HS PE8 Wall run

I’m going to start PE8 soon, but I can’t seem to lift a finger while doing a wall HS. So I kinda hooked my toes on the stall bar to take off some weight, and gain some confidence in lifting hands. Can I keep doing it until one day I’m comfortable enough to try it with a wall, or is it not a good idea?

HI Jin, you can but You have to hold a low number of reps and not too high. this is necessary in order to avoid bad habits.

When I did this on the stall bars, and started to feel kind of confident, and went to the wall, I pretty much started from zero again… maybe just don't lift the hand on the wall, just transfer the weight and feel the smoothness of the transfer. That was the biggest thing for me. On the stall bars, you don't really need to transfer, because you are hooked. 

10 hours ago, Suzanna McGee said:

When I did this on the stall bars, and started to feel kind of confident, and went to the wall, I pretty much started from zero again… maybe just don't lift the hand on the wall, just transfer the weight and feel the smoothness of the transfer. That was the biggest thing for me. On the stall bars, you don't really need to transfer, because you are hooked. 

 

Thanks @Suzanna McGee! I'll try to do it with the wall then. IT's super scary!

3 hours ago, Jin Liu said:

Thanks @Suzanna McGee! I'll try to do it with the wall then. IT's super scary!

Yup, I am feeling you. It was for me. And I still think I have a strong respect for this each time before I do it

@Jin Liu try to shoot your hips out more before you lift your hand for extra counter-balance. Try with and without hooking.

My wall run needs help, lol. I can’t control my body shift well at all. I don’t like that I kinda have to windshield wiper my feet to initiate the directional change. I can’t keep the feet together, and I’m pretty sure my back is somewhat arched. 

At least the times when I got a good hip shift I felt better about lifting hands. But I can’t do that consistently, and most of the time I’m afraid of shifting the hip too far to the side and lose control. Is it just a confidence thing? Or is there any tips that can help me?

thanks!

The major problem here is that the amount of tilt of the hips is not enough for your hand's position that, from my pov, are too wide. I'm pretty sure that if you wrists is moved directly under your shoulder in the elevated position you should be able to control it. Wall runs is not about falling on the hand that has already reached the shoulder but control the movement. For this reason, you should be able to show slow reps and fast reps with no problem.

Jin 

I found for me when I bring my hands directiy under my shoulders it take less shift. when the hands are wider than the shoulders you have to shift more for balance. 

on your first vid your hands are more under your shoulders probaley because you feel more secure.

I hope this helps. I guess Alessandro beat me to it 

Michael 

Narrowing the hands helped a ton (thank you Alex for that pointer from an earlier post).  Here's another thing that helped me tremendously: I push strongly through the shoulder (elevate) when I shift onto that hand. Maximal shoulder elevation was key to being able to slow down the hand movements.  Before that, I was slamming my hand down as I sort of fell back onto the side from which I had lifted the hand.  It took a while to realize that even if I started with elevated shoulders, that as soon as I shifted over, I lost the elevation. When that happened I lost control of the movement and was just falling from side to side.

Not sure if that will help you, but it was a big "aha" moment for me.

That elevation of the shoulder is taxing, though. So I went from 24 reps back to 2 or 3 focusing on slowing down, shoulder elevation, and hips.  Having the hips swaying back and forth while maintaining PPT is the thing that's currently my problem.  I can do it for a rep or two before losing it.

This particular movement has been excruciating in terms of progress over time, but it has been fascinating, and I've learned a lot. Also, my shoulders are a LOT stronger now!

Hope that helps.

Thank you guys!! I tried to keep the hands close but they just drop to the nearest safe place. My problem here is I don’t have control of my bodyline, or hand positions, or tempo. I’m hoping it’ll get better as my body adapts to it more. Thanks @Mark Chin for reminding me to elevating the shoulders. I felt it stabilizes me when I just started doing the regular wall HS. It might do the trick again in this exercise too. I’m sure it’d be very excruciating once I can do it slowly. I’m waiting for the day when I can actually control my body in a HS  

Jin,

One of the things you want to think about is when the hands are wider than the shoulders it is harder to lift the opposing arm. The reason is that when the hand is wider than the shoulders you are pushing your body to the opposite side. If  your hands are under your shoulders you are pushing straight up and hence it will be easier to lift the opposing side. You will be more balanced. As you said when you were using the stahl bars is they gave you more security because you could hook your feet  and when using the wall your affraid of falling. So when your on the wall you use wider hands as a sense of stability.

I have a suggestion. Go back to the stahl bars and do the wall runs where you feel secure try with the wide and narrow hand width to see the difference. I think you will notice that when the hands are under the shoulders that it is easier to do them because you are not pushing your self to the opposing side. I remember you talking about being nervous about doing the wall runs against the wall. Another thing to do is the handstand against the wall with the correct hand width and when you feel comfortable in the handstand then lift one hand alittle on each side and as your comfort level increases lift the hand higher. At the start tou do not have to touch your shoulder just lift it of the ground and get used to keeping the hand position correct. The more you do that the more your comfort level will increase and the higher you will be able to lift your hands. This is what I did and now I can touch my shoulders where as at the beginning I could only just lift them slightly off the floor.

I hope this will help you. I think right now that slight fear is keeping you to spread your hands wide.

