Transitioning between HeS press and wall-HS press

[Neal Winkler]

How do you transition from HeS press to wall HS press?

I tried doing an incrementally elevated HeS, that is, supporting my head at higher and higher elevation until I was practically in a wall HS position, but after I got used to this it was really not much harder than regular HeS.

[Cole Dano]

If you're talking wall HS press, and you ramped the elevation under your head up to almost HS height, what happens when you take the pads away? How are you doing the wall HS press more exactly?

[jl5555]

Try doing some of Ido's gatherings with hands raised on something of course.

[Guest]

I also had a bit of trouble with the Wall HS Press and I have tried various ways of figuring out how to exactly engage my body in this movement. For me, the eyeopener was to actively push my hands into the floor in the Wall HS Press position and trying to lean as little into the wall with the shoulders as possible.

The thing is: when you continue to incrementally elevate your HeS you will still be supporting a lot of weight on your head. Once you move to the actual Wall HS position your head support is suddenly taken out of the equation and as a result you may tend to push into the wall with your shoulders (I know I did) instead of pushing everything down through your hands.

You need to find a way to actively engage your shoulder girdle in order to stabilize your body so that you can use your core/lower back to lift the legs. At least that is my understanding of what a HS Press actually is: keeping your arms and torso in a stable position and lifting the legs into the full HS.

So my advice would be to either continue the elevated HeS Presses with as little assistance from your head as possible, or to move directly to a Wall HS Box Press and try to push down through the hands, with as little assistance from the wall as possible.

[Sternford]

I would like to know this too. We have a lot of people at our gym that can do press headstands, but can't do press handstands against the wall, and I can't think of anything to tell them.

[Blairbob]

Start working negative press HS on Wall (HS press downs) or with a spot. The farther your hands are away from the wall, the easier it is but the more your wrists suffer from a high degree of wrist flexion. You can turn the hands out to the side or almost in an undergrip, but you may find your hands slip a bit when turned this way.

[Coach Sommer]

Start working negative press HS on Wall (HS press downs) or with a spot.

Excellent advice.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer