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Bodyweight First HSPU - Excited Progress!!

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305pelusa

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I have been spending a lot of time with this movement, and I caught on video my first rep. I was really excited and wanted to share it with this community!



I think there's plenty to improve. I think I do a good job keeping a straight body and legs (hard to judge from the angle), but I should keep my legs a bit more together. It's still a bit iffy so I have to go extra slow still! At the bottom especially I almost went into a bent arm planche hehe.

Interestingly, I found that doing plenty of handstand holds and HSPUs with a wall carried over very well. Having a strong base with the wall variation is absolutely key, otherwise, pressing up would next to impossible!
 
Hey,

first of all, congratulations for this movement !

Can you explain your training to reach this goal ?

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
Hey thanks!
So I've been doing a lot of work on Handstand holds for a few months now. I worked solely stomach-to-wall, trying to really stretch upwards and get a straight body line (shrug shoulders and posterior pelvic tilt). Once I could get 60 seconds, I started slowly coming off the wall to work on freestanding handstands. As time went by, I started to get some longer holds (~20 seconds), so then I started to kick into them again (which you see above). I spent 10 minutes on Handstand every day, either before my workout, or on my off day.

As I did this, I supplemented my training with 3 sets of HSPUs with a wall, 4 times a week.

It took about 2 months to get a stable handstand and 3x5 reps on the HSPUs with a wall. And then I just started messing with the above everyday, and got my first one today!
 
Hey,

Thanks for your information. It sounds interesting. I would like to try it now. Besides, your results came quite fast.

The fact is that I am "afraid" of falling -going to far - during the "up phase"...

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
Hehe thanks for the support! There's another skill called the 90 degree push up, where you lower into a bent arm planche, then press back up. That's a real tough one to crack but HSPUs, I think should have a good bit of carry over honestly.

@pet' : That is definitely something that can happen. Falling backwards on a handstand is not an issue, but when you're deep into the Push up, it's much harder to bail! I try to make it a point to stay somewhat underbalanced (hence why my feet dipped a bit at the bottom ). But I have fallen over. You just have to tuck, twist, and allow some of your upper back to absorb the hit. It isn't too bad because you're pretty close to the ground.
 
Tried going for two in a row:


Here's something interesting I've found. I always thought the HSPU would require the strength of a wall HSPU, with some balance added (so for strength training, it does not hold much value as compared to the wall drill). However, after having worked on it for some time, I'm realizing that the HSPU demands a much HIGHER tension than the wall drill. You preserve the balance by tightening even more. It demands a higher contraction by virtue of not being doable otherwise!

I read some time ago in TNW that one way to increase tension in BW training is instability. I always thought that secondary to decreasing leverage, because it conjured images of push-ups on stability balls. However, I'm now starting to realize that Pavel was ahead of me all along! Higher instability -> Higher contraction -> Higher tension -> Higher strength gains.

Anyways, revelation over
 
Awesome !

Just out of interest, how many reps can you do against a wall where you don't have to expend the extra energy on balance/tension ?
 
My wall max is about 5 reps. But the time under tension between this set of 2 and a set of 5 on the wall is pretty similar surprisingly
 
I've just got back to the point where I can do 5 reps against a wall without parallettes (because I don't have them) . Today I tried to do them on kettlebells to add some depth to the exercise and I could only do 2 full reps. The extra depth was a real killer.

I think I've been having myself on doing them on the floor. Now I've got even more respect for what you've done in the vid.
 
Yeah parallettes add almost twice as much ROM. And in the hardest part too, so it's really impressive how much harder they can be :/
 
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