Good Form. Why?

Hi Team,

I'm currently plugging away at H1 and loving it; I really like the insistence on form that we have here.  I have a devils-advocate question for you.  This will help me explain to people what I'm doing.

Why is it important that a handstand is done with, what we consider, good form?  If someone can blast out a two minute handstand that's not straight, sub standard shoulder flexion, arched back, un-straight arms, etc. what's the big deal? Or what specifically do we get out of doing an immaculate form handstand?   Hit me!

Without good form, it'll be next to impossible to blast out a two minute handstand.

More importantly, to paraphrase an observation that Steve Jobs used to repeat over and over: "Most people make the mistake of thinking that design is what something looks like...It's not how it looks and feels like, design is how it works."

A proper handstand is not necessarily what it's supposed to "look like," but how its supposed to work. And if you omit the tiny details of alignment, mobility, protraction of scapulae, etc., you may achieve a handstand all right, which might even look like a gymnastics handstand, but it'll "work" altogether different from a proper gymnastics handstand.

Try to focus on the "how it should work" part, and not worry too much about the "how it should look like" part.

I listened to Coach Sommer saying with arched Handstand you can t go too far, no press to handstand, no one arm handstand. Arched Handstand would be your final goal and you ll have more chances of injury, specially on the shoulders.

I remember Coach saying in several podcasts and articles, that muscle-ups, handstands, rope climbs etc, that normal human beings think of as ultimate strength goals, is actually very basic stuff in gymnastic world- that's where all the real stuff starts, not ends. You can probably achieve all of them also without focusing too much on good form (arched handstands, kipping muscle-ups), but you won't progress much further from there (and in order to fix it on that stage you should come back to basics anyway so that it's more efficient to do it right already the first time).

If somone can do a 2 minute handstand with bad form, he could probably do a 4 minute handstand with good form

If you have a nice straight body form the handstand is so much easier because you don't need to balance a lot.

1 hour ago, Sebastian Binder said:

If somone can do a 2 minute handstand with bad form, he could probably do a 4 minute handstand with good form

If you have a nice straight body form the handstand is so much easier because you don't need to balance a lot.

 

 

 

 

completely wrong . the muscles which are involved work with different intensity on different angles, arched handstand does not involve the deep mid section stabilizer as the hollowed variation, does not work properly the serratus anterior, all the traps and much more. 

handstand it is an isometric work and the isometric work and it's conditioning it is ANGLE SPECIFIC. ignoring this point means ignore one of the milestone of the training science. 

Thank you for clearing that up.

I thought so because once I could open my shoulders up to 180°, handstand was a lot easier for me. It feels like you only need very little strength and just small balancing movements. (compared to a arched version)