What’s up, guys? In the first few years of my calisthenics journey,
I mainly focused on training pulling skills. Eventually I achieved the one-arm pull-up,
which is a level 9 skill according to Overcoming Gravity. However, pulling is just half of what
calisthenics is about. I had been avoiding the other half, which is pushing, because my pushing
strength was pretty much zero since I had never trained for it for my entire life. I mean it when
I said my pushing strength was pretty much zero. Even doing the normal push-up for a few reps was
difficult for me. However, in order to become more well-rounded in calisthenics, I finally decided to
face my weakness and train my push strength. In order to keep myself motivated, I needed to set
a goal to aim for myself. Initially, I thought about goals like doing 20 push-ups in a row,
but honestly, that’s a boring goal. Since I am a one-rep-max type of guy, I decided to set the bent
arm press handstand as my goal. As we all know, the muscle-up is the first non-basic pulling skill
that everyone learns, and according to Overcoming Gravity, the muscle-up is a level 5 skill. The
bent arm press handstand is also a level 5 skill. Therefore, I assumed that the bent arm
press handstand would be a great first non-basic pushing skill to aim for. I learned the muscle-up
in 35 days, so how bad could learning the bent arm press handstand be, right? Apparently,
I greatly underestimated what 10 years of casual rock climbing experience did to me when I learned
to muscle up. As I started from completely zero, it took me 703 days to learn a non-basic pushing
skill like the bent arm press handstand. I know this is not impressive at all, but in this video,
I will share with you the mistakes I made and also the intricate details that I went through
and weren’t mentioned anywhere else on YouTube. As usual, I started by watching as many tutorial
videos on YouTube as possible, and all of them unanimously suggested the pike push-up as the
first exercise to work on. The pike push-up looks easy, but it is actually incredibly hard to do it
right. Here is what my pike push-up looks like on day 1. The form is absolutely terrible. My elbows
couldn’t stay in line with my wrists, my scapula was retracted, and my feet and hands were too far
apart. The only thing I did right here is I didn’t chicken wing my elbows. My body naturally reacted
this way to ensure as much of my weight was on the left side as possible in order to reduce the load
on my weak shoulders. The form got better over time as I continued to train and train and train.
Eventually it got to a point where I thought the form was correct but when in reality it still
wasn’t yet, and I thought I was ready for the next progression. Therefore, I rushed to do exercises
with higher intensity, such as the elevated pike push-up or the chest-to-wall handstand push-up.
Since I couldn’t do these exercises with the correct form and the intensity was too high
for my body, I ended up injuring something in a few weeks. Fortunately, these kinds of injuries
often heal in about two weeks, unlike finger injuries from climbing, which will need a year
to heal. However, unfortunately, this relatively fast recovery time also made me think it was okay
to push myself over my limits again and again since the consequence wasn’t that bad. Therefore,
I was constantly in the cycle of doing exercises with high intensity that my body wasn’t ready for,
getting injured, and taking a few weeks off to get healed. I experienced injuring my wrists,
shoulders, triceps, and serratus anterior. I think I pretty much injured all possible
muscles that could be injured during the process. Regardless, training non-optimally
is still better than zero training, I was still able to make progress very slowly. Eventually,
on day 159 I was finally able to hit the first significant milestone, which was
being able to elevate my legs up for the first time for my bent arm press handstand attempts.
oh man! I continued to train, train,
and train
However, no matter how hard I attempted to train the bent arm press handstand and chest-to-wall
handstand push-ups, I didn’t make any progress. Holding the bent arm position already felt max
effort, and pushing myself up from bent arms to straight arms felt impossible given my strength
level. At this point, I thought that I needed to find a better way to train my overhead pushing
strength. When I trained for the one-arm pull-up, I was able to train with the right intensity and
increase the intensity incrementally by using resistance bands. However, it seems impossible
to have an equivalent resistance band setup for the bent arm press handstand that will
allow me to train with the right intensity and increase the intensity incrementally. Eventually
I decided to train the overhead press because the arm movement looks exactly like the bent arm press
handstand. The only difference is that one stands straight up and the other is upside down. However,
when I actually trained it, I found they were obviously different. In the overhead press,
my scapula is supposed to be retracted but in the bent arm press handstand,
my scapula is supposed to be protracted. As for the starting position of the overhead press,
my hands are supposed to be close to my chest, but for the starting position of the bent arm press
handstand, my hands are far away from my chest. However, I couldn’t think of a better option,
and since I can train the overhead press with the right intensity and increase the intensity
incrementally, I still decided to train it. When I first started, I could only push 75 lbs, which
is 56% of my bodyweight. I continued to train, train and train. It still felt impossible to push
myself up from bent arms to straight arms. Since nothing seemed to be working, I started training
randomly with stuff like dips, push-ups, and planche variations with the hope that
something would stick, and of course those kinds of training didn’t help at all. It was extremely
frustrating. When I trained for the muscle-up and one-arm pull-up, I could feel soreness in my back
muscles during training and after training, but when I trained for the bent arm press handstand,
I didn’t feel any soreness in my shoulders. The only thing I felt in my shoulders was weakness.
