Please don’t kip in your handstand push ups

@emilysmith I like them because this is controlled and you aren’t repeatedly touching the ground with your head. The impact is very low.

Plus being inverted occasionally is great for circulation.
 
@channel7 I agree. I like handstand push ups I do them kipping and strict. Always on a one inch mat. I think doing them responsible is fine they aren’t meant to not have the controlled negative.

But this is up to the person some people just don’t care to learn things properly or no when they don’t have the ROM for movements like this. Isn’t this any issue with any kind of workout program?
 
@channel7 I screwed up my neck kipping on HSPU a couple of years ago. I couldn't turn my head for a few weeks. Eventually I got better and about a year later a coach convinced me to give it another shot. Felt fine during class but the next day my neck was screwed up again. After that I decided to stop doing kipping HSPU forever.

With that being said I see plenty of people do them with no issues. I don't think they should stop - I just acknowledge that they aren't for me.
 
@steve8524 You’re a man for admitting that buddy. I just don’t think the reward they offer is greater than the risk provided. Plus a lot of people hide those “small” injuries like kinks in their neck.
 
@channel7 Can you imagine watching someone doing a push press or even strict press with the start/end location being the top of your head instead of the front rack? Coaches in my gym would (and should) freak out about that. I don't understand why it's acceptable to do it as a body weight movement just because you are upside down.
 
@channel7 I agree with you, I was a coach for 4 years at an affiliate and I hated them, both doing them myself and coaching others to do them. This is a movement that should never be performed under fatigue as the potential for injury increases exponentially with how tired the average athlete gets in a WOD, and to that end I was always extremely worried about my athletes doing them in workouts, as I didn't have control over programming. I would often tell them to stop once they failed a couple reps (even one rep sometimes) and go to strict DB presses to save their c-spines. I also had a PT that did CrossFit that was helping me with a shoulder injury and she wouldn't touch kipping HSPU with a 10 ft pole and I can't blame her. I would support the elimination of kipping HSPU in WODs, and feel personally that the average crossfitter would benefit more by working just strict HSPU as part of a structured skill and strength development program independent of WODs.
 
@channel7 I agree with you to some extent. I think that:

- we should all do strict HSPU in our everyday training;

- and we should only practice kipping HSPU around competitions.

Same goes for pull-ups.
 
@christiangirl1995 I've done this for the past year, almost all of my gymnastics training is strict (pull-ups, hspu, dips, muscle-ups), and as a result I definitely feel both stronger and safer when doing wods with kipping in them.
 
@christiangirl1995 This is most likely the correct approach. We should practice kipping as a skill and only use it sporadically outside of competitions and continue to develop strict skills in our regular training
 
@channel7 I've been Crossfitting for a long time. This has been kicking around in my head for awhile and your post just brought it out of me. Please bear with the wall of text. I'm open to any criticism or dissenting opinions.

OP, you are absolutely correct in your reasoning. Kipping handstand pushups are more dangerous than strict. However, I think that you are only addressing a symptom of and not the disease that is hurting Crossfit right now.

Crossfit started in the early 2000's as an exercise ideology designed to optimize fitness and health. Fitness across many modalities, Crossfit! The named WODs were used as a repeatable measurement of fitness. The point was to get fitter and WODs were a tool to determine if one had. We all could measure our improvement against ourselves and others. Repeatable workouts were not the point, being fitter was. However, due to the design and nature of named, repeatable WODs competition was inevitable and Crossfit philosophy slowly became less oriented towards health and more oriented towards sport.

Today for many Boxes (certainly not all) Crossfit is a sport first and a fitness ideology second . The Point IS the movements and the WODs. This change in social climate is centered around Crossfit "athletes". Like football players, marathon runners, or any other high performance athletes, Crossfit athletes are sacrificing health and fitness to test and improve the outer limits of human ability and willpower. This is an important distinction, Fitness is no longer the primary motivating factor, performance is. This type of training CAN make you very fit, but makes injury highly likely. One can take any exercise past the point of improving well being and put it into a place where one is actively hurting their own body.

