Pike pushups.

First of all I'd just like to say: I love this exercise.  It took a bit to get used to the inversion, but they're seriously my favourite thing to train right now.

 

Something I've been wondering though: am I supposed to be pushing directly up and down?  If I try to focus on this, (which requires some movement deeper into the pike) I find this causes me to perform a calf raise at the same time as the pushup.  If focus on pushing entirely from my arms, I move towards my feet and the pike stays the same.

 

So the first way is clearly more complicated than the second, but I find it slightly easier.  Surely the point of pushing vertically is to up the intensity, so does it matter which way I do this?

If you are meaning at the version with feet on the floor. mmmi don't like it too much, is simply impossible to maintain the same pattern on descent and ascent movement. usually people perform a vertical descent while, on the other side, they break the line on the ascent movement.

Yeah, I hate these. I think it's much better to do them with your feet elevated so you can go up and down. Once you can do sets of 5 of those, you should be able to do at least 1 solid hespu with the wall.

Make sure your elbows are going back, otherwise you're wasting your time!

Cody said:

Yeah, I hate these. I think it's much better to do them with your feet elevated so you can go up and down. Once you can do sets of 5 of those, you should be able to do at least 1 solid hespu with the wall.

Make sure your elbows are going back, otherwise you're wasting your time!

 

You mean moving your head in front of your hands? So going to a tripod position? Or something else entirely? 

Jurre said:

You mean moving your head in front of your hands? So going to a tripod position? Or something else entirely? 

He's talking about keeping them tucked, rather than flared, just like in a regular pushup.

Bipocni said:

He's talking about keeping them tucked, rather than flared, just like in a regular pushup.

You're not supposed to flare out your elbows in regular push ups...

Cody said:

You're not supposed to flare out your elbows in regular push ups...

Yes.  That's what I said....

Bipocni said:

Yes.  That's what I said....

Ah, okay, I misunderstood. Have you tried them with feet elevated yet?

Cody said:

Ah, okay, I misunderstood. Have you tried them with feet elevated yet?

Yeah I played around with them today.  Felt a lot of lat activation, which was weird...

 

I only really felt comfortable doing around 3 reps a set though, so I don't think I have enough strength just yet to train them elevated regularly.

 

I also tried them with full ROM, which was just weird.  I didn't have enough of a pike, which just made them ugly and awkward.

 

I'm gonna have to play around with more advanced versions in order to get comfortable enough with them to train them properly, but I still feel the majority of my overhead pressing should come from regular pike pushups.  I'll focus on increasing the pike for now, rather than which direction I'm pushing in.

Well, for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I started doing elevated ones with those numbers and I was able to increase my numbers at a good rate.

I think you could move on and really focus on building your strength in those with high volume.