Handstand Alignment Help! (Video Posted)

I just cannot seem to fix this annoy arch in my back. I had not noticed until I recorded my handstand. Even though I can balance it at the end it is not straight. I thought it was straight. It's just so frustrating and annoying! :x Any helps or suggest to help fix my balance, kicking up and have my back straight the whole time? Please and thank you.

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Have you practiced wall-handstands with your stomach to the wall?

Well, I had. The closest I can get to the wall is 1 inch. Any closer I try I would tip over. But I don't feel like its helping me correcting the HS alignment. I would lean on the wall and that's it. Yeah sure I would push off my shoulders and extend and open up my shoulders and stretch and point my feet but when I kick up it is no where in that alignment. When I push off the wall when doing Wall HS I can not hold that straight hollow position either. I have not been able to find the solution to fix this problem.

Hmmm, well I'm no handstand expert, so hopefully someone with more equilibre experience can chime in here.

But I'll try and offer suggestions until that happens.

Are you tightening your abs and glutes? This will tilt your pelvis in the direction that it needs to go and your legs should go with it, coming back over your hands. If you are already doing that I am all out of suggestions, most likely.

Also, try this drill.

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Use video to make sure that you are in a straight line from your hands to knees. Then from there it's just a matter of extending the knees.

Titan, I think the biggest culprit is your shoulder flexibility. In not only this video but your last video, I noticed that you seem to have pretty tight shoulders.

With these tight shoulders, you are not going to be able to put your hands extremely close to the wall in a stomach wall HS and that's ok. Focus more on that your shoulder angle is open. Because of the width of the human torso, it would actually require a very slender torso and very open shoulders to be able to put the hands within 1 inch of the wall on a wall HS.

For instance, let's say your torso is 5 inches thick from the front of the chest to the back of the back/shoulders. Get me?

Keep on working on it and try to stick your head out as much as you are. I don't want to see your ears, at all! Get me! Yes, that's may sound like it's yelling but sometimes it's the only way to get through people's head.

If you are sucking in your gut and squeezing your butt and rotating your hips/pelvis under that is the correct way to position your middle in the HS. If you aren't, then do it!

Other than that, it's mainly a factor of your shoulder flexibility. Of course poor form doesn't help.

For my experience (i also had an arched handstand and still working on it but i've seen a lot of progress on this) the first you should do is go out from the wall, if you can do free handstand, go away from the wall because there is a tendency to arch until the feet goes to wall, even if you are not touching it in your mind you know it is there. This would not happen without a wall for obvious reasons . Just do wall handstand if you are practicing for time (more than 30 secs sets).

Then without the wall you would continue to arch but, what worked for me is the following:

1. Slightly bend at your hips as you would do if you were lying back on the floor and want to eliminate the space between the floor and the lower back. At first it would seems as if you were bending to much the hips, go as far as you can until you drop. You'll find that when you are almost going to drop is when your legs are aligned.

2. THEN open your shoulder to counterbalance the movement of the legs.

THIS IS THE ORDER. If you try to open your shoulder first, the body tends to compensate arching more so the legs are more arched and you'll have an beatiful scorpion handstand :wink:

This is how i resolved this issue

Blairbob said:

If you are sucking in your gut and squeezing your butt and rotating your hips/pelvis under that is the correct way to position your middle in the HS. If you aren't, then do it!

Cool, I got something right.

Pause your video when your balancing and compare your shoulder angle to Ido's in the other video posted. Looks like shoulder flexibility.

I agree that it's a shoulder flexibility issue. Robb Wolf pointed out that I had the same problem and recommended I stretch out my shoulders as much as possible on the pull-up bar. The yoga position 'downward dog' is also a really good shoulder stretch. If you're not flexible enough in the shoulders, the position of your legs has to over-compensate in order to keep you balanced, which creates an arch in your lower back.

Brandon said:

I agree that it's a shoulder flexibility issue. Robb Wolf pointed out that I had the same problem and recommended I stretch out my shoulders as much as possible on the pull-up bar. The yoga position 'downward dog' is also a really good shoulder stretch. If you're not flexible enough in the shoulders, the position of your legs has to over-compensate in order to keep you balanced, which creates an arch in your lower back.

Do you just hang from the bar to stretch them?

Hanging from a bar will certainly work the shoulder flexibility. But don't ignore the yoga down dog position because that one really teaches you the active push required for the handstand.

mark said:

Do you just hang from the bar to stretch them?

Well he recommended that I hang on the bar, but with my hands so close together that they're almost touching. Then he wanted me to rock back and forth to stretch the shoulders. I personally didn't feel that great of a stretch with this method, but other people might. I prefer hanging from the bar with my hands the same distance apart as they would be if I was doing a handstand. Then I try to lean my head through while pulling my shoulder blades back to get as good a stretch as possible. I don't really feel like I described that appropriately, but hopefully you get the point