One thing I have been working on over the past several months is more body weight training and this includes hand stand push ups. When I started, even putting my head down caused me to be dizzy and feel horrible. Now I can do elevated partial hand stand push ups and getting closer to a full handstand and then a full hand stand push up.
Today I have a guest article from Danavir Sarria on this very topic. Take it away……

How To Do Your First Handstand Pushup by Danavir Sarria

There aren’t many things that will make you look any more athletic than standing on your hands and repping out a couple of pushups with the grace of a gymnast.

The problem with handstands pushups are that their hard, extremely hard. For a lot of people it will take months to get your first handstand pushup down. Personally, it took me about 3-4 months to get my first full rep with my feet against the wall. I was so excited that I attempted a second rep.

I made it to about a quarter way down before I had to bail. This was a couple of months ago and eventually I got to 5 full reps before stopping all handstand training once I couldn’t use my same old space to do it.

Now I’m here to tell you how I did it.

It’s all about progressing to a harder version to build strength, stability, getting used to the movement as it takes time getting used to the blood rushing to your head and above all staying safe as one thing you will have to get over is the fear of staying in such a position for an extended period of time, so here we go.

Pike Pushups – Work Up To 3 X 12

Start with the Pike Pushup. This position will introduce you to the vertical push movement while having your head in a good position to handle the blood rushing through. Keep progressing from workout to workout until you’re able to complete 3 set of 12

Elevated Pike Pushups – Work Up To 3 X 12

Once you can complete the Pike Pushups, elevate your legs to put more weight on your arms and again help you handle the blood rushing. Work up to 3 sets of 12 as before.

Walk Up Wall Handstand Hold – Work Up To 2 X 1 Minute

\Now it’s time to get on the wall. As every time I have to get someone to just do a regular handstand against a wall, they always get scared so I always tell them to start by walking up against the wall to get into position and practice doing that first. Do the same and hold that position for 2 sets of 1 minute each.

Wall Handstand Hold – Work Up To 2 X 2 Minutes

This time around, you want to do a regular handstand. It takes courage for some people to do this so take your time but eventually you will have to get over it and just do it. Hold it for 2 sets of 2 minutes. It’s going to suck but it will help you get ready for the next one. (Mike’s note, some people find a good transfer from holds and some do better with moving into the position and out and then on to the next step at even ¼ instead of ½)

Wall ½ Handstand Pushups – Work Up To 2-3 X 5

Now let’s add some handstand pushups going halfway down. You’re going to be glad you did all those handstand holds because it’s going to be tough. Work up to 2 or even 3 sets of 5 reps.

Wall Handstand Pushups – Work Up To 1 X 1

After everything, you will be more than ready to get your first full rep in. It won’t be easy and it’s going to feel like a LONG way down after doing partials for so long but you will get it in. Just try it out once. If you can do it, keep working on it and if you can’t, work again on some partials and try it again later when you feel ready.

Couple of Programming Points

Practice Often

Handstands and other forms of bodyweight training is gymnastics. It is as much about strength as it is about skill. Just like with other sports, you need to practice hard and practice often. If you want to get better at basketball, do you play once a week or do you try to go out as much as possible and work on your shot? Even if you’re not good, you’ll eventually get something out of it due to sheer perseverance.

Perform When You’re Fresh

Always perform your most important and hardest exercises at the beginning of your workout. After your warmup, go straight to whatever variation you’re working on at the time. If you leave it at the end of your workout, then you’ll never be strong enough to progress.

Never Max Out

There is no need to max out unless you’re testing for something specific and on my recommendations; it doesn’t happen until you test if you can do a full handstand pushup. With handstand training and just about anything else, always opt for sub-maximal loads or loads where you can do 2-3 perfect reps or higher.

Now How To Bail

Practice getting into and OUT of each position safely. This will allow you to relax more in the position and decreases the risk of injury.

Conclusion: How To Do A Handstand Push Up

It’s going to take a long time before you do your first full and explosive handstand pushup, but with perseverance and a smart program you’ll get there. Once you get it down you’re going to be the biggest bad ass on your block.

Bio: Trainer of the warriors, Danavir is a writer, trainer, consultant and martial artist who loves everything performance or regular fitness training.  He writes over at www.DanavirSarria.com. Head over if you want no B.S training information and bring out “the warrior from within”.

