How To Unlock The HANDSTAND PUSH UP - A Detailed Conversation

We have free access now to the new Athlete app, so you can come have a look at what we're doing. You can see some of the early records. There's tutorials to get you started on things like the handstand and juggling and various elements of the basics. So you can come have a look, see what it's all about. We also have the membership now available. The dream is coming alive, so if you'd like to be part of it, then click the link in the description. Handstand push ups. It's a movement that a lot of people want to achieve. It's one that I worked on for a really long time before I achieved it. In the last two years, probably had 150, maybe 200 people achieve their first handstand push up. One of the reasons for that was that we set a challenge around volume of just normal push ups. And then one of the metrics inside of there, along with push ups and squats, was the handstand push up. And some of the guys who could do the handstand push ups started putting up massive numbers and I think that helped everyone else to calibrate around. Well, okay, if he's going to do 5,000, then, then I guess I'm going to do my first ones.

Yeah. Was that a 10,000 reps when we.

Had the 10,000 reps app and challenge? Yeah, yeah. What do you think got you there when you, when you first got your hands to push up?

So I started training handstands simultaneously as I started doing parkour and in acrobatics and parkour movement, there's a lot of pushing strength. So I think that was part of the reason why later on when I actually started focusing on the handstand push up, it came to me quite easy because a lot of the jumps we're using hands and a lot of the cartwheels and round offs, the back handsprings, you're using that top part of the movement strength. So I think that gave me a good base towards my handstand push up. But when I actually started training it in the bottom would be the hardest part for me.

Yeah.

And that was the only thing I needed to overcome. I didn't really have much of a strategy when I first started learning it. I was just kept doing it and I was doing loads and loads of handstand presses at the time. So I think that had a decent carryover as well.

Like straight arm press to handstand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was doing lots of those. Loads of those. And I think My first handstand push up rep was actually when I come down to like a pike push up. And from there I lift my leg as if I do the handstand press and I use the momentum to get myself to the top. And I was doing that a lot, I remember. And then at some point I could just do one full rep. Yeah. So that's how it came to me. But there's million better ways to get to it.

Yeah, there's. There's lots of ways. And it depends on where the strengths and weaknesses are. Sometimes it's the balance that's the big thing. And working a lot on just normal handstands and shoulder stands, balancing those positions, trying to balance in the mid position. If balance is the biggest issue that you're having, then doing the lower stuff can be really helpful. So when I say lower stuff, it's like doing the frog sit variations where your arms are on the inside of your legs. Any of these kind of lower positions, if you're doing the double elbow lever shoulder stand itself. So where you've got your head over the edge of the box or platform, all of these variations will help you to feel more balanced. And then the biggest thing they've been doing this year that I think makes a huge difference is to vary the surface that you're on. So if you put a yoga mat or two yoga mats, you start to have to use your hands very differently. We're using like big foam boxes, and there has to be small differences even from like the wood surface to the rubber surface. It's more difference than you think when you're trying to learn these. So I highly recommend playing with the different surfaces and then playing with the lower variations if the balance is the issue. And then like either holding in the position or just moving through a really small range of motion in those positions, like in the bottom of the shoulder stand. And just like push a little bit, but without trying too hard. This is. These are really good ways to build up the balance. Then once you're getting pretty close, the eccentric is also a really good one. Like starting from the top, slowly go down. This should give you a chance also to feel all of the positions without, like, being at maximal strength. Do you have any other. Yeah. Tips on the. Obviously it all. It all comes in, like if you're doing cartwheels and other things as well. Handstand walking. Like everything's gonna.

Yeah, yeah.

Help to some degree.

The handstand itself and the handstand push up is a great base if you want to get into acrobatics later. But the other way around it works as well. But I think starting with the handstand, it's a, it's great. It's a cool skill. It builds great strength and big shoulders as well. So it's not just appealing skill for the movement itself, but it does actually build quite a ball the shoulders, which is a side benefit of it. But yeah, what I really like is the variety of the movements and the exercises. When I was first learning it, the whole Internet, every information that I found was kind of like two, three drills and just keep repeating them. But what you're saying, bring that variety, Change surfaces and change the drills very often. Play with the leg positions. That makes so much sense from the learning perspective. By making that training, the practice more broad in doing different things, you learn faster. And yeah, I don't know why the mainstream knowledge doesn't really say that.

