Shoulders · On the floor

Pike hold

Hands and feet on the floor, hips as high as you can get them, and you walk your hands in toward your feet until your arms start to work. From the side it draws an upside-down V closing in. This is where the whole pike family starts, and the only one that needs neither a wall nor a box.

The goal isn't to touch your feet. Every centimetre you gain lifts the hips and pours weight into your hands, until your shoulders carry nearly all of it. Same lesson as at the wall, less impressive to look at, and you can do it in a hallway.

Family

Shoulders

Equipment

None

Type

Hold

Train this exercise in the app

How to do it

1. Hands and feet on the floor, hips high, back long.
2. Walk your hands in toward your feet in small steps, until the weight shifts forward.
3. Straight arms, ears between them, push the floor away.
4. Shift your shoulders over your hands: that is where the load arrives.

The two mistakes that make it useless

Rounding your back to gain ground. The hamstrings pull, the pelvis tips back, the back curls, and the hips drop instead of rising. Bend your knees. A pike with bent knees and a straight back loads the shoulders better than a pike with straight legs and a rounded back.

Sinking between your arms. The elbows give, the head drops, and the position turns into a passive hang where the joints carry instead of the muscles. Push the floor away with straight arms, until you feel the space between your ears and your shoulders.

Related exercises

Elevated pike holdFeet on a box, hands on the floor: the higher the support, the closer you are to a handstand.AlignmentHoldWall pike holdBody folded at a right angle, feet on the wall at hip height: the position where your shoulders start to carry.AlignmentHoldPike leg raisesSitting with your legs straight, you lift them off the floor: compression, the thing that prepares the press.CoreReps

All exercises: the catalog