Balance Crossovers?

I am curious as to whether or not there are balance crossovers from practicing handstands. Sure, strength and endurance will have a huge impact on just about everything, but does the balance help with things other than handstands?

I'm gonna make a wild guess into saying that it would help spatial awareness because you fully understand the world upside down...

Balance is specific.

S.A.I.D.

It will help with anything where you become inverted, so that you don't become disoriented like most of the adult population would.

i unicycled for several years when I was younger and that had absolutely no crossover to handbalancing, and I was doing some hard tricks (some of which took over a year to learn). However it did have a very strong crossover to lower body balancing ability and coordination. I was able to walk the full length of a tight wire on my second attempt. I would say handbalancing would have a lot of carryover to coordinating the shoulders and of course being inverted.

nickvb said:

i unicycled for several years when I was younger and that had absolutely no crossover to handbalancing, and I was doing some hard tricks (some of which took over a year to learn). However it did have a very strong crossover to lower body balancing ability and coordination. I was able to walk the full length of a tight wire on my second attempt. I would say handbalancing would have a lot of carryover to coordinating the shoulders and of course being inverted.

:oops:

That was one of the coolest videos I've ever seen.

nickvb said:

:oops:

Awesome stuff. I was lent a unicycle by a friend, I had around 2-4 weeks with it. I could just about get going with several attempts and a wall to start me off(from then on flapping my arms like a lunatic ).

There's no way that I'll be able to find it again but somewhere on youtube is a unicycle montage similar to that one in which the rider attempts a hand stand between tricks and lasts about 1-3 seconds (backing up that balance is specific).

I do however see stacks of similarities in the learning curve-starting with a wall>learning to fall in each direction without injury>posture>free start>other variations. I've found this to be the learning curve for both. This may not make learning one skill easier having experienced the other, but on the other hand it might :roll: .

speaking of unbelievable feats on unicycles:

I think part of the issue of not having carryover between unicycling and equilibre is dynamic vs static balance.

However, both teach you discipline, frustration-tolerance and that there are no shortcuts in training such skills - so it makes it somewhat easier to pick up the other skill after having learned one.