It was as if my shoulders simply refused to generate any force without trying. It was a
very abstract feeling, but you will know what I mean if you also went through a similar journey.
This lack of soreness in my shoulders also made me worry whether my shoulders were actually getting
stronger or not. At this time, I had a chance to talk to Sondre Berg. Sondre told me that the bent
arm press handstand is easier than the handstand push-up because my arms don't need to be strong
enough to push my entire bodyweight since there’s a momentum from the hip drive when the lower
body is going up while doing the bent arm press handstand. He suggested that I try out the tripod
tuck headstand to handstand and kick the legs up really hard to understand what the momentum feels
like. I tried it out, and I finally had an idea of what it felt like to go from bent arms to straight
arms when the legs weren’t touching the wall. It felt completely new. I also decided to stop
training the chest-to-wall handstand push-up, because when I tried doing the chest-to-wall
handstand push-up on top of a scale, I realized the wall only took off around 10 percent of my
bodyweight and yet I could somewhat do it. My intuition told me the momentum from the hip drive
took off more than 10 percent of my bodyweight and yet I couldn’t do it. The only logical explanation
is that I was doing the chest-to-wall handstand push-up in a very bad form, so it was actually
not a real chest-to-wall handstand push-up. Though I didn’t fully understand what was wrong
with my form at that time, given the fact that the tripod tuck headstand to handstand felt so
different from my chest-to-wall handstand push-up, I knew the form gotta be wrong somehow. I trained,
trained,
and trained.
I tried to progressively overload by reducing the momentum from the hip drive little by little.
Although this felt like one step in the right direction, it was still very difficult to control
the intensity precisely especially when I also needed to worry about balancing. At this time,
I also had a chance to talk to Eric from Frinksmovement. Eric told me that I could work
on the half rep tripod headstand to handstand. He explained that the more we bend our elbows,
the more difficult it is to push ourselves up. Therefore, it will be easier to preform
the bent arm press handstand if our elbows are bent as little as possible. That was also why
at the time I should focus on just half rep of the tripod headstand to handstand
since the full rep wasn’t necessary. If we feel like we need to bend the elbows more,
otherwise the legs won’t come up, we should achieve so by leaning forward more instead.
He also recommended that I still train the pike push-up, but modify it by doing it with my feet
against the wall. This way I will know for sure the distance between my feet and hands,
so I can track the intensity of my pike push-ups and ensure I don’t unconsciously
lower the intensity someday by lengthening the distance between my feet and hands. I trained,
trained,
and trained.
On day 401, I finally achieved the second significant milestone,
which was being able to push myself up from bent arms to straight arms. Oh!
However, I undershot most of my attempts even though I was training in front of a
wall. Additionally, my wrists still got injured occasionally. I tried turning the wrists out 45
degrees as if I was planching to see if that would solve my wrist problem, but it didn't.
I tried training with parallettes occasionally to see if that would solve my wrist problem,
but it also didn’t. At this time, I talked to my brother about my progress, and he pointed
out a very subtle common mistake in my pike push-ups, chest-to-wall handstand push-ups,
and my bent arm press handstand attempts. When I first trained the pike push-up,
my body naturally retracted the scapula, moved the elbows out of the wrist line,
and lengthened the distance between the feet and hands in order to reduce the load on the
shoulders. I forced my body to fight against these to correct the form, but apparently there was one
more key point that was missing, which is I put all my weight on the lower part of my palms when
doing all these moves, and this was most likely the main cause of my wrist pain. This is another
natural reaction from my body because when I put my weight on the lower part of my palms,
less weight will be shifted over to my shoulders, so the load on my shoulders is reduced. However,
this causes my fingers not to be that engaged, and all the load falls onto my wrists. The
correct approach is to consciously distribute my weight onto my fingers. I tried what my
brother said for the first time, although my form doesn’t look like it's changing much on camera,
in reality I could feel a huge difference in the shift of the center of mass. From this point on,
wrist injuries also stopped happening, and I could feel the progress speeding up. Additionally, my
brother also advised me to improve my flexibility by working on the forward fold. Although I
was flexible enough to touch my feet with my palms, it was fairly max effort. As a result,
I couldn’t generate a lot of pushing force in that position since I was on the verge of cramping. I
either had to start in a position where the feet and hands were pretty far apart, leading to the
need to lean forward a lot, which causes excessive pressure on the shoulders, or ended up lifting my
legs too early during my bent arm press handstand attempts because they were about to cramp,
instead of lifting my legs at the right timing because my center of mass shifted towards the
middle. Improving flexibility is as important as improving overhead pushing strength to achieve the
bent arm press handstand. I started to incorporate forward fold training into my routine. I trained,
trained,
and trained.
