Back-swing into Handstand

I've recently been playing around on the parallel bars on days where my elbows need a rest from the rings. I recently managed to achieve the back-swing into handstand in the gym. Yesterday, I found myself training a friend at the outdoor training area in Primrose Hill, London and thought I'd attempt it on the P-bars there.

I expected to be intimidated to go up into handstand without being completely surrounded by crash mats as I've become accustomed to... in fact it felt completely natural.

Sorry about the video quality, it was taken on a phone.

The Handstand

I've been practicing the handstand solidly for a while now and am making slow but steady progress.

The basics of the position are relatively easy to learn but it feels like one of those things that take a lifetime to master.

I found one site particularly useful in building up the basic posture and body positioning. Jim Balhurst's Beast Skills is a site jam packed full of tutorials for a variety of bodyweight feats including the One armed pull up, the front lever, the human flag, the true one handed push up and of course the handstand. All tutorials have gradual progressions to build towards your goal and are illustrated with colour photographs.

While I've been learning, I've also tried my hand at teaching a few others how to handstand. It is through this and my own practice that I've put together some fundamental points in holding a handstand. Note: Many of these are already mentioned in the sites above but as they are extremely common mistakes I feel it's worth stressing the point.

Tips to an improved handstand


1) Use a shoulder Width hand placement: One of the things I've noticed is that people -especially men with built shoulders due to the reduced flexibility- seem to like to place their hands quite wide apart from each other. Before I started practicing them regularly, this is how I was doing it too.

The first time that I placed my hands at the relatively narrow shoulder width, I was shocked at how much easier holding the handstand felt. I believe the reason for this is that your centre of gravity follows a much straighter line with the hands tucked in by the ears. Widen your hand placement too far and you'll find holding the handstand significantly harder. The problem is that a wider grip feels more natural to most people. If your shoulder flexibility is limiting you, try Shoulder dislocates which will improve your ability to hold a handstand with a shoulder width hand placement.

 
2) Good posture is paramount: There's more value in a five second handstand with good posture than a ten second handstand maintained by walking on your hands, bending elbows and piking hips. Focus always on attaining balance, not greater time spent on your hands.

• Open out your shoulders - Push the ground away from you and pull your shoulders right back behind your ears.
• Keep your elbows locked straight - You can rescue a failing handstand by bending your elbows but this can easily become a bad habit and will only impede your progress.
  
• The head must remain neutral - remain looking at hands rather than in front of you as this may cause your back to arch.
• Keep your core and lower back tensed - Some conditioning for each may be required if you're constantly bending at this point which is common.
  
• Tuck your hips - I never understood what people meant when they said this. The best way to explain it is to tense your glutes as tightly as possible. I also imagine that I'm pushing the sky away from me with my legs. This keeps your hips in line with your back.
• Legs must stay together - Accomplished hand balancers can split their legs and maintain balance but as a beginner, it will only make it harder to hold.
• Point your toes - I always forget this. I feel like it helps me maintain a straight body position when I do it though.
• Walking is cheating - If you're trying to hold a static handstand but you're walking on your hands to balance, you're failing. I trained myself out of this one by handstanding on a low wall. On a wall, the last thing your mind will let you do is walk.   

WARNING: Make sure your pirouette from handstand is good and that you're confident doing it from an elevated platform before trying the wall handstand. For gods sake, don't try to forward roll out of a handstand on a wall... I'm told it hurts.

Time spent working on good posture is an investment and will yield far greater returns.


3) Practice on different surfaces: Until just recently, I had worked exclusively on hard floors like concrete, wood and even my tiled kitchen floor. It made me feel pretty good when people commented on how good my "head" must be to handstand on hard surfaces and so I continued doing so, blissfully ignorant of my developing over-specialisation.

However; every time I ended up hand balancing in a park on some grass, my handstands failed after a fraction of the time whilst those who feared concrete would outshine me. Each time I told myself that it was just a bad session and would subconsciously avoid uneven surfaces like grass as much as possible. I've finally started practicing on grass and hills etc. and have made enormous improvements. The only way to master the handstand is to develop proficiency in a variety of situations.

Hard surfaces help with posture and quickly teach you how to pirouette, uneven surfaces give you a greater versatility of balance and a better understanding of the handstand. You may also find that harder surfaces are more responsive to adjustments made through the fingers as they don't yield like softer surfaces do.

Practice everywhere!

4) Video yourself: Record yourself balancing as often as possible. Not only will you be able to monitor your progress, you'll be able to better analyse why your handstands are failing and how best to improve them. 

In fact; if you send me a link to a video of yourself in a handstand, I'd be happy to give you my opinion.


5) Feel it: No this one isn't a space filler. The most important method of improvement for me -greater even than a video- has been a gradual improvement in my physical understanding of what makes a handstand work. Knowing why your handstand failed by actually feeling it will help you better apply the correct technique in future. Try to literally feel each part of your body while you're inverted and build up a mental map of the relative positions of each component during your successful attempts. Spend some time focused on specific body areas and actions (like pointing the toes) and remember how it felt so that you can bring it all together later.

This takes time but will eventually teach you to rescue a failing handstand by altering your body position.

Finally, never let yourself believe that your handstand is perfect, there are always ways in which you can improve it. As soon as you let yourself believe that you have mastered something, you close yourself off to further learning.

On that note, if you can offer any recommendations on how I could improve my own handstand -see video- I would gladly hear them!