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Introduction
To start talking seriously about fingers, I suggest you have a look at this public video if you haven’t already:
Fingers are the final piece of our puzzle
Step 1: we have kicked up with the right amount of momentum, far enough into the balancing zone.
Step 2: we have achieved a functional line, one that matches what our body can do, and has an adequate distribution of counterweights overshot and undershot.
→ Step 3: using our fingers will allow us to balance this position for a few seconds.
Fingers are extremely finicky. They will not do their job if your line is not functional, or you have too much momentum, or if you are undershot.
This is why I have been harassing you with the necessity to work in silos, and to perfect your kick-up and understand your alignment first. Because without step 1 and step 2, there won’t be any step 3, no matter how strong your fingers.
Pushing
Pushing vs Pulsing Vs PingPonging
In handstands, fingers can only do two things:
- they can push you away from the balancing zone or
- they can relax, allowing you further into the balancing zone.
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By pushing on your fingers in a functional line, you will take-off the wall and/or float for 1 to 3 seconds. This is a great goal to aim for, as a beginner.
To convert those into 10, 30, 60 seconds freestanding, we will need to push, then relax our fingers on time to lean back into the balancing zone, then push again once more before we go too far forward, and repeat. We call this process of pushing and relaxing the fingers in a timely fashion: finger pulsing.
To learn to pulse the fingers, we practice the pingpong drill: once on the wall in a functional line, push on your fingers and let the body take off slowly from the wall thanks to this action. Yes, this takes time to feel and master, and you will be tempted to cheat by pushing on the wall with your feet. Don’t!
Once you are off the wall, you will need to relax your fingers at some point. Otherwise, since pushing makes you travel backwards, you will eventually fall back on the floor.
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If you relax on time, your foot, or feet, or butt, depending on the shape you are working on, will fall back on the wall. Congratulations, you have performed a ping pong.
In terms of progressions, we therefore have:
- push on the fingers B2W to take-off with clean technique, float for a second or so and let that drive you back down
- push on the fingers B2W to take-off with clean technique, float for a second or so, stop pushing on time to fall back on the wall.
- Perform 3 ping-pongs back to back
- Pulse off the wall
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