30 minute frog stands

Hehe, ok guys, weird question time for a hopefully interesting discussion;

I was wondering if there could be any benefit to doing extended sets of freestanding frog stands. I am not sure how balance carry's over between positions but it seems to me that training to the point of 10 minute and beyond frog stands would offer some good benefits to the beginner trainee that handstand could not offer (simply because high HS volume would be more taxing);

- Improved and better understanding of balance (could carry over to HS training?)

- Wrist health

- finger and forearm strength

My max free HS is about 45 seconds. I am curious what high volume frog stands could offer me, if anything? I might just play around with this anyways. I imagine it would be a feat in and of itself to be able of 30 minute frog stands.

Do some research into the yoga arm balances to find any concrete benefits of developing the strength to hold frongstand longer than the requirements set in the foundation series.

Put the time into planks instead IMO, or get into ag walks for time frog stand is useful but I'm not sure this is the exercise to pour the time into.

I am also curious about this.

The benefits I see would be:

Wrist, forearm, finger conditioning 

capillary density in triceps and shoulders

But you have to be very careful or you can overdo it too quickly and end up with a tendonitis or some other injury

Jon Douglas said:

Put the time into planks instead IMO, or get into ag walks for time frog stand is useful but I'm not sure this is the exercise to pour the time into.

I understand it is a really simple exercise, but it offers the balance training that ag walks/planks wouldn't. The way I am thinking aobut it is to get the body so comfortable with balance and understanding balance corrections. Like some people say, the eventual sign of expertise with balance is to be able to rebalance unconsciously. Like how we can balance on our legs for hours at a time. It becomes so easy that we can move into harder leg balances with relatiely little effort. yea?

MrPuppeh said:

I am also curious about this.

 

The benefits I see would be:

 

Wrist, forearm, finger conditioning 

capillary density in triceps and shoulders

 

But you have to be very careful or you can overdo it too quickly and end up with a tendonitis or some other injury

Good point, I didn't think about the endurance benefits. Capillary density and increased mitochondria This would allow for slower red blood cell transit time through the muscles and potential for allowing for faster recovery between exercise bouts due to greater nutrient supply. Hmm...

I'm not saying it wouldn't be beneficial, just that there are other exercises that would pay off more for the time investment if your heart is set on frogstand, not sure why you wouldn't at least do the locked arm version.

In the end we aren't gonna know until someone does it, so personally I'd like to cut through a bunch of theory and say go do it and report back

I suspect the ten minute wall runs, which Coach has compared to a static 30min handstand for shoulder conditioning, have a better payoff per time invested, but you are of course welcome to disagree with my opinion

Jon Douglas said:

In the end we aren't gonna know until someone does it, so personally I'd like to cut through a bunch of theory and say go do it and report back

 

Say no more...

Jon Douglas said:

I'm not saying it wouldn't be beneficial, just that there are other exercises that would pay off more for the time investment if your heart is set on frogstand, not sure why you wouldn't at least do the locked arm version.

In the end we aren't gonna know until someone does it, so personally I'd like to cut through a bunch of theory and say go do it and report back

I suspect the ten minute wall runs, which Coach has compared to a static 30min handstand for shoulder conditioning, have a better payoff per time invested, but you are of course welcome to disagree with my opinion

The 30 min planks vs 30 min frogstands : I would agree on the planks also because they seem more practical in terms on straight arm strength and you have to maintain scap protraction and correct body shape the whole time.

I remember Coach mentioning some time that a known Olympic athlete from another country was doing 15 min planks for conditioning. But i cant say how often and how many sets etc.

I agree with Jon about doing and seeing, but I don't think there's any balancing carryover to handstands. It's just much easier to balance in frog stand.

I have to agree w/ Jon on this one.  If you're having endurance problems in the handstand, i'd focus on lengthening the duration of wall walks.  Balance is not your problem if you can do a 45 second handstand.  Muscular endurance is.  This would not be benefitted from the frog stand, as it's not focusing much at all on your levator scapulae and your other scapular elevators.  I think you're just asking for wrist tendonitis working on your frogstand to that degree.  

Frogstand is a very simple balance variation. It can teach people a bit on how to support their weight on the arms and I use it to teach the concept of finger control and lowering it to headstand, but beyond that I do not feel that it carries a lot further. Handstand is all about shoulder and scapula control and you are not touching this to any significant degree when practicing frog stand. 30 min frog stand would be like standing on 1 leg for 30 min, the main thing it would make you good at is endurance in the specific position.

Balance in handstand is mostly about coordination in the position so that you can be efficient with your energy and it needs to be learned in the specific position. Fingers are necessary to correct over balance, but when you are experienced you can place the weight further towards the heel of your palm and use the fingers for fixing bigger movements. Because of good placement I can do a Lsit press to handstand and balance well with my fingers hanging completely inactive off a ledge. 

How about headstands and its variations?

Paulizdaman said:

How about headstands and its variations?

I'm not a handbalancer, I'm still working towards a freestanding handstand, but I can do a headstand for quite a while with no problem.  The only transfer that I'm aware of from a headstand to a handstand is the vertical position of your body.  And like the handbalancer dude said with frogstands, it's not helping with the whole shoulder/scap control thing, 

Hi guys! New to the forum, but thought of bringing my two cents into this discussion.

I'm a Swásthya Yôga teacher, which is lineage that works strongly with a great diversity of physical techniques. In our school, the frog stand and the handstand are in the same family of techniques: the basic frog stand is called "kakásana", and the handstand is the "mahá kakásana", which would be the "great" kakásana. There is a reason for this: the traditional way (albeit not the easiest one) of moving to the handstand (please consider that we do not work with impulses, all movements should be very conscious) is, coming from the frog stand, removing your knees from your elbows and raising your hips, subsequently extending your legs. In order to do this well, the best way is to: (i) grow to holding the kakásana for a few minutes, maybe 4-5, to get your torso stronger; (iI) trying the "êpakada kakásana" variations, which is when you keep one knee in the elbow, but extend the other leg upwards; and (iii) training to remove the other leg once you're able to hold that position for a few minutes. So, in short, if you stay for a long time in the position it will help you to a certain degree; however, using those minutes to combine with other techniques that improve core strenght and hip awareness seem like a better deal for me. 

As to the headstand, it doesn't help. For a good headstand, you don't need a lot of strenght - the weight is distributed between your forearms and neck, and there's not much of an effort. You can easily hold it for 20 or 30 minutes if you're well trained (you'll probably come down when the neck starts to get sore), but you still won't be able to do a handstand. Hope I was helpful