The Final Failure
Early evening, July 2023. I didn't know what to expect from this session and that was alright with me. Over the years I’d grown comfortable with attuning the work to my recovery and energy on the day. With this open attitude I began warming up for overhead press: first the bar, then a few reps at 40kg, 60, 80, finally 90 moved decently. “This might be the day,” I thought neutrally.
I say ‘neutrally’ because moving 90kg decently wasn’t much of a surprise. It had been moving faster than ever recently and I’d been hitting singles at 90 on standing Andersen presses at maybe RPE 7. A year prior I was doing multiple sets of two reps. But attempt after attempt, month after month, I’d failed to press anything over 90.
This time felt different; I was hopeful. After all I’d seen some notable progress after stepping back and doing only dumbbell work for a whole hypertrophy block. “Today is as good as any,” I thought. “I’ll go for it. Let’s get this over with and move on already.” So I slid another 2.5kg on each side and took my rest, deep breaths, some pacing, visualizing the rep. I expected this to be a bit harder than 90, but not a grind, as 100 was the target. 95 ought to be fairly smooth.
When I unracked the bar, it felt heavier than expected and I wasn't so sure anymore. But this was a doubt I’d faced thousands of times before. I refocused and pushed.
The bar barely passed my nose when it stalled and all my strength, mental and physical, evaporated. It wasn’t even close.
Another year of work and I hadn’t moved forward at all. I re-racked the bar, took a step back and stood there for minutes maybe, processing what had just happened. I could feel it wasn't a fluke. I’d failed fair and square, and waiting another day or two to retest wouldn’t change the outcome. Finally I had to face it: my approach hadn't worked. I’d given it more than enough time and fair shakes.
I walked into the living room (my weight room is at the front of the house), still in disbelief and probably visibly bewildered. I can guess this because my girlfriend looked up from her work at the table and asked if I was alright.
“No, I guess not; not really,” I said absently. “I failed another 95kg overhead press.” These words hung in front of me weakly, water vapor on the other side of a plexiglass wall. I wanted to reach out and take them back or wave my hand to disperse them, but they just hung there.
“Oh honey,” she offered softly with a sigh, the same way I’d imagine she’d say it if I’d lost my dog. “I’m sure you’ll rethink it and come back to it again like always.”
“This time I don’t think so,” I said deflated. “It feels different. For the first time I might actually give up on a commitment I made to myself. I’ve been putting in hours upon hours, session after session, focused on recovery, tried to program intelligently, tried many different approaches, for more than two years now without progress. I want to move on. I want to be done. I told myself I’d achieve this benchmark as a prerequisite to releasing my handstand pushup course because I expected it to teach me things I needed to know about more advanced pressing strength development. But I don’t feel like I’m learning anything. I don’t even know what to take away from this failure this time. I feel more confused than when I started. Worse, I don’t know how I’ll explain this to people who trusted me and anticipated this course for years. I’ll have to admit that I failed and I’m done trying. I’ll have to let them down, and I’m having a hard time reconciling that. But I’m honestly so tired.” We’d been together for four years, and this was only the second time I’d expressed any kind of self doubt to her. These moments are very rare for me.
Her eyes softened as she paused a moment before saying plainly, “Yeah, I can see how tired you are, and it must be very frustrating. I’ve seen first hand how much work you’ve put into this. But I don’t know… I think you’d regret it if you gave up. It seems like you could use a rest. Maybe don’t think about it for a while, do other things, have some fun with other movements. Something might change or you could realize something. I really think you can do it; it just seems you’ve reached a point where more work isn’t the answer.”
Immediately I could feel she was right. I could feel the impulse to dwell in defeatism, and come up with excuses for giving up on it for good. But I recognized well enough that it was exactly as she said: I was just tired and could use a change. “Yes, I know you’re right,” I exhaled. “I think part of the problem is I’ve been putting incessant pressure on myself to achieve this before I release the course. And each time I failed, it was further postponed and the pressure increased. This probably sabotaged my programing decisions. I have to admit this wasn’t working. So now, however long I need to take is how long it will be. Because it’s either that or give up; I've reached the breaking point.” I took a few deep breaths and committed to let go of thinking about and training overhead press entirely—with only the understanding that I would return to it when I’d entered new emotional space and insight around this movement. No timeline.
