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🚀 The 4-week Accelerator - October 25
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1. Balancing and the Zones
1. Balancing and the Zones
1. Balancing and the Zones

1. Balancing and the Zones

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Recap of The Zones

At the very core of it, handstands are a fall forward we correct through our fingers.
In our methodology, we quickly establish that there is no such thing as the H spot, that mythical handstand sweet spot where everything becomes easy.
When training students, either online or in-person, I usually spend the first weeks deconstructing the habit they may have build to chase that H spot.
I usually spot it when:
  • you try to float every single time you kick-up against the wall.
  • you keep trying 5, 10, 20 times in row until it “sticks” for 2 seconds.
  • you think touching the wall is synonymous with NOT being in a handstand.
Slowly, we start understanding that a handstand lives beyond that abstract H spot, past a vertical line we could draw from the center of the hands up to the ceiling. We call this zone the Overbalance or Overshot zone.
notion image
As you lean into this Overshot zone, you are, in essence, falling forward.
This is also what happens when you walk, by the way: you fall forward and catch yourself with the next step.
 
A handstand is achieved when we are falling in the Overshot zone the right amount (not too far out) and using our fingers to stay in it.
In the Handstand Academy, we refer to this zone within the Overshot zone in which you can balance as the Balancing zone, or Playground.
Anything before that is the Undershot zone, and will pull you back down to the floor.
Anything past the Playground is too overshot to be controlled by the fingers, and will push out of control, forcing a bail.
notion image

Micro-correcting tool

As long as you can keep your body within the playground, and achieve some degree of “stillness”, your fingers are enough to make you hold it.
By successively pressing (when you lean forward) and relaxing (when you start moving backwards), they ensure that you stay more or less on the spot.
Obviously, this is pretty hard at first.
 
For one, your finger coordination will need to develop so that you find the perfect timing at which to press and relax them.
Two, the room for error is much more narrow at first: your playground is pretty small, and any mistake is enough to take you back to the undershot zone, or propel you too far out in the overshot zone.
Three, getting into the Playground with the right amount of momentum, with the fingers at the ready and a functional shape isn’t a piece of cake in and of itself. Many kick-ups will result in you missing the playground or rushing through it, leaving little to no room for your fingers to do their job.
 
With time and through mindful drills, you will learn to better use the micro-correction tool that your fingers are.
Again, their job is nothing more than to keep you within the Playground for as long as possible.
 
As you work on fine tuning the power you can muster through your fingers (and the body awareness that comes with it), you’ll need to keep improving how you get into the Playground in the first place, ie your kick-up.
At some point in your handstand hold though, no matter how good you are, you will get tired, and/or you will make a mistake.
This will drive your body out of a functional shape, or towards the edge of that Playground. At this point, your fingers can not do their job anymore, and you have to react fast using something else to get back in the playground. Otherwise, your handstand is doomed.
 
To do so, we will have to change the shape of our bodies, hoping to bring it back into a functional alignment.
Those big movements are usually very disruptive, and that is why we don’t focus on them so much at first.
But they also are the last resort action you can try to save a falling handstand, hoping to give your fingers a chance at resuming their work.
Because those movements we perform as we leave the playground, for the sake of getting back in it, are very dramatic and noticeable (compared to the fingers), we refer to those as the tools of macro-correction.
 

Macro-correcting tools

Two scenarios are possible the moment you start losing your handstand (either off a wall, off a spotter, or freestanding).
You either fall too overshot, or fall back into the undershot zone.
At the edge of your playground, you have one last shot at bringing yourself back into it.
 
I like to refer to the edge between the Undershot Zone and The Playground as the Timber zone (you’re falling back slowly like a tree being chopped off… timber!)
And to call the edge between the Playground and what would be too overshot to control, the Breaking zone (your shape is literally breaking).
Those are a longer story for another time: let’s get good at using our fingers first!
 
 
 

The wall isn't your enemy

If a handstand is about being in the Balancing zone, and balancing there…
Then your foot or feet resting lightly on the wall ARE within the Balancing zone.
They are towards the more overshot side of the Balancing zone.
This is why I have asked you to NOT rush the take off after you have landed. If you land properly, you actually ARE in the balancing zone.
And now, through your fingers, you need to feel and make the most of every single milimeter of that balancing zone.