How to Do a Handstand Push up + More

One of my favorite clients, mentioned how she struggled with a handstand push up so I thought it’d be a good idea to share this tip on how to do a handstand push up.

 

The first step is to work on the handstand. You don’t need to be able to do this unassisted, go ahead and start learning this with someone holding your feet, or better yet, up against the wall.

Make sure to weight the finger tips more than the palm and heel of the hand.

Then go to an assisted handstand push up.

Loop two bands over a pull up bar. Loop the bottom band thru your arms and drop your hands to the floor in a hand stand position. Kick up and balance your legs on the band above you. Try to do a push up and you’ll find it much easier since you have the assist from the band.

After you master a handstand, throw that in with a burpee to do a handstand burpee….of course you could then add the handstand push up to the burpee…but that’s a video for another day 🙂

PS. Want more burpee ideas? Go here.

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Question: My knees are a wreck. I’ve never had any knee injury and don’t understand why they’re so achy.

Answer: Here’s a surprising solution that may help your knee pain:

Solving Knee Pain at the Hip

By Eric Wong

Author: 3 FREAKY Flexibility Techniques to Unlock Your Tight Hips bad-knees-cause-symptom

A lot of people who do squats, lunges, or play sports like soccer that involve sprinting or do martial arts have problems with their knees.

Maybe not full-blown injuries, but just irritation that makes these movements painful, but bearable.

And they’ll go about trying to treat the knees to fix the problem…

Well what if I told you it wasn’t your knees that were the problem, but your hips?

You see, the knee is designed for stability. They move like a door except instead of opening and closing, it’s called flexion and extension.

Your hips, on the other hand, are designed for mobility, just like a shower head that can spray water any which way. They’re designed to move in any and all directions: flexion, extension, out to the side and back and rotation.

Unfortunately, modern living keeps us locked in chairs all day and we lose some of this flexibility. Then, when you do something that requires it, if you don’t have it, you compensate either at the knees or the low back.

That’s why if you’ve got bad knees or low back pain, you always have to address your hip flexibility – if you don’t, you’re just treating the SYMPTOM, not the ROOT CAUSE.

If this all makes sense to you, grab my free report where you’ll discover 3 techniques you’ve probably never seen before that will restore the full 360 degree range of motion in your hips:

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Another client asked for a complex warm up, so I made this video. This is an excellent full body warm up, make sure to use light dumb bells. If you want to make this into a workout, once you’re warm, go ahead and grab some heavier dumb bells and go to town.

If you’re looking for a full body warm up that warms up every muscle group. Check out this one below.

Grab a LIGHT set of dumb bells.
Start in the standing position with the dumb bells at your sides.
Drop to a high plank.
Do a push up.
Do a renegade row, one per arm.
Do a spider crawl, one per leg.
Squat thrust legs towards hands.
Stand up doing a deadliest.
Bicep curl to front squat.
Do a push press then bring the dumb bells to the sides again.

Repeat this circuit for 2 min.

Include arm circles and leg circles both directions.

If you like this, you’ll love my Challenge Complexes program, check it out here.

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Question: How MUCH protein should I be getting on daily basis? protein

Answer: I’m going to let my Canadian friend and pro fitness model, Vince Delmonte answer this one…if you don’t have time to read all of this now, simply go here now.

Like so many health and fitness topics, the contradictory advice and conflicting studies are everywhere. So let me simplify it for you.

First of all, protein itself is vital to living. In fact, you could go months, even years without eating carbs  (NOT recommended – of course), and still survive and keep on living. But if you eliminate protein, it would only take a few weeks before your muscles would atrophy (shrink drastically) and your internal organs would literally start to deteriorate. So basically, you would start to die.

With all this being said, too much of a good thing can still be harmful. But in most cases, I find the majority of active folks don’t get enough high quality protein. Keep in mind, if you’re exercising intensely on a regular basis your protein demands will be MUCH higher than somebody who is sedentary.

Protein works in synergy with weight training and high intensity exercise to stimulate higher protein synthesis, which means higher protein needs for exercisers who want to lose fat and gain muscle.

Some examples…

  • Intense exercisers wanting to burn fat = 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight daily…
  • Intense exercisers wanting to gain muscle = 1.5 grams per pound of lean body weight (larger, more advanced individuals could even go higher)
  • Moderate exercisers looking to maintain or burn fat = .75 grams per pound of lean body weight…
  • Sedentary person = .5 grams of protein per pound of lean body weight

This is NOT one-side-fits-all or an exact science, but it gives you a great guideline to follow without being confused.

Most studies and research done on protein synthesis (i.e. uptake and absorption) seems to show that sedentary people really don’t need much more than 20 grams per serving…Whereas guys like me will consume up to 50 grams per serving in our post workout window, when absorption rate seems to be the highest.

IMPORTANT HEALTH WARNING ABOUT PROTEIN

Make SURE you “Go Alkaline”.

If you hammer down too much protein on a daily basis for long periods of time, you can stress out your adrenal glands and overwork your kidneys, while you make your body VERY acidic. At least two or three times a year, go on a protein “fast” for 2 or 5 days straight, and replace your protein intake with high quality,proven juicing recipes.

This will filter out your liver and kidneys and give them a much-needed break, which will also help you avoid excessive acidity and high levels of inflammation. When you keep your body alkaline, you’re guaranteed to absorb more of the nutrients your body needs so you continue to lose fat and gain quality muscle.

If you don’t make sure to AVOID an acidic environment, you’ll simply NEVER get results.

juice product group vinceVince has been working on the ULTIMATE guide to STOP your body from going “acidic”. CAUTION: Do NOT let the name of this guide “fool” you. It’s called GET JUICED”.

And although Vince has just released it to the muscle building world, I believe every man and woman should own a copy of this guide. It’s what’s “missing” from people’s nutrition plans and I truly believe it can help ANY man or woman, of ANY age, burn more fat, gain more muscle, and dramatically improve your health. In fact, Vince teamed up with the world’s TOP expert in this field, Drew Canole, and he has over a million fans and followers using this new method:

STOP your body from being “acidic” (the MISSING link to fat loss and muscle)

I have recently started using this fast, an easy method to RESET our digestive systems and keep our bodies “alkaline” on a daily basis.

Check it out HERE.

 

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Happy Halloween! Sev was very sweet to the princesses that came to the door, but he scared off a werewolf. Seriously, I thought he was going to chase the werewolf down the steps 😉 (good dog!).

Sev Pirate