Quest for a Back Walk Over

In the past, I've always limited myself in regards to what I can accomplish physically.  This started as a child and followed me along thru adulthood.  It wasn't until about a little over 4 years ago that I finally made a change.  And it didn't take long for me to realize what I really could be capable of.  Never would have thought in a million years that I would be able to do even one chin up...now I can do double digit dead hang pull up reps.  Didn't even know what a dragon flag is, now I'm trying to find ways to make them harder.  Well when I was younger and I would see someone do a back walk over, I wished I could do one and resigned myself that it would never happen.  These days I know it is absolutely a possibility if I put my mind to it and work hard.  So one of the many things I want to develop the capability of doing is back walk overs.

My Plan for Progression

Bridge Ups

Obviously need to be able to do these.  Currently I can, but I'm not very comfortable in that position plus my hands/feet are pretty far apart.  I need to get comfortable before I can start working on the next step in the progression.  In order to become comfortable, I'm going to initially target 5 sets.  First 3 sets will be 5 reps for 10 second holds.  Once I can do that, I'll increase it to 10 reps for 10 second holds.  The last 2 sets will be static holds...for as long as I can hold it.  I'll eventually be looking to be capable of doing 5 sets for 60-90s.  Also during this time period I will be working on increasing my back flexibility so that I can get my hands / feet closer together.  I will do that while practicing bridges, but I'll also do that when I'm doing sit ups on the GHR machine.  I'll basically try to hold and pull myself closer towards the machine each rep.  Using the GHR machine, I'll only be able to do that once a week...at most.  But the Bridge Ups, I want to target 2-3 times a week.  Once I've managed to get pretty comfortable doing these, I'll be onto the next step of the progression.




Bridge Wall Walks

This is basically where you position yourself with your back to the wall.  You then arch back and slowly walk your hands down the wall until your hands touch the floor and you are in a Bridge position.  After that, you walk your hands back up the wall.  With these, I would probably want to target 5 sets of 5 reps before I moved onto the next step of the progression.  While doing these, I can also start working on the kick over aspect of the movement


Elevated Kick Overs  

For these, I'll basically be doing a bridge, but with my feet elevated on some surface.  I can even use a wall at first if I need to walk my feet up in order to get my feet over.  I may also try these where instead of kicking over while my hands are locked out, I may start off kicking over into a back roll by rolling over my neck.  I'm fairly used to doing that thanks to Jiu Jitsu, but maybe I can leverage that as a way to progress with these as well.  Anyway, I'll try to keep the set/rep range to 5/5.  And work on reducing the elevation that my feet start at.  Once I get it to the point where I can do the kick over from the standard bridge up...all I need is the ability to fall into a bridge.


Elevated Bridge Falls

Excuse the terminology...I don't know if these are called something else, but this terminology makes sense to me.  With these, I'll be working at falling into a bridge from different heights.  Once I can get to the point where I can fall into a bridge where my hands are touching the floor, I should finally be capable of doing the Back Walk Over and from that point it will just be a case of working on improving the technique to the point where it looks easy.


I will be posting updates in regards to where I'm at with this progression.