A rant on press handstand I made for a friend

0kpnfrMrepw

Just a short rant I made at night, nothing new here, and I'm sure I left out a lot

I thought it might help some people on this forum as well

Nice rant Yuri! Thanks for posting it.

I liked the Pineapple knock over, though i don't believe i can find a pineapple this time of year in Finland.

I just read Roman's thread and I remember that I meant to include one more assistance exercise in there.

Belly to the wall handstand, lean shoulders forward a bit and come back so you are working on forcefully opening the shoulder angle from a slightly planched, closed position

Helps a lot with more than just presses

Oh it's like that, i totally misunderstood :oops:

That does sound very effective.

Nice info! Thanks for posting it.

Thanks for the post, yuri!

Great info.. Thanks

I was just talking with one of coaches at the gym last week about press handstands. Now I have some sweet drills to roll into my handstand practice. Thanks

I went through all of your assistance exercises at the gym last night and loved it! I have actually been doing the sitting straddle lifts as a hip flexor/active flexibility helper for a while now so that was nothing new. The hands on the wall lying on your back open to closed straddle drill was the big winner of the drills in my opinion. After only a couple reps I knew what I was doing wrong when I used to work the press pre shoulder injury. So now I can literally get a fresh start on my presses with minimal ingrained bad habits because I lost the bad habits when I was forced to stop practicing due to the shoulder issue.

This was my first time since my injury working my presses and I actually felt quite stable doing the against the wall negatives. I had my head touch the wall a couple times and the last 6-12 inches before my feet touch the floor are challenging to control. I did the presses at the end of my handbalancing practice so I had a little fatigue built up but I think I made some decent headway on getting the 'feel.'

Thanks for the great tips.

My pleasure

Glad I could help

Yuri, you are a scholar and a gentleman. Thanks for the video. Really helped me with a certain sticking point in my HS.

Yuri, that rant has really helped me out. I did a freestanding straddle press (there was a slight hop) for the first time today. The movement drill on the back really made something click for me that i'd been totally missing.

Thanks!

My pleasure!

HAHAHA Yuri looks like a gangster/rapper on the pic of the video! Whatever, the video is very instructive!

Thanks Yuri, I really appreciate that and I'll be trying out some of those today.

Good stuff. Thank you.

I absolutely have to thank you, Yuri, for this. Worth a small bump.

Press handstands have eluded me, mostly in not understanding the technique of the press. We just had a 4-day weekend here, in which I stayed home to write an essay, and I broke up the time by banging out reps of your wall press drill every so often, probably at least 50-100 per day, regarding my feet on the wall as being on an embarassingly high box. Today I went outside and pike pressed to HS without momentum, locked arms and legs, off a hip-height box multiple times. I completely credit drilling the heck out of pulling with the traps and shoulders and learning how much to lean.

Thanks so much for taking the time, a few minutes of you webcamming made a big difference to me and filled some vital gaps. I have a strong enough base now to work towards pressing from the floor, where before I'd been spinning my wheels on it for literally years.

Looking forward to trying it on rings WAY before I'm even close to capable of it XD

Excellent work Charm, glad to be of service

Maybe I should make tutorial videos more often

Maybe!

And today I got 10 consecutive straddle presses at knee high box, and 5 consecutive pike presses at slightly below hip height. You're a hero Yuri. 0 to knee height in 2 weeks. My upper/mid back doesn't have a clue whats going on, but states it might be in love.

Now I'm getting ambitious. April goal- straddle press on the floor, pike not *too* far behind it I hope...

congrats, maybe you don't feel it but your lower back and shoulders are a lot stronger now.

congrats, maybe you don't feel it but your lower back and shoulders are a lot stronger now.

My lower back was ok, but the difference in my traps/shoulders is striking. Impatient to get it to the floor, then refine it~

Great progress

Make sure to post a video when you get it on the floor!

WOW! awesome Charm! I am still trying to do presses against the wall with little success, so i have been doing free standing negatives regularly. Wonderful progress though!

Cheers all I'm just excited and want to share my excitement. I've got my feet off the ground doing it on the floor, but not quite rolling the hips over to lift. Soon enough.

Ian-- I've dropped the wall presses for now, I will probably revisit them once I have it on the ground, but I feel the mechanics are quite different (hard to engage shoulders properly) and I wasn't progressing much with them. I also feel like my 'negatives' are too fast, so my approach to that is to kick to back-to-wall handstand about a foot away from the wall (so that I can catch myself if necessary but not put shoulders on wall), negative pike lower down, then press back up without putting feet on anything. I remember this drill mentioned in a few places on GBodies; I like it because it forces a correct shrug and lean while in the hs hold, otherwise I just fall (due to not locking my shoulders into a chest roll/negative bower position). Good luck with yours if you have better scapula/traps control than me maybe you can do better with the wall presses than I can...