Bridge Wall Walks Build Both Strength & Flexibility

[Coach Sommer]

Bridge wall walks build greater flexibility throughout your entire back as well as functional strength.

The exercise itself is fairly simple. Facing away from a wall, simply stand about 2 or 3 feet from the wall. Placing your arms overhead, lower back until your hands touch the wall. From here, lean on your hands and then walk your hands down the wall. Walk your feet out as necessary to avoid exceeding your current level of flexibility. When you reach the limit of your flexibility and strength, walk your hands back up the wall and your feet back in closer to the wall until you have returned to a standing position.

Eventually you will be able to walk your hands completely down to the ground. As your strength improves, use your hands less and less for support, until you are able to lower to the ground and back up without the assistance of the wall.

As a side note, working this exercise in conjunction with weighted pike stretching is a very beneficial combination.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Edward Smith]

coach how long do you think it will take for me, a 15 year old, relatively flexible and competent in a bridge to get to the point where i can stand up without any assistance?

[Kamali Downey]

this should a be a sticky no?

[Blairbob]

Ed, this will depend on your shoulder and back flexibility and their strength and how frequent you attempt these.

Standing up and bending back into a bridge or from a bridge is a lot of learning how to balance out going up and down by counterbalancing by leaning into the knees over the ankles and hips over the ankles.

[sghetti]

Is there an illustration of weighted pikes in the book?

[Blairbob]

I, think the weighted pike stretch is similar to a good morning barbell exercise. Pavel has a standing pike stretch where you keep your back stretched/arched and bend at the hips to load and stretch the hamstrings with arms outstretched.

Good mornings will work your core strength like stiff leg deadlifts or glute ham situps, etc

[sghetti]

I see I see. They're a good exercise to use with wall walks because of the stretching and contraction of the muscle? Is that correct?

[Theodore Bushnell]

Re: weighted pike stretch. I had questions about how to do this as well and found this description by the coach. I found it very helpful.

Postby Coach Sommer on Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:31 am

Increasing Hamstring Flexibility

One of the hamstring flexibility movements that I use with my athletes may be helpful to you. It is a weighted pike stretch. Simply stand on the end of a weight bench with a 25-45lb. plate and stretch down into a pike. Be vigilant about keeping the knees locked and try lean slightly forward during the pike while pressing the heels strongly into the bench. This forward lean will greatly intensify the stretch of the calves as well as the hamstrings. Hold this position for 30 seconds. Do two sets with approximately one minute rest inbetween.

As you get more flexible and are able to put hands flat on the floor in a standing pike, make the weighted pikes more difficult by standing in the middle of the bench and holding the weight underneath the bench. To get into this position, assume a squat position on the bench, grab your weight and then straighten your legs to the pike position.

Be patient and consistent in your stretching. The most common mistake in stretching is people working too hard too soon and expecting overnight results.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Mats Trane]

As a side note, working this exercise in conjunction with weighted pike stretching is a very beneficial combination.

In what way is pike stretching together with wallwalks a very benefical combination?

[Nick Van Bockxmeer]

another good exercise is to reverse the wall walk.

start in a bridge and walk the feet up to a handstand against the wall.

[lukie]

I'm not quite catching the difference between Static and Embedded. Any of you guys kind enough to help?

[Blairbob]

Do you have the book, Lukie? Static means still, basically. Embedded is described in the book. It's complicated and best for intermediate to advanced level trainees anyways.

[lukie]

Got the book and DVDs! Take another look.

[Joshua Naterman]

Embedded means that you enter into the static from another position. For example, you could go into a FL from an inverted hang, which is easy, or you could pull up into it from a dead hang, which is harder, and so on. The embedded concept gets your body used to actually moving from one position to another with various transitions, which builds a good bit of strength all on its own.

The book actually does a very good job of explaining this, it's near the end of the book.

[Alexis Solis]

Coach,

Should I do the bridge wall walks first, or the weighted pike stretching first, or the order doesn't matter? (obviously I'd do them at the end of my whole workout).

[Rasmus B]

Should you strive to keep your legs straight or is it ideal to flex in the knees the longer down the wall you go?

[Razz]

Done perfectly legs should be straight all the time, this will not be possible for most people in the beginning though.

[Alexander Svensson]

are you supposed to press down with your feet and squeeze your glutes as you would in a regular bridge stretch? and also should you do any special warm-up before these? i know i'm doing something wrong cuz i get a weird feeling through my entire back.

would be grateful for any tips.

[Alexis Solis]

are you supposed to press down with your feet and squeeze your glutes as you would in a regular bridge stretch? and also should you do any special warm-up before these? i know i'm doing something wrong cuz i get a weird feeling through my entire back.

would be grateful for any tips.