I was making a lot of progress, but balancing when I went from bent arms to straight arms was still a
bit tricky. Regardless, on day 526, I finally had a kind of successful attempt in front of the wall.
Oh my God, for the first time! I decided to start training off the wall. It wasn’t easy
to learn the balance. The main difficulty was that I only had about 3 good tries per session
before my shoulders gassed out and started collapsing during the movement. Learning the
balance in only 3 tries is very difficult. I remember when I learned the kick-up handstand,
I used to have at least 20 good tries per session. Balancing the kick-up handstand and balancing the
bent arm press handstand are also a bit different. It’s not easy to figure out what the right amount
of lean is. I wanted to lean as little as my flexibility would allow me to, but there was
a slight variance in how flexible I was each day. It is also not easy to figure out the right timing
and speed to kick the legs up. I wanted to kick up as slow as my shoulders would allow me to,
since it was easier to balance when my lower body was relatively under more control. However, again,
there was a slight variance in how strong my shoulders felt each day. It is also not easy
to figure out the pushing direction. I was still not at the point where my lower body
was going up under complete control. Therefore, sometimes my legs overshot. If I simply pushed up,
I would lose my balance immediately. Besides pushing up, I needed to push back with the
right amount in order to counterbalance. It’s also not easy to keep the elbows in line with
the wrists during the entire pushing motion. This kind of overhead pressing motion was still
fairly max effort for me, so a lot of times my body naturally wanted to move the elbows
out of line for the wrists to reduce the load, which caused my body to undershoot. I trained,
and trained,
and trained. My body was slowly learning how to
balance the bent arm press handstand. Eventually, on day 703, this happened.
Yes!
I did it! I did it! Yeah [Applause] Hoohoo!
While I was in the middle of editing this video,
I still continued to train the bent arm press handstand to see if I could
have an attempt where I would balance for more than 5 seconds, and this happened.
This has to be five seconds right guys? It felt like that gotta be 5 seconds,
but after reviewing the footage, I realized I was less than a second short. However,
I continued to train and train and train, and this happened.
Ya!
Yes! That has to be at least five maybe ten seconds guys. That has to be. Hoo!
To recap, knowing what I know currently, here is what I would recommend to everyone to train
the bent arm press handstand. First, train the pike push-up with the correct form and
feet against the wall and progressively shorten the distance between the feet and hands. Second,
once you can elevate your feet and turn the pike push-up into the starting position of the bent
arm press handstand, start adding tripod tuck headstand to handstand and the half rep tripod
headstand to handstand to your training. Third, once you have a successful attempt in front of
the wall, start attempting the bent arm press handstand off the wall to learn the balance,
and you will eventually get it. Of course, you have to work on your forward fold flexibility
in parallel to all these, and you might even accidentally unlock the straight arm press
handstand first if you are the kind of person who progresses faster on flexibility work instead
of strength work. You might be wondering why I didn’t mention the frog stand or the crow stand,
which is mentioned in almost every single tutorial on YouTube. Even among the experts I talked to,
such as Sondre, Eric, and my brother, they all unanimously recommended that I work on the frog
stand or crow stand and press up from there as an intermediate progression. For some reason,
maybe it’s due to my body composition. When I put my knees on top of my elbows, my torso felt super
tight and my arms felt like they couldn’t generate much force because my knees were on top of them.
It never felt useful to me at any point of my journey, though I kept coming back to try it at
different points of my journey because of the strong recommendations from all the experts. I
don’t know why, but my best guess is it’s because I have stick arms, yeah, so my knees don't really
fit sitting on top of them. Lastly, I almost gave up on learning the bent arm press handstand. I
set the goal for myself to learn this at least before my son was born because I thought it would
be impossible for me to learn this anymore after I became a dad. Oh yo gotta be kidding me. God.
It was incredibly mentally deflating when I did not reach this goal. For
the first few months when I became a dad, it was incredibly hectic. I even started
having nosebleeds during my handstand attempts, which was most likely due to my lack of sleep,
and my body condition going downhill. Somehow, someway, I found the willpower to continue to
train for this and somehow, someway, I still made progress and eventually achieved the
bent arm press handstand and made this video for you. If this isn’t enough to make you like,
share, and subscribe, I don’t know what I am continuing doing YouTube for. Like, subscribe,
and share this video. Comment below and let me know what skill you want to see me learn next.