We Can Rebuild Him
And that is exactly what I did. I stopped all overhead press work for more than five months. During that time I even experienced some severe ulnar nerve pain after a session of high volume triceps pushdowns and stopped bent arm pushing work altogether for five or six weeks. If you’ve not been acquainted with ulnar nerve pain (cubital tunnel), it felt to me a lot like someone was jamming a needle into the funny bone and twisting whenever I loaded elbow extension. That includes casually leaning on the hand or forearm with a bent elbow. It even hurt to the touch at the point of the elbow. Truly, it sucked. I was fortunate it resolved in such a short time, as it’s my understanding that the ulnar nerve can take a long time to recover when the pain is that severe. I suspect it was helpful that during that time I dropped any expectations about recovery duration and committed to completely avoiding the pain triggers for as long as it took. And I do mean completely: I didn't prod, or “just check,” or “let’s just see where it’s at real quick” at all during those weeks. So “pushing” days became very simple, and not really pushing days at all, comprised only of pec fly and lateral raise variations. That’s it. And because the sessions were so short on those days, this gave me the space to throw in an extra session of jumps and plyos, which were a joy. Before and after the ulnar nerve issue, though, I incorporated two movements I later came to see as critical to my progress: incline dumbbell press and incline Smith press.
I’ll return to the topic of incline press shortly. But during this period I started to feel good about pushing work again, both psychologically and physiologically. Especially after the period of abstaining from bent arm work, I started to notice my shoulders felt particularly smooth in pressing. It was only in juxtaposition to this new smoothness in movement path that I could look back and notice I had been tolerating, even become accustomed and numb to, incessant fatigue and low-level discomfort in my shoulders. In short, I hadn't been allowing them to fully recover and had been accumulating compensatory patterns around that fatigue and discomfort. It wasn’t until I actually tested my overhead press months later that I became fully aware of the extent to which this was the case. But again, I’ll return to that later. The point is, rest and reduced intensity had done a lot of good.
When I say I backed off intensity, I mean it. None of my sets were below eight reps. This allowed me to show up very consistently to pushing work, and safely increase frequency of incline press work to two times per week.
Secondly, due to my hesitancy in bent arm pushing after the ulnar nerve issue, the loads were very conservative and I explored a more open (obtuse) elbow angle in bent-arm pushing movements. This placed less tension on the triceps and more on the deltoids and pecs. I believe this adjustment played into addressing an over-reliance on triceps and underdevelopment of the pecs.
Third, during incline press movements I allowed for a more open and stretched chest. Previously I’d unconsciously defaulted to a protracted shoulder and closed chest, even in the bottom of the press. This was likely due to my background of hand balance work, focusing for years on movements like pike press from forward fold and stalder press. It had also become a habit in handstand pushup, which translated to my barbell and dumbbell presses.
As a result lowering intensity, increasing frequency, higher rep sets, and the above technical adjustments I unexpectedly gained a lot of muscle. Well, I should also mention I started eating more; a lot more. This is equally relevant. I can’t tell you how much exactly as I don’t count calories and never have. But suffice to say I had really underestimated the amount I would have to eat if I wanted to move past my current body weight and strength plateaus. I had been hovering between 85 and 90kg for years. This was the first time I made a conscious effort to eat significantly more in order to move the numbers on the scale. You all know me of course: it’s not about the numbers, but rather the attributes to which those numbers grant access. And grant access they did. My shoulders got wider and I started to actually see my pecs from the side for the first time. To be honest, I’m not sure I even knew what a real pec pump felt like before these training blocks. Anyway, the changes were significant. This increase in muscle and the improved recovery from eating more resulted in significant objective strength improvements.
A Surprise
Fast-forward a little more than five months from the “final failure” moment. It was a normal push day and I didn’t have any special plans for it. Capriciously I thought, “I feel reasonably good today; let’s try an overhead press.” I knew from my Smith incline presses I was objectively stronger, but due to years of failed attempt after failed attempt, I was cautious not to get my hopes up. I warmed up as usual, and each time I added weight it felt… strangely light. So I kept going, and going, and finally, I hit 90kg at RPE 3 and tripled checked the weight, thinking i’d miscounted. But no, it was 90. “Shit, after all this time, I guess this is it. How silly,” I shrugged. So I loaded 100 and sure enough it flew up. Feeling confident, I went for a second rep which also moved fast. I stopped there and re-racked, mostly out of surprise, but knowing a third rep was there. I was earnestly dumbfounded. I hadn't done any direct work in months and there it was—the thing against which I’d been bashing my skull with direct work for years—and two reps, at that.
