May/080
Handstand Pushups and Handstand Hand Positions
Got two more handstand questions I’ll dig into today. I have to admit the quality of the questions has stepped up recently at least for the most part. Submit yours at http://www.lostartofhandbalancing.com/question.html.Here we go. The first one is from Ari.
“OK, Logan, I can balance on my hands, and I have the strength to do handstand pushups, but maintaining balance in an HSPU seems almost impossible. As I lower from the handstand my weight always starts to move to the ventral (stomach) side and unless I bend my legs at the knees so my calves counterbalance the weight, I lose my handstand. How do you maintain a straight bodywhile doing a handstand pushup?”
The first step is to make sure you have the strength to perform the move. When most people do handstand pushups against the wall it’s in an alignment that makes the pushup easier than the form you have to take for a free standing handstand pushup. This is a big topic in and of itself that I’ll have to dig into another time.
The important thing is to have an excess of strength. It’s not good to be burned out after two attempts, since you need to ‘practice’ the move. Onto the balancing.
It is going to be slightly different depending on how straight or arched you are. The thing is that your body will be at an angle and not perfectly vertical from the ground. When your head touches the ground it should be in a triangle formation with the hands. Like the headstand except you don’t rest on the head.
Because of this the upper body and lower body are on different sides of your center of gravity. As if you were lowering down toward the planche.
The most important thing you have to do in order to keep the balance and not fall toward the feet is keeping yourself toward overbalancing. The pressure must be toward your fingers at all times. If you go toward your palms you’ll lose it.
Of course the body has to be kept real tight at the same time. But keep the weight toward your fingers and you’ll be able to stay balanced while doing the pushups.
And here’s one from Ron.
“I’ve been doing handstand training for the past 4 months. For the purpose of experimentation, what are the effects of different hand positioning? In other words, if you spread your hands wider apart, does that provide any benefits, as opposed to keeping the hands at shoulder width?”
Here’s the words of Professor Orlick, from the beginning of chapter 11 in Hand Balancing Made Easy.
There is a two-fold purpose for learning these (that is handstands with different hand and arm positions). The first is for the stunts themselves, they look good, impress your audiences and give you personal satisfaction.
The second is for excellent balance they develop. When you vary the position of the hands you are forced to balance less and less with the fingers and hands themselves and more and more with the body as a unified whole. This may not be clear to you right here but after you learn a few of the stunts which are described you will understand exactly what is meant.
He then goes on to list 14 handstand exercises with different hand and arm position and even more in the next chapter. For details on the exact ones check out Handbalancing Made Easy.
But that explains it well enough. Changing your arm position will work your balance to a higher degree. These variations are good to throw into the mix from time to time.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Just to let you know there’s going to be changes to a few of the products next week.
May/080
Can Hand Balancing Help Doing Backflips?
It looks like the last email unleashed a fury of new questions. Because of the volume of them I might not get back to you personally, but I’ll try to answer the good one’s here.
Hi Logan,
I’ve been making tremendous progress with my handstands. I can also do a lot of those presses that I’ve seen on your site and on youtube. I did have a question though. Will hand balancing improve things like backflips and other aerial tumbling moves? Will it help me build more nerve when it comes to flips and things like that? I’m very athletic and I can do a backflip, but I was just wondering if hand balance training would make it even better.
Thanks for your tips,
Nelson
Thanks for the question, Nelson. It’s an interesting one that I have given some thought to before. Here’s my take on it.
Any move you work on will only improve your skill in that exact move. There is some carryover between related skills, like doing a frogstand will help somewhat with doing a handstand because of the similar balancing aspect.
But when you have skills that are far apart like hand balancing and a backflip, there is very little relation and therefore carryover. The skills of one will not help the other.
Just because someone is a master of hand balancing doesn’t mean necessarily they can do high flying aerial moves. Or vice versa.
That being said, here’s the flip side (no pun intended). This sort of training helps you to learn control over your own body. To really know it and be able to make it do what you want.
I believe someone with your skills should be able to pick up various other physical skills easier than someone with no experience hand balancing.
No amount of hand balancing will give you the ability to do backflips, you have to work specifically on the skills you want. But learning to control your body one way or another will speed your learning curve.
Plus the strength you build from hand balancing is likely to make many other moves easier as well.
Since this email is already getting long and most of the questions are in depth I’ll have to save them til next time.
But before I go I want to let you know about my other site. Just recently re-launched it and have some awesome things in store.
I like to keep this site well targeted on hand balancing and acrobatics, but that is only one aspect of the much larger world of physical culture.
If you want to learn more of my thoughts on strength training, bodyweight exercise, kettlebells, hand strength, old-time feats of strength, and much more you’ve got to check it out here.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Go to Legendary Strength and be sure to sign up for the email tips there too to regularly get all the up to date information.
May/080
Increase your Hand Balancing Abilities
Got a question from Patrick. “I am a beginner at hand balancing. How can I find exercises and stretching drills thats will increase my abilities”
C’mon people. This is a call to all who submit questions. Be more specific. I can provide better answer when I know what you want. In fact the more detailed the better.But I will take a blind shot at this question.