Yeah, it's like if you get it in one way and you know that one way can work for other people, then you just keep saying that one way. But doesn't mean it's the fastest way, it doesn't mean it's the most enjoyable way. Doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody. Because it really does make a big difference if skill is more of the issue or strength is more of the issue. So if strength is more of the issue, the, the one that I think is the biggest sleeping giant is just to do the, the piked handstand push up. Yeah, I really ignored this one because I felt like, like it was a bit demeaning, like it was below me to do the, the pike tan stand push ups because I could already press a decent amount of weight and I just didn't think it was going to help that much. But with the pike tan stand push up, it really makes a big difference how far you keep the shoulders forward. If you really keep the weight on the hands, you can make it really close. You can make it like 70, 80% of load, even maybe 90% of load of what your whole body weight will be. But you can also bring it back to like 20, 30, 40% and then you're getting like a really nice specific push. I think that's like probably the best way to build the, the strength specifically.

I ignore that one too.

Yeah, yeah. I think you can get there way faster once you, if you just get a lot of volume of these, if you're pretty close, you're probably going to find that. Yeah, yeah.

And when you're coming from the, from the bottom of the pike, you can actually start lifting the legs and it already starts to feel like a handstand push up. And that's how my first rep looked like. So.

Yeah, but then you still always got like just size and basic strength. Like, it's also useful if, if handstand push up isn't your only goal in life. If your barbell numbers or dumbbell numbers are going up, often people will say like 90% of body weight for a standing press. If you're really skilled or you're just not really familiar with the bar, then maybe like 70% will be enough. Maybe like if you're really lucky, probably around 80% is like the minimum, usually by 90%. If you can press 90% of body weight, then, then you're going to be able to press. Of course, with this other skill stuff that we're talking about, you put those two things together and it's going to be good. But if you're pressing like 60% of body weight, if you weigh 100 kilos and you maximally press 60 kilos, it's not going to happen. The barbell numbers can help to be a bit like a reality check of if it's somewhere close or not. The equivalence on the dumbbells, it can, can work as well. Like it's not nothing special, particularly about the barbell. The best athletes are going to be able to be more adaptable. Even see like Daniel Vadnal, the kind of the original body weight guy, bodyweight FAQs his handle saying like, should have done more barbell work earlier and by doing both you get better results. And I think that the truth in all of these areas, like if you go through and watch all of the videos that we're putting on here, you're going to hear me say a lot that the truth is in including more things and being able to do more things and yeah, having that carryover, like say you can do the handstand push up but you're terrible on the barbell. If then you decide you want to do weightlifting, Olympic weightlifting, like push presses and then jerks, then you have less of a foundation, which is something that a lot of the guys in the tricking and parkour community now are getting into some weightlifting. If you already messed around with some, some shoulder press, some standing military press, pressing the bar, then you got some more base. So you're not really going to regret and you're going to have less injuries and less tendency for if you, if you are building more patterns, just broadening.

That strength base is Going to make the skill itself come much faster. It's going to be much easier. Before, I would never train with weights. I would just do purely body weight. And when I started training weighted dips and I started doing some squats with, with extra weight, my jumps got so much better. And the handstand push up like the full all the way just to box. That just came by itself.

Yeah.

I wasn't even really training for it. But before, no chance. Just doing dips for few months with extra weight and it just happened.

Yeah. So the goal is always more load and more load is king. So we find more load by putting more weight on the bar or by making the position more leveraged, making it in a disadvantage that makes it heavier. But you also find more load by doing explosive things. So if I drop myself, and we spoke about one of the other videos, if I. If I drop a 5 kilo weight from, or if I put a 5 kilo weight on his foot, it's nothing. If I drop it from here, he's going to be angry. If I drop it from the roof, then we're going to be going to see the, the emergency in Bali. Right. So you can create a lot more instantaneous load by varying the repetition type. There's a max effort on Instagram. I've had a few messages with him. I'm pretty sure that's his thing. It's not spelled exactly like that. The guy that's doing the deficit. Yeah. So he's doing handstand, say on the bar on the rig and then dropping down into shoulder stand. So he's doing depth jumps from a height that most people would feel really uncomfortable with their feet. Yeah, he's doing that with his hands. And so this is the idea of like continuing to progress load. So another way that we can take this, if your handstand push up is feeling heavy, if you start working on one arm handstand variations, if you've already done your two arm handstand, then you can have your whole body weight on, on one arm and you can slightly, slightly bend that elbow. This is going to start to recalibrate to higher loads. Or if you're doing the pike handstand push ups and you do clap on the pike tan sand push ups, the instantaneous loads, for a fraction of a second, there are going to be more than. If we're doing the just the body weight handstand push up. Yeah.

Would you say walking as well?

Yeah, walking is going to give us those high instantaneous loads and it's going to recalibrate for the nervous system what heavy is. And it's really important what heavy is for you, because if standing on your hands feels really heavy, like when. When you first do a handstand for most people, when they first do a handstand for me as well, if you're super heavy. But when that stops feeling heavy is when you feel double, you know, all the weight on one hand or you feel double body weight overhead in the rack and just lock it out a tiny bit.

