HS and press handstand form

[Mark Bernacchi]

Hey guys, just wanted to get some feedback on my HS. I always tend to lose balance by falling forward and one thing I think I noticed, especially in the 2nd clip, is my shoulders being too open. Just wondering if anyone sees this too as it seems like I'm trying to compensate by making my middle and lower back overly hollow.
Also looking for tips in the press HS, though it is by no means something I train regularly. The first press HS clip is how I feel more comfortable doing them, and the 2nd one is with coach's requirement of having toes and heel of the palm on the same line. When I try to do it this way, I have more difficulty and have to lean forward to get anywhere. I'm guessing this is in part because I need to work on active pancake flexibility?
Thanks!

 

 

[gravy]

your line looks pretty clean to me. don't those parallettes have a really small diameter? in your second press, it seems like you bend your knees a bit.

[Sammy Dinneen]

it depends on what line you are going for, i find that gymnastic, sports acro and handbalancing all have different lines, gymnasts have a slightly piked/dished shape and more open shoulders and sport acro have piked shoulders and handbalancers go for that perfect straight line.
i agree that your 2nd shape your shoulders are too open and hips are piked, you can see that your back is very curved and this tends to happen a lot in your videos which is making you fall over, which is also why if you look at your wirsts there moving a lot to balance. when you jump up try and put your weight straight to the front of your wrist and keep it there, lock it out, lock the shoulders a little more piked than you are doing
also when you jump up you stick your head out and then you put it in, try and have your head in from the begining then you will have less movement and less to change once your up there.

hope this helps you and have fun training

[Mats Trane]

Hard to tell but how is your breathing? Try to have control over your breathing. Short, shallow and consistant breathing has helped me.

[Mark Bernacchi]

Thanks for the feedback.

I would like to have the perfect straight line, but my main goal is just to have be comfortable in at least a "semi-correct" position.  To fix the extra curvature in my back should I just let the H1 positioning slowly fix that or should I try not to squeeze the hollow position quite so much?

Mats, breathing is definitely something I am working on(and really need to focus on!).  If I focus on breathing, I tend to loosen up and lose my position.  If I do this I can comfortably stay in the handstand for awhile, but it looks ugly and I don't want to start messing up my form.  Because of this I have typically tried to hit a good line first(or at least what I think feels like a good line), then start to relax my breathing.  Would you recommend trying to fix the breathing at the same time as all the other things instead of having it come later?

[gravy]

As Sammy mentioned, its the shoulder angle. The reason youre piking is because you have to compensate for your torso being past 180 (in relation to your arms). I think an easy way to reinforce the proper position would be stomach to wall (or vertical cheese block) handstand holds. I think that if youre flexing your hollow, contracting your glutes and trying to extend your toes as much as possible, the back issue will resolve itself (once you have proper shoulder angle and no pike).

Another exercise for fixing the pike/back would be to stand back against the wall and rotate your pelvis so that your back is flat to the wall. Make sure your arms are over your head and your shoulders complete a straight line from head to toe (use a mirror). Flex everything and commit to memory.