Some weeks ago it was shared here my 6 month handstand progress video and due to the good response I decided to create this post. Here’s the video:
On the journey from a 1s to 25s hold I learned some key insights you can use to progress faster or just improve your understanding about handstands. As a disclaimer, I’m not a certified coach but I’ve some solid background on biomechanics.
On the journey from a 1s to 25s hold I learned some key insights you can use to progress faster or just improve your understanding about handstands. As a disclaimer, I’m not a certified coach but I’ve some solid background on biomechanics.
What It Really Takes To Learn The Handstand:
- The 5 Minute Skill Work Myth: as an average guy it was not possible for me to just learn the handstand by just playing with handstands for 5 minutes before my strength work. As I’ll explain later I started to really progress when I had a complete 30+ minute handstand sessions covering all the different aspects (bodyline, balance, kick up).
- Strong Wrists Come First: my loose wrist tendons made me stop training the handstand several times before. That’s why taking wrist condition more seriously and also using parallettes saved the day for me. Most of you won’t need to use parallettes but still conditioning your wrists is a huge part of long term success.
- Strong Shoulders Come Second: most of the shoulder workouts tend to be “bent arm” which is great for building those muscles. However, for handstands that won’t be enough. The shoulders are much more unstable than the hips and yet when doing handstand we pretend our shoulders to function as hips. To be honest your shoulders will automatically start adapting by spending quality time on handstands (here the importance of >30s chest to wall handstands). But you can accelerate the process by adding weighted exercises like “Bilateral Shoulder Circles”.
The 3 Biggest Lessons:
- Handstands Are Like The Stock Market: training handstands can be very frustrating. One day can be really good and the next so bad. Here it’s key to zoom out and don’t let the volatility of handstand training affect you. It’s the same as when you buy some shares of a company. Their price can go up and down in the short term without much reason. But over the long run the price will go up if the company invests in their products and their people. So for handstands if you follow ther right progressions and you don’t train mindlessly you’ll keep improving no matter the daily fluctuations.
- Divide And Conquer The Handstand: the best way I found to approach handstand training is to do it with these 3 dimensions:
- Bodyline: your body has to be like a stick. As soon as it starts to wobble you’ll most likely fall from the handstand.
- Balance: once you’re upside down you need to be constantly reacting to the feedback that your body is giving you to avoid falling.
- Kick Up: you need a way to get into a handstand positions as precisely as possible and you’ve to be able to exit safely whenever you need to. (with these 3 things layed down it’s just a matter of objectively looking at your handstand and putting a plan to improve the areas you’re lacking)
- The Magic of Handstands: as someone engineer minded I wish I could learn the handstand by just doing sets and reps. But the truth is that handstand is as much an art as a science which brings the psychological component. Still if you want to find some order I recommend you to track “handstand hold time” and “kick up success rate”.
