This movement tops milestone lists amongst CrossFitters, along with the muscle up, sub-3 min Fran time, and 2x BW deadlift to name a few. The handstand push up involves serious full body strength, keeping the body rigid in a handstand while pressing your bodyweight up, which is why this is also the movement that is the most butchered in WODs.

Most serious butchering involves:

• Hands are as far apart as a snatch grip:  The hand width should be shoulder width, or SLIGHTLY wider.  Too often you see people with their hands so wide, their HSPUs involve only 2 inches in their range of motion (ROM).   Plus, a wide hand position lessens the integrity of the handstand itself, which brings us to…
• Poor handstand position:  Arching of the back, or closing of the shoulders.  Since we do the HSPUs against a wall, too often we see people using it as a crutch instead of assistance.  What’s the difference?  A proper handstand involves full body rigidity, with legs pressed together and toes pointed.  Everything is flexed:  arms, traps, abs, glutes, calves, toenails.  Your body is in a hollow position (think hollows in our warm ups), and your head is neutral.
• Shorting the range of motion:  This one is pretty self explanatory.  Abmats will be allowed if you can still touch your head to the floor.  However, you’ll never achieve a full ROM HSPU unless you do (you guessed it) a full ROM HSPU.  That’s where bands come into play.  Bands are an excellent way of training your HSPUs.  You can decrease the assistance as needed by using thinner bands as you progress.  Negatives also will help build your strength.
• Kipping:  Unlike a kipping pull up, which I consider an altogether different movement from a strict pull up,  a kipping HSPU is just a poor way to circumvent building strength.  The point of a HSPU is to do a push up while in a handstand.   To me, it’s just as ridiculous as a kipping push up.

Today we’ll be doing Diane, which involves 45 handstand push ups.   If you’re taking a minute to do each HSPU, push your ego to the side and use the bands.   We’re shooting for a time of 7 minutes to achieve the intensity the WOD was created for, so scale accordingly.

WOD 05.14.10

Back Squat 3×5

Diane

• 21-15-9

• Deadlifts
• Handstand Push Ups