My inbox has been blowing up lately about a post coach Mike Boyle did entitled “Is Foam Rolling Bad For You?”

Mike Boyle

In it, coach Boyle referenced an article I wrote about 4 years ago about why I did not like the error erasing properties of the amazing foam roller.

“Don’t be fooled by internet writers looking to take a contrarian stance to get site hits. Focus on results.” –Coach Boyle

It seems I am the contrarian and not the results fitness guy now. I guess the following articles did not help my contrarian case.

Get Off the Corrective Exercise Bandwagon

Foam Rolling

Get Off the Treadmill

Static Stretching Still Sucks (The 4S Rule)

Intermittent Fasting for Fat Loss

Keep in mind that I have 567 entries on this blog alone, so by comparison the articles I have are not that many.  Hmmm, maybe I should have started  www.foamrollerssuck.com

Foam Rolling: The Early Years

However, I started out with quite the different view of each of those topics above.   When I ooked back at a program I wrote for a client in 2005, it started with foam rolling and treadmill work! Eeek.

Over time, while the foam roller seems to help in the session, it did not do anything long term to reduce his pain.  Each time he came back, I was having him roll his ITB.  He was yelping in pain and I would proclaim

“Ha! See, it is painful, so it must be good. That whole area is tight and needs to be rolled out.”

Hmmm, if that was so true, why was he still doing it with the EXACT same response 6 months later?

Broken To Better

It was around this time that I was so broken (by my own free will) that it took me almost an hour to lift anything in the gym!

I was foam rolling while thinking that all those other goons in the gym don’t know anything since they are not using this amazing piece of equipment and I know what is going on! Keep in mind this was around 2005 when I was much younger and knew everything.  Haha.

After foam rolling I would do some static stretching, dynamic mobility drills, joint mobility work and THEN start very light to progress on to my working sets over the next 20 minutes. Yep, almost 1.5 hours into a training session before I would do my first working set. Seems totally insane now, but at the time I thought this was the best it could get!

All of this to pull 345 lbs in competition and wake up with horrible pain so bad I could barely bend down to wash my face in the morning. It was a great tripod maneuver to spread my feet wide enough and slowly get my left hand on the counter so I could get my face about 3 feet from water. I don’t fault anyone for this, as I did it entirely to myself! I was foam rolling like white on rice, in the morning, in the evening and some times during the day. I even started to include dynamic and mobility drills then too.

My clients at the time (circa 2005) were getting stronger, but they still had nagging pains too.

The Breaking Point

All of it came to a head when I was at Z-Health certification in AZ that Fall. I remember taking a hot bath that night trying to get my back to relax, wondering what the hell I was doing to myself.

Was I really going to be the next Benni and deadlift over 1,000 pounds? Was Any Bolton laying in his warm bed in the UK all worried that I was going to come up from nowhere and steal his current world record in the deadlift at that time?

Benni Destroying Some Weight!

Andy Bolton’s World Record Deadlift in 2006

Hell no!

There was high school girls lifting more than I was I’m sure.

Why was I so bent on doing a certain number? Why did I not realize HOW I was doing it was the source of my issues?

Blame My Injuries

Sure, I could blame it on all sorts of past injuries from a completely ripped out right shoulder (broomball accident), grade 2 separated shoulder (AC joint), busted right ankle (snowboard accident), sprained wrists (windsurfing), pulled groin/hip flexors on both sides (deadlifts), misaligned thoracic spine (thoracotomy when I was 4.5 to repair a congenital atrial septal defect, ASD, in my heart), a misaligned right eye that causes my whole body to twist so I walk straight, blah blah blah.

The reality was that I was attempting to load a chassis that was screwed up. Dropping a V-8 into a pinto is not a good idea (er, in my case a V-6).

Laying there in hot water trying to fix my back so I could make it through 3 more days of the certification, I decided that I was going to destroy my ego before it destroyed me. In hindsight it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I called up my buddy Brad “No Relation” Nelson to get his help and vowed to do whatever it took. If that meant I did not even LOOK at a deadlift for 5 months, fine. If I could only use 135 pounds for months at a time, fine. At least 135 lbs was more than the 95 lbs I started at with deadlifts back in 1996, so that was improvement, right. I was sick and tired of being in pain.

