Slow Progress On Headstand Pushups

Hello everyone.

My problem is with my nemesis which is Headstanad Pushup whos progress is pretty slow. I use deadpush version where I start from the botton using books as assistance, I'm currently 14,5 cm of ground which is my max.

Could my 3x a week routine be problem, I warm up with light triple then do 4 sets of 1-3 and then 5 singles.

Note that my current nutrition isn't ideal as I'm still a teenager living with parents and sometimes I only get 6 hours of sleep. Are those two main reason?

I think starting from the bottom is harder than starting from a handstand with your arms straight. Is there a specific reason why you do it that way? Also, if you can only perform 1-3 reps and then 5 singles, I think the exercise is too heavy to make progress.

You could start with your feet on a table to take away some of the weight (these are called box HeSPUs). Make sure to keep your arms and body vertical in one line and perpendicular to the floor when you do this. And don't start from the bottom with your head on the floor. You'd better start with your arms straight and then lower down and push up again. It will be easier that way. Make sure to make slow controlled movements (don't let yourself drop down).

Once you can do 3 sets of 5-7 reps, you can start doing HeSPUs from a handstand against a wall (with your stomach facing the wall and hands about 30cm away from the wall). These will initially probably still be too hard to perform, so you can either do negatives only and rollout at the bottom, or simply lower down as far as you can and push back up again. I followed the 2nd approach and got my first full HeSPU after four months. I trained HeSPUs 2x per week (among other things).

Good luck!

markp said:

I think starting from the bottom is harder than starting from a handstand with your arms straight. Is there a specific reason why you do it that way? Also, if you can only perform 1-3 reps and then 5 singles, I think the exercise is too heavy to make progress.

You could start with your feet on a table to take away some of the weight (these are called box HeSPUs). Make sure to keep your arms and body vertical in one line and perpendicular to the floor when you do this. And don't start from the bottom with your head on the floor. You'd better start with your arms straight and then lower down and push up again. It will be easier that way. Make sure to make slow controlled movements (don't let yourself drop down).

Once you can do 3 sets of 5-7 reps, you can start doing HeSPUs from a handstand against a wall (with your stomach facing the wall and hands about 30cm away from the wall). These will initially probably still be too hard to perform, so you can either do negatives only and rollout at the bottom, or simply lower down as far as you can and push back up again. I followed the 2nd approach and got my first full HeSPU after four months. I trained HeSPUs 2x per week (among other things).

Good luck!

Because it ensures more constant range of motion, if I can get my head off ground I can complete it no matter what and it feels like barbell overhead press which is cool. B)

Thanks. I could try that if I fail to see some progress in two weeks time.

Sounds like that's way too "heavy" for you currently. I'd find an easier variation, if I were you. Or just do negatives?

With regard to sleep - well, everyone's different there. These days honestly I do not recover from a basic training load unless I'm getting good sleep. It's vital for me. Others don't really seem to see a difference.

It's a bit more complex than that, though, because too much training can interfere with sleep as well... and external stresses can impact recovery and sleep separately/together, too...

You need to sleep and eat, man. Otherwise training just tends to be a pile of merde.

Blairbob said:

You need to sleep and eat, man. Otherwise training just tends to be a pile of merde.

I try with my best, but damn high school gets into the way , hopefully a college in the next year will allow me to get decent night of sleep everyday and large caloric intake.

What do you think about my programming then?

Pargie, it's going to be hard for anyone to comment on your programming as you've only mentioned what you do for HeSPUs. Maybe your total volume each week including all of your other movements is just too much for you to recover from given that your nutrition and sleep isn't ideal.

For the HeSPU work what you're doing is probably ok for max strength but 3x a week is too much at that intensity. Follow the advice of the guys above and build up some volume with an easier variation (i.e. Box HeSPUs).

Also keep in mind that coach has stated that we should progress from pushups to dips to HSPUs. Did you follow this progression and if so how is your dip strength?

If you skip progressions you will stall at some point simply because you haven't built the necessary foundation.

I have honestly been running into the same problem. I heard that starting from the bottom is harder, but i do not agree. Lowering down is very difficult especially when you get to a point when you are not strong enough to hold yourself. I can do a slow controlled decent but i still have yet to be able to push back up. I have even started from a head stand and its been difficult./ I just keep trying to do it becasuer as long as i keep trying it will come through

I think that there's a problem between the complexity of the movement and the stimulus that you need to improve, especially during free standing  versions. I think that a good approach is to combine different movements. For example: Negative HeSPU (Learn Eccentric Phase), Static Bent Arm Press (Learning Control in the middle of the Rom and good stimulus without balance problem, it's also good for learning muscle activatioN), concentric Bent Arm press. Wall Versions so as to improve endurance, but not good stimulus for freestanding (There's no stabilizers). What do you think about?

best thing you can do to increase hspu and hespu is what Coach said in one post. simply pass more time into handstand position. i've experimented that thing with my brother and 1 client. thery were locked in hs push up progression. In that period they had reached the necessary body alignment to maintain the wall hs for more time and what's happened? ony 3 weeks of wall handstand and they passed from zero headstand push up or a very difficult negative to headstand pushup (hands were elevated with 2 mats for each hand)...

so try if it works well also for you!