WTF Just Happened?
I spent the following days, weeks and months reflecting on what happened, recapping the variables and testing my hypotheses further. I’m here now to share in as simple terms as possible the insights I took away from this multiple-year struggle and breakthrough.
Magic Moves
I’ve been in this game a long time, starting serious athletics, strength and conditioning at 16 in high school. I was only playing soccer before that. But at 16 I became fascinated with programming and very ambitious about running track. I’m now 35; that’s nearly 20 years of dedicated training. This experience has taught me again and again that there aren’t really any shortcuts or magic tricks. But… I’m obliged to say, this is the closest I’ve ever come to finding a “magic movement.”
For me, seated incline Smith press did more in five months to develop overhead pressing strength than standing overhead press or handstand pushup did in five years. Of course I’d also rank the incline dumbbell press as high useful, if intensity is properly modulated. But dumbbells are a lot less stable, and so it’s easy to slip into default compensatory patterns and unintentional technique. This leads me to some speculative reasoning for why incline Smith press seems to be so effective.
The crux of it is this: it is very stable. The bar is on a fixed path and there is not need to balance it or control its trajectory. You’re also seated, which means your center of mass is closer to base of support and you’re wedged against the back of the bench. All this stability allows for a coupe of things to happen. You have greater control over technical execution, allowing you two access adjustments and target muscles as I described above, and there are less variables for you nervous system to process which means you can focus more on raw force output. This is all conducive to hypertrophy and strength development.
I highly recommend incorporating this movement in any program that aims at overhead pressing strength. It is now number one for me, above all others, no contest. If I had to choose a second it would be incline dumbbell press. This is a good choice to alternate with smith press. It’s also wise to vary the incline angle by some degrees [know that the more horizontal you go, the less it will translate to vertical overhead pressing] to avoid fatigue or overuse injuries. But I should add: I now believe it’s best to include dumbbell work on top of a strong technical foundation reinforced through more stable movements like smith incline press. The higher your technical control, and the more rounded your development, the more you will get from unstable movements. My career is ironic in that I came to this insight late, and very much did things in reverse. But I could have spared myself a lot of time, struggle, plateaus, and injuries if I’d known and applied this sooner.
There’s another reason I can attest to the efficacy of incline press programmed in a simple format: I’d tried almost everything else. I’d done direct work on overhead press, which took me a ways admittedly. I was able to work up to 90kg for multiple sets of two reps. But even when I backed off the intensity, or tweaked volume and frequency, nothing seemed to move me to 95kg. And if I continued direct work for too long, my shoulders began to pay the price in the form of mild anterior pain and loss of strength. I’d done heaps of Andersen press, seated Andersen press, behind the neck press, seated dumbbell press, unilateral javelin press and landmine press, you name it. And after I hit 90kg, month after month, the progress was either almost imperceptible or I’d move backward.
I played with various programming approaches, too. I’d tried periodized straight sets, west side conjugate method (and later modified that in the way you saw in previous posts here), alternating sessions between 3-4 sets of 8-12 and 10-12 sets of two, once a week, twice a week, three times per week, four times per week, zero times per week. I even tried doing an entire three months of only seated and standing vertical dumbbell press, no barbell whatsoever. Through all of this, somehow it never occurred to me that incline press would have a direct enough carryover to vertical strict barbell press. But it did. I never saw progress as clean and as fast as when I began to incorporate incline smith press supplemented with incline dumbbell press. Also notable: my shoulders never felt more comfortable and smooth than during this period. Over the years of pressing work in both calisthenics and other forms of resistance training, my shoulders had become finicky. Likely this had to do with the high volume of very similar vertical pushing movements. If you’re curious about the specific incline angle I used for smith and dumbbell press, I don’t know the degrees in numbers but you’ll see it clearly in my instagram videos.
The Basic Four, Again and Again, No Really
1) Volume, 2) intensity (I’m including effort in intensity), 3) frequency, 4) recovery: no matter how special you think you are, it’s almost a guarantee that you’re poorly managing one or more of these variables at any given time. And this is especially true if you’re not progressing for a period of months. It’s normal to have a low week or three. But when it’s weeks on weeks or months on months, something is amiss. And it’s almost always one of those big four.
I’m another example. As long as I’ve been training, I still made basic mistakes with overhead press. Both single-session volume and intensity of direct work were consistently too high. I didn't notice because I’d lost touch with a baseline of how it felt to be fully recovered, discomfort-free, and not compensating. I also underestimated and under-leveraged food. So basic, but so easily overlooked even by experienced people. So, no really, it’s one of these four.