The average person coming into Crossfit fresh is not interested in become a Crossfit "athlete". The benefit does not outweigh the risk to the average person in doing kipping ANYTHING unless they are already sufficiently fit and trained in gymnastic movement. If any significant percentage of Crossfitters experience injury then Crossfit as a fitness ideology has failed. Crossfit will have made those injured overall less healthy, less fit.

Coaches need to change their mindset. We aren't trying to get as many people as possible to the open. We are trying to improve lives through constantly varied, high intensity, functional fitness. This means programming to minimize injury potential first, and only then increasing intensity and complexity. Even Crossfit Corporate realizes this, as evidenced by their recent videos showing "less than optimally fit" people doing basic movements with everyday objects.

I'm not trying to say no one should learn advanced movements if they are interested. They should just go in with their eyes open. Those individuals who push for a 30 minute Murph, or a sub 2 minute Fran, are no longer attempting to maximize their own personal health and fitness. They are attempting to maximize their performance in a sport. Like any high performance athlete, injury of some kind is inevitable for these individuals.

As to the average person, Crossfit boxes will continue to have issues with things like kipping handstand push-ups as long as they continue to prioritize the sport over the health of their clients.
 
@garrettholliman2001 I love you so fuckin much right now, man. I’m reading right next to the girl who encouraged me to become a coach years ago and we are both reading your post, nodding our heads.

It’s true! We have gone from being health freaks to self-destructive macho man Randy Savages. We just want the flashy tough guy stuff it seems.
 
@channel7 All I see is that we went from firebreathers, navy seals and games athletes to uncle George lifting antifreeze jugs.

Crossfit is supposed to be hard, it’s threshold training, and it works if there is intensity. For everyone else there is Zumba.
 
@channel7 Do strict but don’t pretend everyone agrees with you or say it’s dangerous because it’s not. Snatching or running is way more dangerous.
 
@dawn16 I don’t have any delusions that everyone agrees with me. It’s why I ask for the disagreements. I have had some good arguments but nobody has had a counter I find fully convincing.
While snatching and running can definitely bear risks, the risk to reward comparison in kipping handstand push ups is different. Every repetition comes with 1 head impact with your body weight, multiplied by the acceleration of your descent, behind it.
If you put abmats under your head it will help but even with that your entire bodyweight is still resting on top of your cervical vertebrae. Even if you land with everything in perfect position the bone is only made to support the 10-11lb head that we have.
I just don’t want chronic damage like stenosis or brain damage from unknown concussions to happen to athletes. That’s why I wrote this but I don’t hawk it at people. Thanks for reading. :)
 
@channel7 I disagree. The issue with throwing out kipping movements is that your decreasing power ( move or travel with great speed or force ) output. The kipping movements produce more power than strict. Therefore allowing you to do more work in a shorter amount of time, with less energy expended (due to the body generating momentum through movement, requiring less strength).

Is it safer to learn strict first and then kipping? The general consensus is, yes. However, I have known plenty of people who have kipped everything for years and have suffered no major injuries; only minor. (Tbh, anyone who is afraid of getting hurt should just stick to the couch in their padded home)

If anything CrossFit should use both strict and kipping within the same event. Mat Fraser will still probably win such an event anyways, because he is living proof that no matter what it is, he'll be better than MOST people at such a combination of movements.
 
@takesight77
The issue with throwing out kipping movements is that your decreasing power ( move or travel with great speed or force ) output. The kipping movements produce more power than strict. Therefore allowing you to do more work in a shorter amount of time, with less energy expended (due to the body generating momentum through movement, requiring less strength).

That middle-school physics stuff is Glassman’s definition of a good workout, not the actual definition of a good workout.
 
@jacquiluvsjesus I mean, what's a good workout really depends on what your goal is and whether that workout brings you closer to it or not. Glassman's method works and is actually rational. I can't recall any elite athlete in history who didn't perform with consistently high intensity. Nor can I recall any elite anything who didn't perform with the highest of intensity. Glassman didn't call for programming that was stupid. He called for an optimal dose to get the optimal result.
 
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