At some point on your handstand journey, you may seek longer and longer holds.
To develop this stamina, we can use 5 different tools:
- Stamina holds
- Macro-micro-corrections focus
- Improving the stabilisation phase
- Holding harder shapes
- Adding chaos
Note: This is usually relevant from the end of the green belt onwards, past the 10s second mark.
#1. Pushing for stamina while freestanding or at the wall.
This one is the most intuitive.
In pretty much all programs out there, this is the one (unfortunately, and only) tool used. If you can hold 10 seconds today, you simply “try harder to hold longer".
Sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. Just as if you keep running, you’d end up becoming more endurant and cover longer distances, trying to hold longer yields some benefits, for most, for some time.
Through patience, you will steal more and more seconds upside down.
But this approach would be incomplete if we didn’t use the array of protocols we* have developed over the years at the Handstand Academy.
Here they come:
#2. Changing the ratio macro/micro-corrections.
As we quickly see after our first few seconds of balance, there is a big gap between our expectations (holding a perfectly steady handstands with minimum finger movement) and reality (fighting for your dear life while upside down by bending and extending every joint in your body and forgetting to breathe in the process).
Remember, micro-corrections are the subtle rebalancing act you engage in with your fingers, and macro-corrections are the hardcore, last-ditch movements performed with legs, pelvis, shoulders and elbows to recover a fallen handstand.
At first, you will very quickly get out of the micro-balancing realm.
Your finger pushing is too hectic, or your body awareness doesn’t allow you yet to hold your body still for more than a handful of seconds.
It is quite common, on your way from 3 to 10, 15 seconds (and sometimes beyond), to see quite a lot of macro-corrections.
This is even more true if you were gifted by a very cooperative upper body - aka the captains planche and captains elbows in the group. You simply default to what feels natural.
The more macro-correction however, the more turbulent our hold.
We want to select the drills that allows us to get into a better alignment, earlier in our kick-up.
We want to push our body awareness to recognise the slightest signals announcing the beginning of the end of our handstand, as to recover early enough, before the mistake snowballs into a macro-correction.
We want more and more microcorrections, and less and less macro-corrections.
#3. Zooming on the stabilisation phase
There is a small footnote to the above-stated goal: as we finish our kick-up and start balancing, we usually need to stabilise the handstand first.
The process could look like this:
Kick-up → stabilise the alignment → balance
If the kick-up was akin to a car being driven, the stabilisation is your foot pushing on the pedal to bring it to a stop.
Even at advanced levels (beyond 60s freestanding holds), it is pretty common to see one or two macro-correction in the stabilisation phase, like a gentle pressing of the brakes to make sure the car stops where we decided.
Not that the advanced handbalancer couldn’t get into a hold without using macro-corrections… more so that they got SO efficient at recovering them that they don’t care about it.
They know they can afford a bit of turbulence - that’s the usual noise of the engine as the plane takes off.
They know that once the plane is flying at cruising altitude, there will be no movement.
Beyond the ratio micro-macro-correction, which really applies once we have started balancing (the balancing phase), we also want you to get incredibly good at performing small macro-corrections at the end of your kick-up to get you consistently in the sweet spot (the stabilisation phase).
#4. Holding harder shapes
Your first 10 consistent freestanding seconds will be in your default shape.
That is the core of our unique method, what set us apart from the beginning from everyone else - we believe in finding a handstand that worked for your body and nervous system, first, and sculpting it into different aesthetically pleasing shapes second.
But to push beyond the 10 second ceiling, we may want to use different alignments, harder to hold in some ways, as to make you stronger in your default shape.
Quite commonly, I like to ask my students to pike around the 10-15 second mark:
Not that they need piking, nor is it a priority yet… but because piking needs stronger finger pushing (the pelvis being that far out), which then helps you balance with more ease.
Another way to do that would be to change the gaze and head position.
#5. Adding chaos when the sky is blue
Before playing with chaos, let’s remember this: if you’re not steady in your hold, your mission should be to find stillness first.
Get out of the clouds, and bring that plane into a more comfortable altitude.
But when the sky is consistently blue and calm… Boringly so, day after day… then you may want to spice things up a bit and nose dive for the thrill of it (ok this is where the plane analogy stops).
Let’s not just wait for stamina to gently build up.
Add disruptions on purpose to teach yourself to recover from them.
The key, and it’s not easy, is to select the right drill and the right intensity so that things are just hard enough, but not impossible to recover from.
To longer and longer holds.
- I say “we”, because while I am the one with the lab coat and the test tubes, all of the following was inspired by the enquiries, questions and obstacles students naturally encounter as they progress. You’re my biggest source of inspiration, and I keep learning from you. Thank you.