Arm strength for Bridges#815

I can’t pull myself up while doing bridges. I think I’m lacking arm strength. Any way to increase that?

Heya Jo :)

You’ll be automatically improving your arm strength as you progress with your pushups and pullups, but if you also wanna move on from the glute bridges to the straight bridges but they’re just a little bit too hard, you can make them a bit easier by elevating your hands onto something and doing it from there

That way, the same way as we progress with pushups, we get to place a bit more of the weight on our legs and off our arms, and that helps us build up to it :)

If however you feel that’s still too difficult or you just can’t make it work with your setup - you can simply give it time while you progress on pullups/pushups and can focus on getting stronger at glute bridges by working towards single leg glute bridges!

To gradually progress to those you’d start with normal bridges on the way up, holding the top position with just one leg
Then going up with both but going down with one
And then eventually doing the full reps with just one leg!

I hope that helps, but let me know if it doesn’t!

I can do straight bridged just fine, and inclined bridges too, up to a level. But when I try head bridges/full bridges, I can’t pull myself up.
So, the best way to build up arm strength fast are pushups and pullups?

Ah my bad Jo, you did write bridges you’re right haha!

Then I’d recommend to either stick with incline bridges for a bit longer; increasing reps / choosing an elevation that’s slightly lower - or to work with head bridge isometrics; just pushing up as much as you can but then holding the position for time (even if you can’t raise yourself up at all, if you’re pressing into the floor, it’ll still help)

If you end up feeling stuck with this nevertheless you could try to build up to the overhead pressing strength with pike pushups - regular pushups do still help, but they don’t challenge your shoulders quite as much

This here teaches you good form and some possible regressions; but I’d see it as plan B :) https://nick-e.com/pikepushup/

My apologies again for misunderstanding

It’s alright. Thanks a lot.
One thing- is it shoulder strength or arm strength that I should aim for, for pulling myself up during bridges?

a bit of both for sure, but your delts (shoulders) and traps should be the main components, followed by your triceps :)

which will all be worked via the bridge progressions past glute/straight bridges

So it’s better to do do the bridge progressions itself, and also pike pushups, right?
Thank you.

pike pushups could be used as a complementary exercise to the bridge progressions yes ; they are a similar movement, just slightly different in terms of shoulder position

So yes doing both should give you the best/fastest progress, but you’ll also have to recover from more - and in case that’s an issue, I’d stick to only doing the bridge progressions as they’re the most specific to where you wanna go

Thanks a lot.