Happy Ending?

Now I can deadlift without pain (although it is still not the best lift for me) and even on my worst day I can pull 345 lbs without any warm up (no, I don’t recommend you do that). My warm ups are about 5-10 minutes on my worst day.

My current goal for this year is to pull 600 lbs on my Dinnie Stone Trainers for a single deadlift and lift the Dinnies in Scotland 3 years from now. Most would say that is a screwed up lift since it is more of a heavy partial, done from a rotated spinal position, with an offset load (the load on the back hand below is about 75 lbs less), so the torque across your body gets pretty nuts. Stu McGill fans run in horror, but it does not bother me (then again I am not normal in any sense of the word).

Dinnie Stone Trainer Deadlift Recent PR

Foam Rollers?

My whole point with that part of the rant is that everyone’s person journey will change how they perceive events. If coach Boyle see success with his athletes (which he does, otherwise nobody would pay him and he would do something different), and he has them foam roll beforehand, his brain will associate foam rolling (to some degree) with success.

A Better Way?

Could there be even better success around the corner without foam rolling? I would say yes, but it would have to be tested.

Testing can be scary since you may not find what you WANT to find. It is hard to test all aspects of programming I know.

But what things are you willing to question?

Former Foam Roller Dealer

Perhaps I am a contrarian for fitness, but I did not start out that way. I used to even buy foam rollers for my clients to make sure they had one. I had them start on the treadmill, static stretch, eat their meals every 2-3 hours (going without protein for 5 hours was a huge sin), do their corrective exercise drills, but I was wise enough then to look at the results.

If the results did not match what I thought they could be, I would try something different and re-measure again. I would seek to understand why things should or should not work. If that did not match, I would really have to ask myself why I was still doing them?

After years of testing, I had them stop doing treadmill work, stop static stretching, get off the foam roller, do FEWER warm ups, employ intermittent fasting at times, and they got even BETTER results.

Of course they got results before. I would not stay in business if they did not get result, but they are now even better.

Contrarian or Results Fitness

Over time though, they got better and faster results by REMOVING things from the program instead of adding them.

“Maybe all the fitness people need to clean out their garage instead of adding more tools” –Adam Glass

I call it the “Adam Glass Corollary” the more certifications and information a trainer has, the worse then tend to perform over time.

At first, learning more dramatically helps. However, once you reach a base level, adding more knowledge by itself is not helpful. It starts to go the other way.

“More knowledge without action will lead to brain damage” –Frankie Faires

The reason is that you are starting to de couple knowledge + action. Too much knowledge and not enough action. Just like a fat kid on a sew saw, it is skewed too far one direction only.

Clean Out Your Fitness Garage

It is time to clean out your fitness garage.

Take each item, look at it, test it, keep ONLY what is useful.

Nothing is exempt.There is nothing scared. It is either making you (or your athletes/clients) better or worse. It is really that simple.

Are You Up To The Challenge?

Are you willing to do it? It is not easy. It is really really hard. Few do it.

I can guarantee that your results will be even better.

You owe it to yourself and your clients.

Summary (aka How To Still Love Your Foam Roller)

More knowledge is not the answer.

More action is better.

Applied knowledge is the key

Are you willing to question and test what you think you know?

This includes foam rollers. They are not exempt.

If you have tested them and can show they help performance, by all means keep doing it.

But if they do not help, are you willing to take them out?

In the end I would rather be known as the results guy instead of the contrarian fitness guy; but I will take whichever makes people better. I really like better.

I agree with coach Boyle when he says “Focus on results.” Since that is what matters and is why all of us are here.

Rock on

Mike T Nelson

PS—If you love results as much as I do, no matter how you exercise right now, you could have bigger, stronger muscles, go HERE : Video Training for More Muscle and Strength –FREE

Another great video to get you going on this Monday.

It is up to YOU!

YOU decide what to do via your ACTION.  The critic does not count.

It is easy for others to SAY what to do, but you back it up with action every time.

The time is now, and don’t wait.

Go for it and live the life you always wanted.

Rock on
Mike T Nelson