To increase your abilities you need to work on the specific abilities themselves. I’m going to assume that you’re talking about your hand balancing abilities.
Depending on what you are specifically having trouble with this could mean any number of things.
If your having problems with balancing than I would recommend even easier skills than the handstand itself. Skills like the frogstand, headstand and forearm stand. Here’s the easiest way to learn how to do the handstand.
If you need strength I would recommend holding handstands against the wall and doing handstand pushups.
For flexibility, lets say in the shoulder region, you can do many drills. In a handstand against the wall you can bring your chest outward thus working the shoulder flexibility. That’s just one example of many. The gymnastic bridge also works wonders and for more than just the shoulders.
The concepts are universally applied to almost any exercise question. If you can analyze where you are at and where you want to be than break that down into things to work on you can attain any goal.
It’s a useful skill to have. Breaking down the seemingly complex into simple steps to follow.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Now if you want the whole hand balancing plan laid out for you than I recommend you check this one out – Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
May/080
Fish Tail Press Up to Handstand
Fish Tail Press Up to Handstand
Got another video for you. This one is from next month’s Acrobat Accelerator.
A slightly more advanced move, but in the complete video you’ll be taken through the steps to get up to this move.
Here’s what it says in The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing about the Fish Tail Press Up.
Lie flat on the back, with the hands and arms close to the sides, with the hands flat on the floor, then by resisting with the hands, you draw the legs up slowly, and rigid, keep the legs going until you are up, resting on your head and shoulders, then change the position of the hands by placing them along side of the head flat on the floor; then let the feet drop about six inches, then drive them up, and push up to a handstand, the legs are kept rigid all the time.
That’s one long run on sentence but it describes the move well.
This move takes strong abs just to get into the plough position and hold it with your legs over your head. I suppose you could call this move the Plough press too. The more you drive with the legs the less you have to push with your arms but you have to do both.
Give it a shot and see how it goes.
On another note the May Sale is moving fast. Many items are sold out but others like the Paulinetti and Jones’ book and the Tumbling Course still have many in stock. http://www.lostartofhandbalancing.com/maysale.html
If you’ve stalled, wait no longer. The sale will come down late Sunday even if there’s a few items left.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
May/080
David Webster on Hand Balancing
Strength historian David Webster wrote this about hand balancing in 1963:
“Few physical culturists attracted to balancing have any ambitions to perfect a first class act and top the bill at the variety theatres or on television, this has happened time and time again to fellows who set out to learn a handstand just for the fun of it.
Few forms of training are as enjoyable as balancing and not only the participators find it so; those watching the activity derive a great deal of pleasure from seeing the thrills and spills of training sessions as well as enjoying the final polished performance of the feats.
With a little conscientious practice, most people can master the elementary balances and this in itself encourages them to try harder stunts. Those who have a background in strength athletics of any description will have a great advantage over the less experienced.
The strong men will find their strength in the arms and shoulders a great asset, but don’t worry if you don’t possess strength or experience because the first balances can be practiced even by schoolboys.
Master the basic balances before trying the harder stunts. These lay the foundation for future success.”
I would agree with David completely.
I decided to master the handstand one day and look where that has led me. I’m not one of the best by any means but I’m teaching hundreds across the world.
Just look where you can be in 10 or 20 years. That’s a lot of time to practice!
It starts with the foundation. One simple move, the handstand.
From there you can take it in so many directions.
Walking and Jumping on Your Hands
And much more. Once you learn the basics the next step is up to you. As long as you keep pushing forward, in a little time, you’ll be doing moves that will impress others and get them started on the hand balancing path.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
May/080
Taking Time Off from Handstands
Every once in a while you need to take a little time off from your training. This could be a few days or a week. Maybe a month while you focus on other goals.
This is not a bad thing. Sure, you won’t be making direct progress during that time. But more often than not, you’ll come back with a fury, excited and supercharged to make big gains once again.
This is as true with hand balancing, as with any other form of training.
If you go about something the same way, day in and day out, for a long, long time you will go stale eventually. Your body and mind will get use to it.
Taking a break can be like re-fueling the engine.
It goes without saying that you do have to devote time to practicing and working toward your goals. You can’t be on a break all the time.
And when you do come back there may be a day or more in which it doesn’t feel right. Where it seems your skills have gone down.
Not to worry, just get back into the flow of things and soon you’ll be surpassing old records.
Such is the case for myself. I’ve had to change up my training for reasons I won’t get into this time. Hand balancing had to take the back seat for a few weeks.
I still did some, but not with the same intensity and effort I was before. Believe it or not, many days I was left too sore to even hold a handstand. Certainly not in any shape to work on harder skills.
But I’m not beating myself self up over it. Because soon enough I’ll launch right back into it. With new energy I know I’ll be making some impressive gains.
How about you?
Know that at any time you can switch what you’re doing and go after something 100%. To get yourself back in gear instead of going through the motions.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Special announcement coming next week…
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