is by changing the body angle. Elevate your hands to move weight from the hands toward the feet to decrease intensity, or elevate the feet to bring additional weight into the hands for increased intensity.

You can also add partial or extended reps into your routine. Place yoga blocks or similar obstacles between your hands to cut the range to make the pike push-up easier, or elevate your hands and feet to increase the range for increased intensity.

Pike push-ups with a dead stop can be performed as partials or full-range reps. Additionally, the headstand in each rep allows you to cut the muscle’s stretch reflex, making it harder to push back up.

Weighted Exercises

Possibly the single most useful exercise to build initial strength for the pike push-up is the weighted overhead press. This exercise is simple to do correctly, as you can watch your form in the mirror as it happens, and you can scale resistance to the smallest detail. When training your overhead presses, try keeping your elbows in and consider looking overhead like you would in the pike push-up.

It is essential to mention here that transitioning to bodyweight exercises as early as possible is crucial to maintain specificity in training and to stimulate neuromuscular adaptations effectively.

Accessory Exercises

Additional accessory exercises that will contribute to your pike push-up progress include handstand-related exercises such as wall walks or L-handstand walks. Protraction training with exercises like plank push-ups and serratus push-ups will help you maintain proper alignment in the bottom position of your pike push-up. Lastly, isolating the triceps with bench dips, triceps extensions, or even just regular push-ups will help you reach your goal faster.

Training Volume/Schedule

Train for your pike push-up 2-3 times per week, allowing at least 48 hours of rest between sessions. Train your hardest pike push-up progression first, right after your injury prevention and specific warm-up, and aim for 10-20 hard-working sets per week.