Get a Freestanding Handstand

The handstand is an awesome exercise for anybody, it helps your jerk if you are a weightlifter, your bench if you are a power lifter. It also puts a lot of stress on the deltoids and the triceps. There are so many benefits to this exercise, so I will make an article soon on the full list of things it can help you out with, they also look really cool.

A lot of keyboard idiots will say that the wall assisted handstand (hs) and handstand push up (hspu) will give you just as much of a strength benefit as the freestanding variations, this could not be farther from the truth, if you have ever tried a freestanding hspu you will know what I am talking about, it will challenge the grip, core, back, as well as hit the arms and shoulders that much harder. Also, imagine having to find a wall every time you want to show off your sweet handstand, I've been there, it's not as cool.

If I am going to be completely honest, the hs is a grinding exercise, you will have to do 100s, and eventually it will click and you will have it. But there are some exercises that you can try out to monitor your progress, these are listed below. If you want you can work towards each progression in order until you can hold it for 10-20 seconds, then move onto the next. Alternatively, you can just use them to see how you are doing.

1. Frog stand
2. Chest to wall handstand
3. Kick up to handstand against wall
4. Back to wall handstand
5. Forearm stand against wall (make sure you have flexible lats)
6. Forearm handstand free standing
7. Handstand with one leg against wall
8. Kick off wall for 6, 5 second handstands (hands about 1ft away from the wall)
9. Kick up to freestanding handstand

The most important thing to learn when it comes to getting a hs is learning to kick up, I read a book that will explain it much better then I ever could, so I will put a screenshot down below,

The overall key points are:

• lean forward
• first leg goes up in an arc, second leg comes in to your body and straight up, it does not go in an arc like he first

After a long time of grinding, I have found some cues that will help you hold a handstand, the idea is to over do it on the kick up, then balance out with muscular effort. Important things to remember.

• Brace your abs
• Keep your fingers spread out and 'dig' them into the ground 
• put your lats in your front pockets/ round your shoulders forward and spread your lats (protract the scapular)
• keep feet together and legs straight
• Once you have found your balance, shift your shoulders forward slightly, as if you are about to drop into a planche. (this will give you more control).

Hope this helps,

Enjoy the gains

Alex

Around the world - more interesting than cardio

Around the worlds are a training method developed by bar hitters in New York. The original idea consisted of push ups, pull ups and dips, 10 reps per exercise with up to and beyond 40 sets.

Sounds a lot like metabolic conditioning. So if we take this idea and put our own exercises in, but making sure that we hit the whole body, you have a work out that will make you stronger, improve GPP and burn a hell of a lot of calories depending on the exercises and the volume that you do it.

For example, today I did a circuit of one arm chins (2 reps), pistol squats(3-5 reps) and press to handstands (1 rep) for 6 rounds, and i got an effective work out in 20 minutes, and it hit my conditioning as well, jsut doing each exercise one after the other with as little rest as possible.

You can pick any 3 exercises: calisthenics, barbell work, strongman, even some isolation exercises if you want to bring up a lagging body part.

If you are training strength movements, as I am, and still want to train like this, I would recommend adding in a 'spacer exercise' or 2 to help you rest between sets, for example, I was training around the worlds yesterday, with handstand presses (1 rep) and one arm chins (2 reps). I added in a set of bulgarian split squats to help me rest more between sets. A 'spacer exercise' should be relatively easy and can be done for high reps, push ups or skipping are also good exercises



I hope this helps if you are stuck for a workout, remember, be creative, and enjoy the time away from the world, this work out can also really help clear your head.

Enjoy the gains
Alex

You want a 500 lb bench what??

Here I am going to be laying out my long term upper body strength goals (aim to get this aged 25, so 7 years), for my lower body I have not chosen to have any serious long term goals, I wouldn’t mind being able to dunk within a year, but apart from that I am just going to have fun and see how much I can squat. All of these targets will seem pretty far fetched, but you can’t hit anything without aiming at something. So here they are:
500 lb bench press: I don’t know how much I have to weigh to get this as a natural athlete, or if it has even been done before, for now, my main pushing strength I will be working planche and handstand push ups. But I will incorporate partial bench presses working up to 500lbs and slowly increasing the ROM over the 7 years. But I will be very careful of elbow pain and will progress at a very slow pace, it will not be my primary focus for now.
100 one arm pull ups (50 each side) ok, this one is straight out crazy, Jasper Benincasa could do 25 on each side, alternating arms each rep, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll go for twice that,  I am planning on doing this through steady state cycles, slowly increasing the number of reps as the cycles progress. Once I get 10 each side, I may have to get more creative, maybe do some west-side style training, I don’t know, I will think about it closer to the time.

100 Full planche push ups: This is going to be a challenge, I am currently doing crooked planche push ups (below), or about 10 reps, so I will aim to get 100 of those and work from there, to try and get my work capacity up before i do it in harder movements such as the full planche.

120kg strict curl: I am a torso dominant athlete, and so my arms have always lagged behind, After seeing Denis Cyplenkov do it, I thought I had to at least give it a go, I will go over how I plan on doing this in the near future

Enjoy the gains
Alex