Wednesday, June 22, 2011

How To Do Handstand Push Ups!! The Tutorial!!


Handstand push ups are an excellent test of upper body pressing strength. They're functional, challenging, and fun! However they're not the easiest exercise for most people to accomplish, and most people can't just flip upside down and start banging out a set of them. So lets look at how you too can work towards adding the handstand push up into your array of exercises.

Get Comfortable with Push Ups:

Getting comfortable with basic push ups is an absolute must! This means mastering the push up to the point where its no longer a challenge to you what so ever. You might also want to try Hindu push ups and dive bomber push ups like I've outlined in "The Body Weight Solution". Once you have these down, then you're ready to move to the next step!

Master Pike Push Ups:

Pike push ups are an excellent way to accustom your body to the pressures of handstand push ups. Try starting them with your feet on the ground at first, get comfortable with these and practice them until they're no longer a challenge for multiple reps. Once this has been accomplished try pike push ups with your feet elevated on a bench, bar, or ball.

Time To Go Upside Down:

You'll want to get comfortable holding your own body weight for long periods of time when upside down. So practice holding your hand stands for 1min each while up against the wall. Once you're able to hold your hand stand for at least 1min and you're performing multiple reps of feet elevated pike push ups, you'll be ready to try out the hand stand push up!

Tips:

The hand stand push up is no easy feat, try to keep your feet together as much as possible, control your body weight throughout the entire movement, and don't forget to breath! Come up slowly, a lot of blood will rush to your head and you don't want to get light headed or worse. Take your time, it's all about practice.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Dips: How To Progress, Achieve, and Challenge!!



Dips, along with pull ups and push ups, are one of my favourite exercises! The dip is an awesome exercise for targeting your upper body with an emphasis on the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Full body weight dips are an excellent exercise to master if you intend to strengthen and build muscle in the upper body or if you're looking to progress to more advanced upper body exercises. The dip (along with the pull up) is one of the "gate keepers" to actually being able to perform the ever elusive muscle up or weighted dips!

There are many schools of thought on how to progress towards performing the dip, in the video above I'll share with you the way that I have found most effective with my clients. It's much safer on the shoulders than a lot of other approaches and allows everyone to get a feel for full dips right from the get go!

The method I have detailed in the video involves using resistance bands laid across your dip bars, in this case my Lebert Equalizer is being used. You place your knee on the resistance band and as you lower your self through the movement the band will actually assist you by reducing the amount of body weight you have to push. It's very effective and so simple! Try it out, let me know what you think in the comments below!

- Tim

WWW.JUNGLE-FIT.COM

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