Yeah.

So you can use much bigger loads through smaller ranges of motion, and then that recalibrates what heavy feels like for your system. So that. That's probably the other big trick that we haven't spoken about. If we kind of touched on the balance element, we touched on the max strength. This idea of, like, just recalibrating for your body what heavy is and helping it to be more comfortable so you can get more volume so that you. You don't. You don't kind of freak out and fry the system. Spending some time in the positions that you want to be in. So the frog sit position. Most guys can do the frog sit, like when they first come into new athlete and they say they want to do handstands, I'm like, cool, show me your frog sit. And nine out of ten times they'll be able to do the frog sit. And I'm like, cool, you're doing a handstand. So you're already giving them the feeling of, okay, well, I am balancing on my hand. The problem is when the lever is really long, then. Then I don't have enough, you know, skill to balance it. But if we can start with that frog sit, and. And then we say, okay, well, the goal is to be able to push into the ground enough that the knees and the legs don't have to touch the elbows anymore. That gives us something really specific in a really specific position for the handstand push up. But we can spend some time there. That's what I really like about, like, the. Spend some time in the middle position. Spend some time in the bottom position. Spend some time in the top position. Even if it's too heavy for now, top position can be even, you know, going into the one arm stuff. Bottom position with the shoulder stand. Even if you're not very close to doing the handstand push up, you can put some time in there, and you might find something like two, three, four sessions or, you know, two, three, four weeks. Those positions start to feel light. And then you're like, okay, well, what was Once really heavy is now pretty light becoming easy. Yeah. So this is like kind of bringing the two things together and I think that that's, it's more within reach than a lot of guys realize if they just work partials in the mid position, partials in the bottom position, partials in the top position. If the strength base is there, if the balance is there, good thing is you're going to get balance and strength from both of those as well. So there is a course inside of the New Athlete app which has those progressions. It also has recommendations about the strength side of things. You also have a course around the handstand push up. We also have Nico's course around the handstand push up. So if you come into New Athlete and you don't get a handstand push.

Up, then there's more than enough resources to help you on the way.

Yeah. And you're around a lot of other guys who are also going along that same path. So you can be talking to them and seeing their progress. And yeah, all the foundations feed into being able to achieve these, these other movements as well.

Yeah, yeah. When you see everyone around you doing it, it also becomes less of a mental deal of like, oh, this is such a big hard thing. Like you see everyone do it, it kind of becomes a standard 100%.

It's just like, yeah, such a huge part of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For me it was like I would have never thought that I would ever approach five ball juggling, but just seeing you do it all the time and some of the other guys trying it, I'm like, yeah, I got to get that. I just got to keep trying. And yeah. And, and now it's like, oh, if I don't reach that goal, I'm not even like worthy of being a new athlete coach.

Yeah, it's like it's, it's going to happen and it's just like once, once you start doing, then you know it's going to happen. And that's what I think the. We could see Lucas getting really close to his and he's, he's seeing, you know, you doing them. He's playing around with all those different variations. He's getting stronger in the basics. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's, it's, it's going to come when it's like that. And you see it a lot with CrossFit, you know, where they, they made a lot of things normal that weren't normal before. Doing bar muscle ups, you know, kipping muscle ups, the ring muscle ups, like those stuff you would never see anyone do. And then all of a sudden there's more than a million people have done CrossFit and probably, you know, whatever percentage, I don't know, half of them have probably done ring muscle ups. So something that seems like it's crazy. If it's normal within the community that you're part of, then you're probably going to do it. Yeah, you see it with the backflips and stuff as well. But yeah. Is there anything else you want to add around the handstand push up?

Oh, I think we covered pretty much all of it. Yeah.

Yeah. The different grips can help as well if you're getting any wrist pain. The parallettes are really useful tool on dumbbells.

Yeah, that's.

The wrists can take some time to adapt. They definitely did for me. I started all this stuff after 30, so if you're under 30, you're going to pick it up way faster than me. But yeah, the wrist can take a little bit of time. We have free access now to the new Athlete app, so you can come have a look at what we're doing. You can see some of the early records. There's tutorials to get you started on things like the handstand and juggling and various elements of the basics so you can come have a look, see what it's all about. We also have the membership now available. It is $290, but for the first who join, it's only $29. That gets you into the network. We get to see your goals and you get access to all of the leaderboards so you can start to be part of what we're doing. If you want programming, you want more support, obviously we can do that for you as well. But we've now made those available so you can click the link in the description. We've got people jumping in and we're building this network all around the world. That's the big dream, is to have people who understand new athlete and are doing it daily and want to pass it on to their friends, family, clients, children. The dream is coming alive. So if you'd like to be part of it, then click the link in the description.