This time for headstand practice, I focused on lifting a knee away from my elbow, per 2nd progression guidance from the StrongFirst HSPU Part 1 article. My very first attempt failed. As soon as I attempted to lift a knee, the pressure of my palms against the floor went up and the leg felt so heavy, as if it were made of lead. I stood up, off tension, and made a couple more attempts. On my 3rd or 4th attempt, I was able to lift a knee about half an inch on each side. By the end of Practice A, I was able to lift each knee an inch away from each arm - one knee at a time. This seems to work like GMB Frogger and Monkey, where I have to press my hands hard against the floor to get my feet in the air. Hopefully next time, I'll remember to press harder with my hands when I want to lift a leg into the air. I think when I can straighten one leg while maintaining a headstand, it will be a sign that I have the bent-arm stabilizing strength to shift all of my bodyweight to my hands, and lift my head off the floor. When I can do that, I can work on transition from headstand to Crow Pose
For the Push session, I did ring dips in 4-rep sets, for a total of 24 reps. I decided to do ring dips instead of parallette push ups because I thought my left shoulder would be less likely to be irritated. However the shoulder was irritated right away for the first couple of sets. I then remembered to set up for the dip with a hard anti-shrug to depress the scapulae, then keep the scapulae depressed and retracted as I sank into the dip. This helped eliminate the shoulder irritation. The other cue I had to remember was to not allow my elbows to flare outside my hands.
I was able to maintain the headstand, while playing with raising one leg at a time, for about 5 seconds before I had to take a break. I didn't count how many times I did the headstand within Practice A's 10 minutes, because the goal of a Practice session under the GMB 5P framework is to... practice... a skill, not chase numbers.
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