 Welcome back to the Squall Calisthenics, it's Tim and Jacko, and today Tim is going to tell us... This is the best Calisthenics exercise ever! It's a handstand push-up! So Tim, tell us what this amazing exercise is and why we're doing it? It's the wall handstand push-up. When I started learning to handstand, I did a ton of this, partly because I didn't know any better, but it actually, because it's one of the most effective exercises and it helped me to build a real good foundation of pushing strength for my handstand training. And what we're finding now is a lot of people want to learn the frog-to-handstand movement, but that's actually not strong enough in the vertical pushing movement. Pipe push-ups are only going to get you so far and at some point you're going to need to put some wall handstands in your push-ups in your program if you're going to start to convert the strength from the tuck in the frog stand to the extended full handstand position. Yeah, and it depends where you want to take your handstand training like. It's one of the most popular things that people want to learn with us, and I too wanted to learn the handstand, but my long-term goal wasn't just to learn to handstand, it was actually I wanted to do handstand push-ups because they've been called, and so a couple of prerequisites on that is you need to be able to hold a handstand away from the wall and they need to be strong enough to do wall handstand push-ups, so then you just try and put those two things together. But it's not an easy thing, right? You're going to shift your body weight vertical pushing up against one about 73, 74 kilos. That's a decent amount of weight. So we've got some tricks and some tips to show you how to progress and get this one in the locker. So before you get started with your wall handstand push-up training, you should be able to do a competent wall kick-up into a handstand and make a nice long straight alignment making sure technique is on point with those. You should also progress an elevated pike push-up position which enables you to get the hips higher and stack those over the shoulders. You can see there's a much more vertical pushing pattern, and this is a real easy progression that you can move towards before you take yourself up into the full wall handstand. So get those two things nailed down before you begin. So the first thing in your wall handstand push-up, you've kicked up into the wall, you've made a good shape, and I'm just going to review the coaching points. We're locking this midsection down, we're keeping the bum tight, and we're staying nice and strong. We don't want to see the back arching and creeping into this bent banana back position through any of these movements as we go forwards. The first one we're going to focus on is actually working through the available range. So Jacko might not be strong enough to take his head all the way to the ground. So what he can do is lower down to as far as he feels he can go, and then he's going to push back out. The real key thing here is these elbows are facing behind just like in a pipe push-up. We don't want to see the elbows splaying out to the side. Working through available range means you can still hit some decent volume of reps and sets, but you're actually just working through a range where you've got strength and your job is week on week to try and take that a little bit lower until you can progressively get all the way down to the head to the floor. The next tool from the locker is the eccentric. So this is just going to start to focus on the deceleration phase. So Jacko does his kick-up as before. He makes his nice long straight shape, and then his job is to take a slow ride down to the bottom, working for about five seconds as he goes all the way down, really controlling that deceleration. The human body or muscle will be able to decelerate more force that can accelerate. So in this position, you're able to lower yourself back down even though you can't push yourself back up to the top. So just as Jacko did, then he's lowering himself to the floor, he then comes back down, does the kick-up again, and starts to put again some reps in the tank, which are going to help him to build some more global strength, which he can then convert into that full range of movement exercise. The last one we're going to use is an isometric and another tool from our locker. This is just going to hold a stationary point. So Jacko's going to go back to what he did before in the first exercise, work through the available range that he's got, and then he's going to lower down to the bottom point where he feels like he can't go any lower. His job then is to push as hard as he can for five, four, three, two, one, and then he can drop his legs down. In that isometric hold at the bottom, we're actually able to start to stimulate strength adaptation at 15 degrees above and below that position. So even though he's not quite at the floor, he's actually building strength which is going to convert into using that through a more complete range of movement. The real key for this one is you have to work hard, push the floor like you're trying to push it down and then so hard, maximum effort, and that is going to start to, you're going to feel like you're shaking, but it's going to start to really put a nice adaptation of stimulus in those shoulders. So we don't call this guy head of handstands at Squall Catex for nothing. He's going to show us the full thing and there may be a little bit of something extra. The key point on this is, when we're going to get the strength to go back up, is socks on and heels against the wall and making sure you allow them to slide when you drive back up. So Tim controls down, head goes slightly forward, it goes to the floor, kills it, and then drives back up. Keeping midsection nice and tight and pushes everything goes up in a nice straight line rather than getting to the bottom feeling weak and then losing that position of that arch coming in and sometimes that can be because your feet are just struggling to get up the wall. So make sure you keep that nice and tight as you drive and feel that sliding action of your heels against the wall. Deep, very deep, very deep, very deep. Handstands are deep, much deeper than you think. Now you got it. If you want to go and get super strong, the available range of motion when you're only using the floor is limited by the fact that as you come down your head is going to touch it but as you get up on the little parallel bars you've got all that space to take the head lower then than it is than the floor and then we drive back out of those deep positions. That's you increasing your strength by going through deeper ranges of motion that are going to help that frog to handstand progression somewhat magnificently. So if you're anything like us you're going to A think handstand push-ups are cool, B think handstand push-up and handstand training is fun and enjoyable and C, you're going to want to try and impress some of your friends as well. Yeah, so if you want to get that frog to handstand you've got to get strong. We've called our handstand guide the strength edition. This is the reason why pushing from that frog to handstand is the biggest thing that people lack when they say to them, why can't I do a frog to handstand? Truth is probably not strong enough to get these in your program that's going to take care of that issue. Just remember to always train with good form. Handstand push-ups can force you into that banana back. We don't want to put excessive pressure on the lumbar spine by breaking it in the back getting into that banana shape that we talked about. So keep it safe, keep it progressive and work at a range and a level which you can control with perfect technique. Yeah, so with us you're going to have some fun getting strong and that's the main thing. So until next week class dismissed.