In handstands, the wall is a double-edged sword.
It is both your best friend, because it will correct your mistakes like nothing else if you use it properly.
But it can also be the enemy hindering your progress, a crutch that we become reliant on in our journey and that prevents us from balancing without it.
Using the wall isn’t something you improvise: it’s a mindful, goal-and-technique oriented practice that will yield benefits if you know what to do and what not to do.
One of the most common mistakes I see in students who are able to kick-up against the wall is:
They take their feet off the wall and “float” as soon as possible without thinking twice.
We tend to think that, just because we are vertical against the wall, the real practice starts now.
That kicking up to the wall doesn’t really matter, or is too beginner.
So we pull our bodies somehow away from the wall, enjoy the exhilarating few seconds of floating we achieve, and then fall back down to the floor.
The rule to live by when you practice on your own is the following:
Whatever you do against the wall should aim at mimicking what needs to happen without it.
In other words, if your handstand looks different with the wall from what you what to achieve freestanding, something is wrong.
The wall is a crutch, not a cane
The wall feels like we’re reaching a basecamp, in which we can rest and recover before we jump into harder, more interesting balancing drills.
This leads people to accept a very drafty kick-up, as long as it gets them upside down, and dedicate most of their focus on what follows next.
No matter how well you balance of that wall, even with perfect technique: a random, unreliable kick-up will prevent you from ever doing that consistently while freestanding.
The key lies in your ability to connect the dots together, and ensure that your practice is well-rounded and integrated.