The Kick-up. Balancing skills. Endurance. Mobility. Alignment. Strength. Etc.
The Art of Handbalancing is comprised of many subcategories that, together, form a whole.
Just like the tennis player practices their services independently from their back hand, you need to have dedicated times for each of those components.
This harder done than said, because the practice of handstands as a whole (with all of its singular pieces) is usually conflated with one of balancing (which is just one piece of the puzzle).
Two mistakes keep recurring amongst inexperienced beginners:
- Trying to do them all simultaneously. Within one same rep, you try to muster the perfect kick-up into the perfect line while exerting timely and efficient balancing skills, all the while keeping your body very still and in a straight line thanks to perfectly open shoulders. This is possible, eventually. But it’s your first day in circus school, and you’re trying to juggle with 7 balls in the air already. Not going to happen.
- Only focusing on balancing. You won’t survive the qualifiers for the US Open if you only work on your right hand. Your game will be full of holes. Practice all the pieces of the puzzle, without which balancing can not happen freestanding.
#The Handstand Equation
Within the Handstand Puzzle, there are three skills that deserves the seats on the podium of priorities: The Kick-up, Alignment and Balance, in that order.
Handstands are a complicated skill as it is. But they get horribly complexified by the amount of contradicting opinions and cues available out there.
My work over the last decade has been to simplify and streamline it all to make handstands as approachable as possible.
Every time I zoomed out, I realised how dogmatic handstands have become:
Many people achieve handstands.
The minute they do, they tend to think their way is the only way, and then go on to spread their gospel.
When you watch long enough what happens then, you realise than only a fraction of the students get it. The method, drill or cue wasn’t the promised missing secret ingredient. It only worked for a selected few.
The resulting frustration has fed my quest to figure out the rules that govern all handstands, that apply to everyone.
You will have plenty of time to get into the subtleties of handstands week by week, month by month, and, if you get hooked like I have, year by year.
For now, we want a couple of simple, clear models we can rely on. To have a clear direction to follow.
To cut through the noise.
The first framework we will use is the Handstand Equation:
Handbalancing = an efficient kick-up + a viable alignment + timely rebalancing
As discussed earlier, handstands aren’t just about balance.
There is no balance if you don’t have a body position - we call them shapes or alignments - that can be balanced.
And regardless of how good that alignment is, if your kick-up doesn’t allow you to stop in it, you will never be able to balance.
Achieving your first 15 seconds freestanding is the product of:
- developing a consistent, systematic kick-up, into
- a viable alignment, one that can be practiced with and without the wall, and one that can be
- balanced, thanks to your fingers, first, and bigger body movements, second.
What of the rest of the puzzle?
Mobility and strength: 99% of people have enough strength and mobility to start handstands. Yes, even if they haven’t trained in a while, and even if they have closed shoulders, as we will see soon.
The less endurant you are, and the shorter you can work on your handstand skills with quality. Developing strength is desirable to maximise the output in your training sessions.
As for mobility, the more flexible you are, and the more options you have at your disposal. In some contexts, increased mobility allow you to perform drills with less brute force, and to be more efficient. And in many scenarios, a more flexible handstand is more eye-pleasing.
We will assess your starting mobility and endurance, and see what improvements can be made.
Body tension: The body tension and silence helps with balance, but is useless per se. We will therefore include drills to learn body tension within warm-ups and see their application for balance.
Body awareness: Handstands being a work of subtle corrections and exquisite details, knowing to differentiate your elbow from your knee is pretty essential. We develop body awareness by performing the drills related to the three main components of the handstand equation with the right pace, amount of rest and mindfulness. Handstands are not about counting reps and sets, as we will elaborate on later.
Fear management: This is a biggie. You can hone the most perfect technique against the wall, if you are somehow afraid of falling (most people are when they start), none of it will matter freestanding. Not being able to fall forward is a prerequisite for handbalancing without any support. As such, it will be a big component we will work on in paralell of our Handstand Equation, to ensure that your comfort zone expands week by week.