It’s actually astounding the degree to which most people who are experiencing plateau or injury are in denial of this. They’ll look at and for almost anything else: supplements, shoes, clothes, weird schedules and programs (German and Bulgarian for example) that are really only suited to a tiny fraction of athletes, drop sets, super sets, pause reps, accommodating resistance, French contrast, “I’m different because twitch fiber ratio,” and on and on—when in reality a very basic programming structure would work splendidly if they just got the basic four variables somewhat right. And I do mean somewhat right. You can get a lot wrong and still progress if you’re anywhere near the mark for the majority of the variables. The only people who really need to get these almost perfect are athletes who have already reached a very elite level and begun to push the edge of their genetic potential. And before you try to convince yourself you’re that guy, let me just cut you off: you’re not that guy.
Of course the volume, intensity and frequency that will be right for you is very individual, so keep that in mind as I share the following. But here are a couple of examples that demonstrate my point about simplicity. With the pushing work that progressed my strength to this degree, I was truly following a simple structure: incline press variation followed by pec fly and lateral raise. I was alternating between dumbbell ands smith for the incline press. And that’s it. This was all done on a simple push/pull/legs/rest split. I’d take an extra rest day whenever I felt like it. The set/rep scheme was simple, too: 2-4 sets of every exercise, 8-12 reps, 5-7 minutes rest. That’s literally the whole thing. Before the ulnar nerve issue I was also doing overhead triceps extensions on a cable, but I took those out after the nerve first acted up and didn’t end up missing them at all. They might be useful if your bent-arm pushing volume is deliberately low, but otherwise the triceps are unlikely the weak point as they get quite a bit of stimulus from other pushing patterns. Especially if you include dips, triceps isolation exercises might not be that useful. You’d likely be better off dedicating those recovery resources to other pushing work.
The same is demonstrated in my front squat progress. The best progress I ever made was during a hypertrophy block, rotating between sets of 8, 10, and 15 reps at 1.5 sessions per week. In that block alone my front squat 1RM increased by 15-18 kilos in only 12 weeks. Anyway, I think you’re getting the point. The chances are very, very low that you’ll find answers in fancy lifting accessories, unheard of exercise variations, or exotic, complicated and highly ambitious programs. It’s the basics again and again. No, really.
Recovery is a topic I address often, and my message is usually focused around sleep and psychosocial stress as these are maybe the most impactful factors in recovery. But today I want to focus on food. It was quite surprised how gravely I had underestimated my caloric needs. Yes, when I gained this weight I also gained a bit of body fat. That’s inevitable, unless you gain weight extremely slowly (I’m taking 1kg/six months slow). But the notable strength progress and overcoming the plateau I’d faced for years was more than worth it. Plus… real women prefer a meaty chunk of man to a pretty beach boy. Shut up and have another helping of steak and potatoes. Or don’t and stay small.
Where To, Mr.?
The next step is to test the impact of this strength increase on freestanding chest-to-box handstand pushup. Then work on the program. I’ve already tried a couple of sessions, and the results were shocking (I‘ll include a video here. My balance is of course relatively shit, as I haven’t visited it in more than two years, per my promise to myself to truly test this carryover. But even at 100kg bodyweight I was flying up. It’s very far from where I was prior to this strength progress. It will take a little consistent work to regain enough skill to test my true max, but suffice to say the work had an even greater effect than I expected.
This process has honestly completely changed my perspective and the approach I would take to a handstand push-up program, and pushing strength in general, to a degree I could not have anticipated. I have also changed my ideas about the format in which I’ll offer the course. More on this soon, but it will be innovative and unique compared to what’s out there, offering more resources that enable critical thinking and autonomy in writing programs, which is in line with my central message. As such it will also be well suited to coaches who seek insight into programming pushing strength and handstand pushup for a range of students.
I have so say, this process was probably the toughest challenge I’ve faced. It wasn’t that the work itself was excruciating or anything; it was the number of failures, setbacks and confusion. It made me question everything I thought I knew about programming. It also tested my character. Unsurprisingly, though, it was one of the most rewarding experiments I’ve run and resulted in some of the clearest and most profound insights into physical development. Feel free to deduce from that what you will.
- D
24 December, 100kg Strict Press x 2
5 February, HSPU