Another extremely slow progressing exercise - half HSPU

I have been doing this exercise for 4 months now, 2-3 times a week, in the beginning I do 5x5, now I pretty much have no improvement, still at 5x5. Or another way to put it, is I still experience the same amount of load and stress. The exercise is I put my leg on a platform that's three and half feet tall so my legs and my upper body are about 90 degrees, and do HSPU on 8'' tall parallets (I used to scale to verify that the weight I am pushing is roughly 80% BW), I go down until my head touches the floor. If I do a normal handstand, I can't lower my body until my head touches floor then push up again. I can only go half way down, maybe 1/3.

Is there anything wrong here?

By the way, this is not related to rings at all. I posted it in the wrong sub forum.

Because currently in that position I am usually at the end of my strength after the 5th one, a few times I can push to 6 or 7. So I am questioning if increasing intensity will help in this case.

Well, I am doing the first variation of HeSPU in the book except my hands are on parallets, so I am actually increasing the ROM. The reason was because I thought this could help me progress to the real HeSPU quicker, but after a couple of months I don't see much progress.

Zach Armijo said:

I see now. how about without PBs?

I just tried it and I did 12 (this is after I just worked out so I guess I can do 15+ when fresh)

I just have my fingers pointing forward and go down naturally, I did not pay attention to my elbow.

Somehow when I do a handstand against the wall and go down, and my forearms start to go to the side and that's when I start to feel discomfort in my wrist. So to reduce the pain I usually have my hands placed such as fingers are pointing more inward, so the hand can line up more naturally with forearm.

Don't have a camera with me now, I guess I will try something else in my next work out day.

Thanks!

I just tried a handstand against a wall, lowered myself to the floor and as soon as I felt my hair touched the carpet, I pushed myself up. Then I repeated one more time.

There's hope after all.

Thank for everyone's support!

Doing HSPU work on paralletes (assuming they are actually parallel) is way harder because it is nearly impossible to stick your elbows out. Shoulders and upper back have to do a huge amount of the work unless you are arching, so there will be slow progress on that. I can do full ROM on cinder blocks with my fingers maybe 20 degrees turned out, but can't even do 1 HeSPU on paralletes. It is HARD!

Don't stop doing the PB work, treat that as your strength and treat the floor stuff as endurance.

Agreed, I have been trying out a few different things and I think together they provided different muscle stimulation that contributed to an overall gain.

Joshua Naterman said:

Doing HSPU work on paralletes (assuming they are actually parallel) is way harder because it is nearly impossible to stick your elbows out.

That's why I put them more like / \ shape.

seiyafan said:

Joshua Naterman said:

Doing HSPU work on paralletes (assuming they are actually parallel) is way harder because it is nearly impossible to stick your elbows out.

That's why I put them more like / \ shape.

Cheater!

In some of the sets I also put them both horizontal like - - , or / \ or | | (wide)

Speaking of HSPU variations, have anyone here done narrow grip triceps HSPU before. I never seen or heard of anyone doing these before, but I think they are possible.

Vassily does those:

I think Vagabond on these forums is working them as well, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, but I mean with full range of motion like from a single bar or paralletes or something instead of headstand ROM.

Your upper body would have to travel forward a lot and as a result you'd get a lot of planching. So I think it'd become like a close-grip bower.