Michael

i’m of the opinion that if these are too difficult right now, spending time in Wall HS and practice where you place the weight through your hands is going to yield more physical(and psychological) gainz. 

not that i’m saying you shouldn’t do it, i just prefer being tired and coming down from handstands with control rather than feeling unconfident and risking crashing. you don’t want to risk that testing for mastery  #beenthere (and awakens floor outside of the Stallbar room is concrete underneath the carpet. not comfortable to fail handstands on when going for strength / endurance feats)

The hands under your shoulders is the (one of the) secret, for sure. I used to be wider, got some kind of wall runs down, then Alessandro told me I am too wide. Suddenly I was not able to do any. So I backed of to the HS (like Keilani just wrote) and was working there to get used to the more narrow position, and then worked myself back to the wall runs. But it took me really long…  even to this day, I feel slightly "anxious" when I am placing my hands directly under my shoulders (they are so narrow)—because I feel like this tall structure (I am over 7 feet in a handstand) on a tiny base, which can be blown off my a tiny puff of wind…  ha ha… you'll get used to it  

@Jin Liu how are these doing for you? I am still working on them. Nowhere near mastery, I am afraid. But they do get better over time. Then, with these, I will have a day where it just isn't working, and I have no idea why. 

Does that happen to you? 

10 hours ago, Mark Chin said:

@Jin Liu how are these doing for you? I am still working on them. Nowhere near mastery, I am afraid. But they do get better over time. Then, with these, I will have a day where it just isn't working, and I have no idea why. 

Does that happen to you? 

Hey Mark, I’m slowly improving. My biggest challenge is to consistently control the hip movement from side to side, while keeping the feet together and fixing on the wall. Now my feet tend to separate and slide when I shift weight to the left (guess which side is my weaker side). Still working on it.

I found that the more I think I’m afraid, the crappier my reps are. But when I switch to “attack mode” (lol!), like you are setting up with certain aggressiveness, fully engage the entire back, abs and legs, push real tall, lock the f*ing elbows, and just do it. Then I usually end up banging out the best reps of my life, even tho I’m exhausted afterwards, but am happy. 

There are days when I feel I’m doing worse. If it’s mental, I’d do the above, and it’ll boost me up. If physical, esp if you’re not recovered from yesterday’s workout, I’d give it a rest. Maybe do half the reps, but still try to do the best quality work I can.

another observation, there’s a couple times I was doing either overhead press or push press first, not a ton of weight, then I do the wall run. I felt a certain easiness. Not sure why, maybe the overhead work really warmed up my shoulders well, and the full body alignment. Worth a try  

I totally know what you mean about "attack mode"! Sometimes, even if the last couple of sets were fatiguing, if I just throw myself into it and really move the hips it works great. Until my hands start inching away from the wall... 

I will try some standing presses as a warm up and see if it helps. Thanks for the suggestion! 

1 hour ago, Mark Chin said:

I totally know what you mean about "attack mode"! Sometimes, even if the last couple of sets were fatiguing, if I just throw myself into it and really move the hips it works great. Until my hands start inching away from the wall... 

I will try some standing presses as a warm up and see if it helps. Thanks for the suggestion! 

 

Yea, while doing the overhead press, emphasize all the checkpoints in a HS. Complete open shoulders, push real tall, locked elbows, ears touching the shoulders like two suction cups, ribs in, slight PPT in the back, strong legs, oh and breath. Let me know how it goes  

will do! thanks for the pointers. 

Woohoo! Best sets yet!! It’s not without struggle, not nearly perfect, but they are feeling MUCH easier!!! Something clicked today

i realize I still have to work on bringing the hands closer to each other and to the wall, probably. Body alignment needs more work, etc. but I’m happy

There are many corrections needed:

-first, there is an asymmetrical work from left to right. when you lean on the right your hips begin to twist while in the lean you are simply doing side flexion. twisting is wrong.

-hips should be stacked over the hands;

-you are too far from the wall;

-hands still too wide.

-my suggestion is practice the lean of the hips separately.

1 hour ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

There are many corrections needed:

-first, there is an asymmetrical work from left to right. when you lean on the right your hips begin to twist while in the lean you are simply doing side flexion. twisting is wrong.

-hips should be stacked over the hands;

-you are too far from the wall;

-hands still too wide.

-my suggestion is practice the lean of the hips separately.

Thanks coach! Will practice the hip lean separately, and improve everything you mentioned. I know there are still a lot to work on. But I’m feeling a lot better than before. Most importantly not afraid any more  

Here’s a set of wall run with each rep on the brink of collapse. I’m still at 3x12r, which is depressing (ok, maybe I skipped HS a whole month of June & most of July), but today I decided to add one more set at the end and max it out. It’s not pretty, but hey I punched 20, while holding my breadth, lol. With that I’m hoping to challenge my body & force it to adapt more quickly. Then when i come back to do 3x12r, I can do it with more ease & control, hopefully. It’s not gonna be a linear progressive process, but an iterative one.. 

Atta Girl! I'm a week or two away from these. 

The first sensation I got seeing your video is that you are falling on the hand after touching the shoulder. on the opposite, you should be able to touch the shoulder aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand move the hand on the floor. this can be due probably to your hands position that is too wide for your lean or that your lean is too less for the hands position.