ShareLast night, I received an email from a cool cat who is rocking the 1000 Calorie Accelerators program – but needed a substitution for a DB push press.
No dramas. <= that’s Australian for “I’ve got you covered, champions”
By the way, if you ever need a specific exercise substitution, just email or Facebook message me. I’m here to help YOU.
And today, my buddy and legend Forest Vance will show you exactly how to train your shoulders, using bodyweight only.
Take it away Forest!
——-
Best Body Weight Shoulder Exercise?
The BEST Body Weight Only Shoulder Exercise
The Pike Press – Best Body Weight Exercise for Shoulders
by Forest Vance, author, Body Weight Strong 2.0
Today, I’m going to talk to you about how you can train your shoulders with body weight only.
It’s easy to train your legs with just your own body weight- you can do lunges, variations of squats like pistols, etc. It’s also fairly easy to train your chest with various forms of a push up or other pressing movements.
But when you think about training your shoulders with just body weight, you need to be doing some sort of overhead pressing movement like a handstand push up.
This is a great exercise, but you need to work up to it. So if you aren’t quite at the level of being able to do a handstand push up, a great alternative to train your shoulders is called a pike press.
Here’s a trick to make this exercise a lot more effective and a lot easier on your shoulders.
You need to have a piece of chalk and a floor that can be marked on or outside on the concrete. Start by getting into your normal push up position. Mark an “X” where each hand is, then go to the bottom of your push up position and mark and “X” where your head is.
You’ll wind up with a triangle on the floor, and this is the position that you want to be pressing from when you do your pike press. The pike press is a lot like a handstand push up in terms of the angle, but you have your feet on the floor. You can also elevate your feet up on a box if you want to make it a little bit tougher.
So to start, put your hands on the two X’s and walk your feet forward and hike your hips up. Your legs should be pretty straight but you can have a little bit of bend if you don’t have super flexible hamstrings.
Start in this position and then bring your head down towards the third X. Now press yourself up and back like you’re doing a shoulder press. Think about how when you are doing a shoulder press with a pair of dumbbells you should be pressing up and slightly back – you want to be doing the exact same movement in the pike press. As long as you stick with the proper angle and movement pattern, it’s a great exercise for working your shoulders.
There you have the pike press.
Now you have a new exercise you can use to work your shoulders using nothing but your own body weight.
If you want to learn more exercises and progressions along with variations of different exercises like one arm push ups, full handstand push ups, pistol squats, and other body weight only exercises, be sure you check out my full Body Weight Strong 2.0 program, here:
Thanks, train hard, and talk soon
- Forest
—–
It’s KV again… Thanks Forest, you rock! I’ve known Forest for nearly 2 years, and he was showing me this move in Cali last month when we caught up at Fitness Business Summit.
(Yah, he’s tall. And used to play pro NFL. Cool, right?!)
That’s it for now. Enjoy this new move and let me know how it goes for you.
Have an awesome day!
KV
