It has been a crazy week at NPF! I didn’t get to the blog like I would have liked, but here we go.
This week’s exercise:
Push-up to Pike
Benefits– This is an awesome exercise for core stability. Everything from your scapula to your abs has to be engaged to perform pikes correctly. The time on your hands makes it an excellent upper body strength/endurance movement for all of your upper body pushing muscles.
Execution– In the video, we are demonstrating the push-up to pike with the power wheel. We also love this exercise using the TRX. Start in a perfect push-up position- legs straight, glutes tight, neutral lumbar and cervical spine. First perform a push-up while maintaining the posture mentioned above. At the top of the push-up simply “draw” your hips up until you can no longer maintain a neutral spine. ROM is dictated by your flexibility. The most common mistakes we see on this movement are sagging in the spine at the bottom of the pike and poor push-up form. It is imperative that you stop at the bottom of the pike and maintain a neutral spine. It’s harder than it looks!
Progressions– We use more of a regression from this exercise with a push-up to knee tuck. This movement is fairly advanced and the best way to increase the intensity is to increase the reps. 40 in a row is pretty good.
Especially good for– those with time constraints. While everything works your core, it’s easy to quantify this exercise as an upper body and core movement. Also, it’s fantastic in a fat burning circuit. We love combo moves for our fat loss circuits and push-up to pikes are perfect for this purpose.
Include them in your next circuit and I know you’ll love them too!
______________________________________________________________________
You can’t judge a book by it’s cover. These guys needed that advice before they went out on the town. See video
