HSPU

When last did you do a handstand? Can your kids do handstands? How about cartwheels? There is this sepia colored idea of youth that includes handstands and cartwheels on acres of lawn surrounded by high old growth trees. I know that is not the reality, and probably, if you got to do hand stands at all it was in a dusty sweaty gym, where your attempts may have been ridiculed into cessation Lon before perfection was reached and the naturals marched off to special gymnastics training.

HSPU means "handstand push up " which is the crossfit way of challenging one way out of your normal sporty comfort zone. There seems to be a dividing line age wise too, somewhere in the latter part of the 1970's into the 1980's it seems kids no longer had the right to learning handstands as part of their youth.

I did hand stands as a child. Coming back into them 35 odd years later it took me a couple of months to get my nerve back. The thrust upward and then allowing gravity to take you further before trusting a wall or fellow marker to stop you tumbling down the other side. Age in we have fear. Realistically there is not much that can go wrong,but it's really scary to try and trust your own body again if you've grown out of the habit. A not insignificant proportion of our class had never done hand stands as a child. It's a hard skill to learn as an adult. Are they going home and teaching it to their kids? Not just the ones doing gymnastics classes, but all the run of the mill kids?

Now I've mastered the handstand part - next goal is the combination with a push up. And yes, my kids can do handstands.... Partly at my encouragement and partly as a result of an excellent PE program at school.

Go on, I dare you, pick an empty wall and do a hand stand against it... Cartwheel anyone?