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What's Going on Here?


Sternford
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I've been working on doing elevated headstand push ups by putting my hands on increasingly thicker books, and I noticed something that I was hoping someone could explain. When I start by kicking into a handstand and then lowering down and stopping I can to about three push ups, but when I start by kicking into a headstand I cannot push myself up at all. I am putting a good amount of effort into making sure that in the first case I am not just bouncing my head off the floor, so I don't know what else it could be.

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Starting from the bottom of the position is always harder. This is similar to doing bench presses from pins, those who have done them will tell you that not being able to first lower the weight makes is quite a bit harder. As for the exact reason for this, could be a mix of things: lowering first even when stopping still activates the nervous system, in return helping you overcome that sticking point; some stretch reflex is still utilized even with a pause unless you are resting for more than 5 seconds and finally I imagine that when you first lower you are able to maintain a certain line of balance that isn't maintained when you are starting from a dead stop (the last one I found to be true for me, not sure if it applies to you).

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Joshua Naterman

What's going on is pretty much what Alex said. Part of it is that when you lower down, the stretch reflex helps you on the way up. You'd have to pause for about 3 seconds to lose most of that stretch reflex assistance.

The other part is that when you start at the bottom you have to move your bones into the right position with all the load at the hardest point in the movement, which requires far more strength than just pressing out of the position when you've lowered into it under tension, because when you lower under tension your bones are already in the right place and the right muscles are already activated.

Starting at the extreme end of ROM in any exercise is very difficult, it requires that you start with around 10-20% less weight than if you lower down under tension to the same point.

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