Now that we’re in the “Off Season” for CrossFit it’s a great chance to break down our movements and start again.
Two commons errors we see in the Strict Handstand Push Up are elbows flaring and arching the back to achieve the press out.
When we let the elbows flare, we’re not building strength. The cue here is to focus on squeezing the elbows together during the descent. This will absolutely make you feel weaker at first. It is building the muscle and allows you to train strength for deficit HSPU, parallettes, ring dips, etc.
Secondly we arch to shorten the range of motion and use our pecs more. This is fine in a competitive setting. In training, we want to build technique so the aim is to focus on looking across the room, rather than at the floor during the pressing phase.