If you've been doing CrossFit for the last few years or just recently started doing functional fitness, wall walks are a movement that's here to stay. However, it's relatively new on the scene.
And it's one of the more complex movements we've seen show up, and there's only a little coaching for it.
So that's why this article will cover a few of the mistakes I've seen myself and other athletes make as they try to do wall walks.
If you avoid these five mistakes, you're gonna get no rep, and you'll have a much better time when wall walks show up in the middle of the workout.
If you're trying to learn how to get your first successful wall walk, you may be trying to become more efficient at them then this article will be helpful for you.
Mistake 1: Moving The Feet Too Early
So let's start at the very beginning of the movement. This is where the mistakes start, and we're going to work our way through.
So the first wall walk mistake is people move their feet too early.
As you start your wall walk, you're on the ground, feet are on the wall, and your hands are on the line, and what I've seen with a lot of people is they think "oh, well, I have to get my feet off the ground before I start moving my hands."
So they'll do a push-up, and then they'll immediately start to move their feet.
That is a challenging position to be in. That is nearly impossible.
So rather than moving your feet too early, thinking, "Oh, I gotta get my feet off the ground, and then starting a wall walk from here," which is exhausting.
Instead, the first thing you need to do, what I've taught in a couple other articles about my progression, is get into a downward dog position, then when you're in a downward dog position, that's when we can start moving our feet up the wall.
The first and probably one of the most common mistakes is moving your feet too early.
Get into that downward dog position before moving your feet up the wall; it's going to put you in a much more accessible position.
That's your whole goal of the movement is to try to avoid really, really awkward positions. And there are a lot of chances for you to do that throughout a successful wall walk.
Mistake 2: Moving Your Hands Too Early
Common mistake number two, unfortunately, is moving your hands too early. So I just talked about your feet, so how do you move your hands too early?
Well, this is a common way that I've seen a lot of people get no rep, or a lot of people that should have gotten know no rep did this.
And that is, when they're on the ground and ready to start their wall walk; they could do the right thing and get into a downward dog position.
Well, as soon as they move, let's say, one foot, if they get their left foot off the ground, a lot of times people will take that opposite hand and move it away from the line.
Remember, both of your feet need to be off the ground before your hands can move off the line.
So be really, really cautious and pay special attention; if you have a good judge, if you're filming yourself, or if you're trying to uphold the standards, you really need to make sure that two feet are off the ground before you ever move your hands.
It's another really, really common mistake that a tonne of people make, and they might not even notice it.
Mistake 3: Taking Baby Steps
This is especially true for beginners of the wall walk because they take little teeny baby steps.
They take steps and spend a really long time up inverted against a wall.
Because their steps are so short.
So you've done everything right, you didn't move your feet too early. You didn't move your hands too early.
But then it looks something like this: where you're just barely moving, it takes 30 steps to get your hands to the wall.
That's exhausting. You can't do that. Once you are in a position to start walking. Your goal is to really take nice, big, steady steps.
I want you to maintain your balance and control.
But you shouldn't be taking baby steps; if you take baby steps during the wall walk, you're using twice as much energy.
The more steps you take, the more energy you burn. So rather than barely shuffling your hand, you need to get used to taking nice, big steps.
I want you to take only a few steps. So if you can take four, maybe five, steps deliberately, that's better than taking a bunch of mini-steps.
Mistake 4: Pausing At The Wall
That moves us on to mistake number four, and that's pausing at the wall.
I've mentioned this in a couple of our other articles but again, it goes along with the theme that the more time you spend inverted, the more energy you waste.
I often see athletes get all the way up to the wall line, then they hang out at the very top and have both hands on the line, just hanging out for a couple of seconds.
That pause, even though it seems slight, that pause wastes a tonne of energy, and it wastes time in a significantly compromised position.
So don't spend time with both hands on the line.
Instead, what I want you to do is that I want you to get your hands on the wall and tap and go; that's going to help you waste less time inverted, and it's going to help you get through your wall walks with fewer mistakes and less fatigue.
Mistake 5: Descending Too Slow Or Too Fast
The fifth and final tip I want to give you involves coming down the wall too slowly or letting your feet drop too soon.
It's a very nuanced approach.
Once we've touched both of our hands for the line, our only job is to get our hands back to the original starting position on that line before our feet touch the ground.
I often see people do those baby steps, and they very, very slowly control themselves back to the ground, which we've covered already; it fatigues you way too much.
Or they let themselves pike, their butt come up, and their feet touch before their hands hit the ground.
We've already talked about the baby steps; you know what that looks like when you slowly walk yourself back down.
We don't want that because of fatigue.
But another way that you can make a mistake on the way down is to let your feet drop too early.
Let's say I get up on the wall. I do my wall walk on here. And I let my feet touch; that's a no-rep. My hands have yet to get to the line.
So what you really need to focus on and spend extra attention doing is keeping pressure on your feet on the wall until your fingertips touch the line.
As soon as your fingertips are on that line, you can drop. As soon as I got my fingers to the line, I just let myself splat down to the ground.
To Summarize
So I hope that you liked this article. I covered five really common mistakes that people make during wall walks.
You'll become more efficient during wall walk workouts if you eliminate these mistakes.
If you want a free training guide, my team and I will give you a couple of drills and exercises to help you get better at wall walks so that you can become proficient.
If you want my Ultimate Guide to Wall Walks, here it is.
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