Yes, at the lowest part of the movement you should try to get to a bridge position, then reverse up the wall. You really should warm-up before doing ANY kind of exercise, ESPECIALLY those involving stretching.

I include these in my stretching routine, but before stretching I run for 15-30 minutes. If you're only going to do the Bridge Wall Walks, you should (in my opinion), AT LEAST, run for 10 minutes. (A lil' extra cardio is of no harm at all! :wink: )

And finally, what do you feel in your back? Be more specific. Is it cramping, or stretching pain? If it hurts too much, don't go lower than you feel comfortable (where the discomfort is quite bearable); and slowly, with time and practice, go lower until you get to the floor without that "wierd feeling" you describe.

Good luck!

[RatioFitness]

I'll add that it would be a good idea to do some easier bridge specific work before doing a full bridge.

Take a look at these scaled down versions of a full bridge.

hbnmcALXXUY

[Troy Rodriguez]

I was wondering...once you can lower to bridge under control and return to standing, Would that replace this drill?

[Larry Roseman]

Are bridge wall walks recommended if you don't good "backwards" shoulder flexiblity/strength?

Can do a decent head bridge, and can barely get my hands besides my head but can get no lift from them.

If someone lifts me up on them, I can't hold the position or my weight on them.

It's weird because I've got decent pull-up/dip (10+). My overhead dumbell press is fairly weak (6*35lbs) though.

I weigh 170, 6' tall, with fairly long torso and arms.

Would this or anything else help specifically?

[Aaron Griffin]

I am also interested in the answer to FutureIsNow. While I can do a floor bridge just fine, I can never really get he hands rotated enough so my elbows are not splayed out to the side. I imagine I just have a lesser variation of the inflexibility that FutureIsNow has

[Cole Dano]

It involves a pretty even proportion of open shoulders and thoracic mobility. Unfortunately it's not the kind of thing that one gets overnight or without some dedicated work. I was never a natural backbender, so i know by experience it is a lot of work. I did get to the point that i could touch me toes to my head, but once i stopped practicing regularly that went away quickly as well.

All that aside, shoulder mobility, it's the same basic work as with handstands and getting the shoulder up by the ears.

Thoracic mobility, one just start to try to find that part of your body and get it to move. One thing is just to lie on your back and with out moving your body try to move the part of your spine between the shoulder blades into your chest.

Arch body hold, try to keep your stomach flat on the floor and do the same thing as above with your spine try to get your chest to face straight forward not towards the wall. You can do this active/passively as well by putting your hands on the floor in front of you and using them to pull your chest out and up. You can also do this on stall bars standing up holding the bars and arching back.

More dramatic passive work involves laying over a chair or bench so it's right in the middle of your upper back and trying to get your head to the floor.

As for when to do the wall walks. First priority is getting a decent backbend IMHO. Try the elevated feet method as well it really helps give the feeling. You can also start doing baby wall walks, jut by learning to drive your hips forwards and lifting your arms stretch back from your chest until you touch the wall at any height. Wall down maybe just one or two steps, keeping focused on holing an open chest.

Start doing backbends with your hands at the wall and as they get better also walk up the wall any amount. In fact i think it's easier to learn to walk up the wall than down.

Hope something here helps, let me know.

[Blairbob]

I was wondering...once you can lower to bridge under control and return to standing, Would that replace this drill?

Ya mean a standing backbend to bridge and stand. Maybe. Sometimes those are actually easier than Bridge wall walks because they can be so much faster. There are some times where I am just not in the mood to bother with BWW and so would rather just backbend up and down typically rocking in a bridge at the bottom to loosen up the shoulders.

Future is Now, it sounds like your shoulders are somewhat tight if you can hardly get your hands in positions by your head with elbows up on the floor. Look into some front squat stretches that KStar does on MobilityWod. Very similar position.

For little kids, I start them off on baby bridge walks fairly early. As with BWW in general, you have to focus on straight arms arms because if their head is nearly touching the wall with bent arms, you are basically only working core strength but not shoulder flexibility. This is why doing them on a stall bar is great since you hold each bar and push your arm straighter easier and feel more comfortable going down the bars.

For someone with a decent bridge (like me :wink: ), I can just use these to warm up my bridging. However, if your hand bridge still sucks, it can be a useful to do the baby bridge wall walks; but you still need to do some elevated bridging.

For my WU for my kids, Bridge wall walks are in there pretty early. Generally some hanging first and perhaps some foam roller work on the thoracic. Eventually we get back to bridge kickovers and walkovers toward the end of their warmup.