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Pike Push Ups: A lot of people doing body weight exercises, neglect training the backside of their biceps.
We all know that front double biceps pose is a standard in almost any competition but the back double bi has been neglected for too long!
One of my favorite exercises to achieve this, is called “pike push up” aka flag push up. It works the entire back side of your arms, and it helps to understand the importance shoulder strength in a good front double bicep pose.
Pike Push Up Target Muscles
The pike push up is a fantastic exercise to completely engage all muscles in the back side of your biceps.
This includes muscles like trapezius, infraspinatus, supraspinatus, teres major, teres minor, posterior deltoid, latissimus dorsi and lower fibers of the triceps.
Pike Push Ups Benefit
This exercise is great for those who like to do bodyweight exercises and it illustrates the importance of shoulder strength in the front double biceps pose.
It’s also a great way to stimulate growth of your arms, which you can’t achieve with standard push up as much.
How to do Pike Push Ups?
Start in a push up position with your feet on an elevated platform. Your hands should be wider than your shoulders.
Inhale and slowly bend your elbows to lower yourself down until the top of your head almost touches the floor, while contracting the trapezius muscle by flexing at the scapulae.
At this point you should look like a triangle from underneath with a wide base and a very narrow point towards the ceiling.
After a second pause, exhale and use your triceps to straighten your arms back towards starting position until you feel a nice contraction in both shoulders and deltoids.
Don’t go further than that as it would bring more workload on the front side of the arms rather than the back.
Sets & Repetitions
Aim to do around 3 sets of-20 reps depending on your strength level.
Please make sure you warm up properly before doing any exercises. There is a lot of good articles on this site covering the subject of warming up, read them and make use of them!
Pike Push Up Alternatives
Since this exercise is quite tough you could do the same movement pattern except place your feet on a bench.
Another alternative would be a kipping pike push up, where you swing your legs forward and backward as if doing a kipping pull up.
The benefit of this variation is that it’s less stressful for those with shoulder problems.
You can also vary the angle of your body by placing one foot on elevated platform and doing the exercise from there.
In my opinion this variation does not offer many benefits compared to standard pike pushups performed from the floor.