Interesting ideas… I wonder how the Hollywood media would portray this?…

Now, I did completely cheat in one respect: I can’t do a handstand to save my life. My technique was to start facing away from the wall, getting into a push-up position, and walking my legs up the wall/my hands towards the wall until I was vertical.

Developing the HSPU is like developing the pull-up: you use assistance, and you tweak the body’s position. Most people assume a pike position (bent at the waist) while putting their feet (or knees) up on a chair or jump box. Thus they try to get the torso vertical to the ground, and then do push-ups along the vertical plane of the torso. Better forms of assistance come from looping the legs over a stationary bar, and of course a talented partner.

CrossFit does many workouts including the HSPU. For those who cannot do HSPU, I see them trying to ’substitute’ a prolonged handstand. Doing prolonged handstands is, in itself, a fantastic exercise. The problem is: a crossfit workout is ‘for time,’ and when substituting a prolonged handstand, the athlete tries to stay in the handstand for as long as possible. This is a little backwards: the stronger I become at holding my handstand, the longer the time of my workout, which means: the lower my score. The reason we do crossfit WODs “for time” is to motivate power, i.e. work / time, aka intensity and metabolic impact. Even if you don’t care about competing against others — this includes most people, I believe — how do you monitor your own progress, if getting better means the HSPU portion of your workout keeps getting longer while the other elements keep getting faster?

I solved this problem, and also created a workout just for people who cannot yet do handstand push-ups. You’re welcome. Yes, you’re going to hate these workouts. In a good way.