Why can I not reach the wall (daftpage)
A note for complete beginners…
Kicking-up looks like the grail of handstands. Truth is, it is but one piece of a vast puzzle.
If you can not reach the wall just yet… be patient. This is an uncomfortable place to be in, and it will require some fortitude. Don’t compare yourself to those who could get to the wall on their first day.
Your goal is to get closer to the wall every week and, through this guide, understand exactly what is at play and how to work on it.
Above all, keep your practice engaging.
Handstands should be fun, after all!
Why can I not reach the wall?
I can't reach the wall!
If you can not reach the wall yet, you have to understand that this has more to do for 99% of people with their sense of ease while upside down than strength...
Let's be honest: this is a tough spot to be in, because handstands are not really rewarding and, dare I say, fun, until we can reach the wall consistently!
Rest assured though, with proper guidance and methods, you are just a few weeks away from landing like a feather on that wall.
For this, we can start using the mapping toolbox.
🧰
Mapping toolbox: you probably realised it by now - a simple action, like shoulder flexion, is so easy to do when standing upright... and yet so hard when on our hands!
This toolbox contains a selection of drills designed to increase our body awareness upside down.
This would include chest to the wall exercises with different cues, foot position, hand angles, head movement and soothing techniques.
Their goal - making us feel gradually safer while upside down, stronger and creating reliable reference points in space.
Add to that drills designed to clean up the three phases of your kick-ups, and you will reach that wall in no time (if you practice regularly, of course).
Yep, you heard it right.
To conquer that kick-up, you’re going to have to practice a lot of things that don’t look like a kick-up, and a lot of things C2W.
Detailing them all would be beyond the scope of this already lengthy mini-course. If you can’t reach the wall, practice the drills detailed down below, in the Stage 1 Group. Then, you can head to this free platform to find more resources to keep exploring this, or jump on the Rocket if you want to work hands-on with me.
Ok…
Stage 1 Group: can’t reach the wall
Handstands are not about kicking up against the wall, but certainly the latter is a prerequisite to the former.
You may find yourself unable to reach that wall at all, crashing at times your head into it if you are particularly brave.
If so, make peace with it: in my experience, around 30 per cent of the beginners who stepped in my classes face this challenge.
With proper cueing, some diligence and a pinch of patience, all of them eventually overcome this obstacle.
This step-by-step guide was designed to help you reach that wall consistently, and open the doors of floats and upside down balance.
Why are you not there yet?
There are a lot of pre-conceived ideas around handbalancing, especially when we begin:
I am not strong enough
My hamstrings are too tight
My core is weak (*cough*)
In reality, if you can hold yourself 15 seconds chest against the wall, you are strong enough.
Let's start by assessing this so that we can discard this BS once and for all:
Are you too weak?
Here is a video detailing all the steps to take to assess that:
If you managed to hold yourself roughly 15 seconds, even if your hands are far-ish from the wall, 🎉congratulations🎉: you are not weak.
So, Why?
Two main culprits are to be blamed for your current inability to reach the wall: coordination, and your brain.
Coordination
If kicking up against the wall feels like throwing your legs above your head and praying for the best, we need to refine things a little.
A kick-up is a motor pattern comprised of three main actions:
a) The back swing. The leg that you swing first towards the wall is your back leg. This is the first action that happens, and we want to distinguish it from:
b) The front push. The front leg, usually bent, pushes after the back leg has started swinging. As I like to say: The push supports the swing. Not only that, but the timing at which you push is going to be of the essence. Time it too early, and you will be pushing as you swing, cancelling out the effect that pushing with your front leg could have produced. Time it too late, and your push won't support your swing, with your body already being on its way down to the floor.
c) Shoulder flexion. I know, this is a mouthful. Stand up or sit against your chair. Look in front of you. Raise your hands to the ceiling. Here: that's shoulder flexion for you. I like to refer to it as "opening the shoulders", but really, use any phrasing that makes sense to you.
Now here is a little secret that no ones seems willing to share:
🤫 Shoulder flexion is the most important part of your kick-up and, in many regards, the most important part of your handstands.