For me it helped to do the concentric part as slow as possible, this way you work every muscle fiber there is. You Will definetly find where your week links are. Do them against a wall or stallbars this way you can assist yourself with your toes. The important part is to do the concentric part as slow as possible.

Yes. Slow concentrics are excellent for developing movements that are highly unstable in nature.

I also found that building up to a 60s wall handstand with locked elbows before trying any HeSPU was the key for me when i first started. I went from 0 reps to 3 reps. Took me somewhere between 3-4 months I think, I can't remember anymore. I'm sure it was more than 8 weeks.

My final input is that isometrics to failure in your weakest part of the ROM. Find your stidking point and stay just above it for as long as you can. Literally hold it until you slowly lower down to your head against your will. Do NOT let yourself collepse onto your head.

That's my advice.

Nacho: You can think about development the way you wrote if you like. The freestanding stuff is about not knowing how to USE the muscle to balance, which is different than not training them at all. If you're stomach-to-wall in proper alignment , with proper activation (constantly pressing yourself away from the ground) you will most definitely be using them and making them strong! All that will remain is learning the skill of balancing without the wall, which is easy to do when you've accomplished everything else in this post

Question - is there a connection between the dip and the HePU? Both are vertical pushing full body weight and pass through a bent arm stage.

Is it strange that I am comparatively strong in dips (like 10 full ROM and bw+60lb 1RM ) but can't do one HePU against the wall? Perhaps not as I've just started training negatives. Is it reasonable expect comparable strength in He/HSPU as I have in dips if I keep training them?

I have always found negatives and isometrics most helpful at the start. 

FutureisNow said:

Question - is there a connection between the dip and the HePU? Both are vertical pushing full body weight and pass through a bent arm stage.

 

Is it strange that I am comparatively strong in dips (like 10 full ROM and bw+60lb 1RM ) but can't do one HePU against the wall? Perhaps not as I've just started training negatives. Is it reasonable expect comparable strength in He/HSPU as I have in dips if I keep training them?

No, because HSPU's have the shoulder in full flexion (hands overhead), while dips have the shoulder in neutral (not sure if that's the correct anatomical term, but you know what I mean). This means that muscle involvement around the shoulder changes greatly. The only real correlation between a HSPU and dip would probably be the triceps involvement, and I'm not even sure about that.

Rik has it.

The triceps strength carries over quite nicely, but dips don't work the shoulders the way proper HeSPU/HSPU will and it should not be surprising to find a big difference in strength.

To put that in perspective, when I first started out here and was doing 10 reps on weighted dips with bw+100 lbs, I couldn't do one HeSPU. Not one.

I built up to a 60s stomach-to-wall handstand and got 2 decent reps and a pretty ugly third, with no change in any other strength levels. 

They are just very different in terms of the demand placed on the shoulder girdle!

I can hold 30 seconds HS with not so great form. The so-so form probably makes it more difficult to hold longer.

My upper traps are not strongly developed and I suspect those are also a factor.

Also I started at about 80 pounds OH press and now can do about 100 (out of a bw near 175).

Were you a lot closer to being able to OH press your bodyweight when you started? 

Not sure, I didn't really overhead press very much. Lots of deadlifts, lots of rows, lost of pull ups, lots of dips, pretty decent amount of bench.

That was part of the problem, but I could still do a behind the neck press with ~75% bodyweight for 5-8 reps. That probably had a lot to do with how quickly I was able to get to doing the HeSPU.

Joshua Naterman said:

 

Nacho: You can think about development the way you wrote if you like. The freestanding stuff is about not knowing how to USE the muscle to balance, which is different than not training them at all. If you're stomach-to-wall in proper alignment , with proper activation (constantly pressing yourself away from the ground) you will most definitely be using them and making them strong! All that will remain is learning the skill of balancing without the wall, which is easy to do when you've accomplished everything else in this post

Yes. I wrote it bad, i want to said "Free Standing versions (HeSPU not HS). In fact I use the wall a lot with my HS. I started to improve since the moment I trained wall stomach HS. However, I think that you can be able to perform 5 HeSPU in the wall, and not be able to perform any freestanding. I think that freestanding needs freestanding work. Not only separate, but together. I was able to perform Free HS and Wall HeSPU versions, but when i attemp to perform Free HeSPU I find that it was really difficult. So, which would be the best technique to use the wall, in Wall HeSPU, so as to have a good transfer in free stuff?

Definitely. When I learned freestanding HeSPU I could do 7-8 reps against the wall and couldn't do one freestanding. A month later I could do three, but I practiced singles all the time. Kick up into a handstand, lower slowly to wherever I thought I had the skill to push out of, and hold there, then push up. I probably did that 4-5x per day at least. Sort of GtG style I guess, looking back at it.

I'm trying to do the same and I'm seeing good results.