Unsurprisingly, it is also the one we pay the least attention to in the first few months of practice.
Learn to feel and master what happens in your shoulders, and you will catalyse your progress.
So no, kicking up against the wall is not just about your legs. And yes, each leg has to be thought of independently, one supporting the drive of the other. More importantly, you want to work on each action separately and combined if you want to maximise your chances at reaching that wall.
Here are two drills to practice to work on your coordination:
- Fear
You may already have felt it, or be completely numb to it.
Regardless, the number one reason why you can't reach the wall is that you are not quite sure of what happens to your body when you go upside down. You are not yet comfortable in that position, and if everything feels like it happens too fast, or if you blackout, this is more likely than not what you are facing.
In fancier terms, your spatial awareness upside down isn't where it needs to be. Therefore, while you know that, in theory, there is a wall behind you to catch you and keep you safe, in practice you sabotage your attempts at reaching it for the sake of staying safe.
You (unconsciously) don't trust yourself, and how could you blame yourself?
When was the last time you were spending hours cartwheeling and monkeying on your hands?
Exactly!
This trust has to be re-learnt.
Trusting that our joints and muscles can bear the load.
Trusting that if we fall, we won't hurt ourselves.
You have fallen on your back too many times over the years to not know that it hurts.
And therefore, along the years, you have develop some smart safety mechanisms that could be simplified as "I won't let you go over your head, because you are going to hurt yourself if so".
Your nervous system is protecting you.
And guess what: these safety nets are rock solid.
This is a lost argument.
Your conscious can not beat your unconscious out of sheer willpower.
Pushing through these safety mechanisms will only result in the same, over and over again.
What you want instead is to convince yourself (your nervous system) that, actually, you are safe. That there is no need to push on the red emergency button.
This takes a smart, gradual approach, in which we have to recognise the signals that our body is sending us and that translates different states of discomfort, and work with, not against, our fear.
Stage 2 Group: can’t stay on the wall
This stage is the shortest of all. Great news.
You “simply” need to work on:
→ the feet together variation. Ensuring that both feet are overshot maximises your chances at staying on the wall.
→ opening your shoulders more and earlier. Your pelvis will therefore start working with you rather than against, forcing you to land (sometimes more abruptly) on the wall, and to stay there.
Great, once you have 60% success rate or more, move on to stage 3
There are three initial stages of your kick-up practice, for any shape and any kind of kick-up:
Stage 1: Not reaching the wall, but getting there
At this stage, your mission is to get that foot closer and closer to the wall every week as you kick-up against it.
📈 Progress tracking: Film yourself to track progress. See if your leading foot is getting closer to wall.
☣️ Pitfalls:
Suboptimal coordination between both legs
Weak front push
Weak back swing
Inexistent shoulder flexion
⌛ Timeframes: This stage usually lasts between 4 - 20 weeks.
Stage 2: Not staying (aka not landing) on the wall, but touching it
At this stage, you struggle to stay against the wall, and instead bounce off it.
This is a problem, because your mission when you kick-up is to go in the overshot zone, stay there and fight there. If you bounce off the wall, you never got a fighting chance at holding that handstand.
📈Progress tracking: Perform 10 kick-ups per training session in which you assess how many times you managed to stay still for 3 seconds against the wall before coming back down. The success rate has to improve every other week.
☣️ Pitfalls:
Suboptimal alignment
Suboptimal shoulder flexion
⌛ Timeframes: This stage usually lasts between 1 - 4 weeks.
Stage 3: Landing on the wall
At this stage, you can land (ie stay) on the wall at the end of your kick-up.
Your priority will be to land softly, consistently, and in the desired shape.
📈Progress tracking: Perform 10 kick-ups per training session in which you assess how many times you managed to land softly (vs land at all). The success rate has to improve every other week.
☣️ Pitfalls:
Suboptimal alignment
Suboptimal shoulder control
Overuse of the legs
Overuse of the momentum if with a lunging kick-up
⌛ Timeframes: This stage usually lasts between 4 - 12 weeks.