Tuck Side Planche Help

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfnaZp_6ZVw

I'm trying to find the proper position for this skill. The first 4 clips, my knees pretty much for a right angle, the last 4 clips, my knees are tucked in tighter. It seemed easier with knees tucked tighter to my chest. Also, I'm not perfectly sideways, I tend to stick my chest just slightly in front of my hands as it seems to make it easier. I'm just wondering proper technique.

You have good alignment, but you forgot one very important thing:

you do not stay active in the supporting shoulder. You should push through the floor with it during the whole transition into the position and in the position itself.

How do I know you dont do it? because you are not shifting up and over the shoulder, but just sideways - until you fall down.

A lot of people make this mistake - they think a one armer is simply leaning sideways until your non supporting arm is airborn, and it is - but only if you are activly pushing through the supporting arm the whole time.

I go through a lot of exercises to explain this point in my Balance Workshops. Mind you, it is not the shrug of the trapizius that means you are active, but a more delicate positioning of the humerus inside the shoulder capsule. Difficult to explain in text form, and not so simple even while teaching hands on.

Ido.

Looking quite good as far as I can see. What Ido says is pretty much correct. You need to stay on top of your arm, so you are not only falling to the side. You also need to think that you slightly lean your body to the other side to compensate for the legs leaning over. What I think you should do to learn to keep it on one arm is to do the same thing as you would to learn 1 arm handstand; go to the fingertips with the other hand and learn to stay there for a long time. Your big no no is that you keep your free arm straight as you go to fingertips, which pushes you more to the side. Be EXTRA careful to only bend the elbow of the free hand when you go to the fingers to isolate the arm, so your shoulder and scapula dont move.(which results in a change in centre of gravity, that you want to avoid)

When you want to train to hold it on 1 arm make sure you utilize the free arm to counterbalance by extending it at 90 degrees to your side, but make sure you do not move the scapula when you lift it out, keep the trapezius of your free arm active while the rest of the arm is quite relaxed. Again, if your left shoulder goes up when you shift to your right arm, it will move your entire centre of gravity to the right which makes it much harder to hold.

In this clip you can see me do it with very bad form at 0.44 seconds. There I do most of the mistakes am talking about actually, but I can keep it because I have pretty strong flags. My arm lift is quite bad, even though I bend my elbow. It is not so visible, but you can see my right shoulder move slightly too much, which makes me need to spread my legs and press it back. Compare it to the first flag I do on my right(strong) arm where the shoulders stay pretty much square and the left shoulder stays still while only the arm moves.

For a decent, but not perfect free arm release, watch the split handstand at 0.20 seconds, I release the forearm first, THEN I lift the arm, while the shoulder stays in the same place. On my right arm I tend to go directly because I am pretty safe, but bent elbow-release forearm is always the safest.

This text became a mess, but I hope it can help, keep training, you are doing pretty well!

Ido and Handbalancer thanks again for some really helpful insight into the fine art!

Really appreciate the video Handbalancer, as well as the willingness to dissect your own practice. I doubt i will ever get anywhere near where you are, but am really enjoying the ride.

Jamesters, your handstand looks very solid, keep at it, follow the advice above and you'll have it in no time!

I am copying the above posts into my handbalancing log/blog on Idos board, just for my own reference Nice info guys, thanks a lot!

Ido Portal said:

You have good alignment, but you forgot one very important thing:

you do not stay active in the supporting shoulder. You should push through the floor with it during the whole transition into the position and in the position itself.

How do I know you dont do it? because you are not shifting up and over the shoulder, but just sideways - until you fall down.

A lot of people make this mistake - they think a one armer is simply leaning sideways until your non supporting arm is airborn, and it is - but only if you are activly pushing through the supporting arm the whole time.

I go through a lot of exercises to explain this point in my Balance Workshops. Mind you, it is not the shrug of the trapizius that means you are active, but a more delicate positioning of the humerus inside the shoulder capsule. Difficult to explain in text form, and not so simple even while teaching hands on.

Ido.

Thanks! Ideally, how tight should the knees be tucked into the chest for this skill? They seems to have a natural tendency to loosen as you go sideways. Also, I plan on taking your workshop, either with Steve Atlas, or when you're in LA. Who knows, maybe both.

Handbalancer said:

Looking quite good as far as I can see. What Ido says is pretty much correct. You need to stay on top of your arm, so you are not only falling to the side. You also need to think that you slightly lean your body to the other side to compensate for the legs leaning over. What I think you should do to learn to keep it on one arm is to do the same thing as you would to learn 1 arm handstand; go to the fingertips with the other hand and learn to stay there for a long time. Your big no no is that you keep your free arm straight as you go to fingertips, which pushes you more to the side. Be EXTRA careful to only bend the elbow of the free hand when you go to the fingers to isolate the arm, so your shoulder and scapula dont move.(which results in a change in centre of gravity, that you want to avoid)

When you want to train to hold it on 1 arm make sure you utilize the free arm to counterbalance by extending it at 90 degrees to your side, but make sure you do not move the scapula when you lift it out, keep the trapezius of your free arm active while the rest of the arm is quite relaxed. Again, if your left shoulder goes up when you shift to your right arm, it will move your entire centre of gravity to the right which makes it much harder to hold.

In this clip you can see me do it with very bad form at 0.44 seconds. There I do most of the mistakes am talking about actually, but I can keep it because I have pretty strong flags. My arm lift is quite bad, even though I bend my elbow. It is not so visible, but you can see my right shoulder move slightly too much, which makes me need to spread my legs and press it back. Compare it to the first flag I do on my right(strong) arm where the shoulders stay pretty much square and the left shoulder stays still while only the arm moves.

For a decent, but not perfect free arm release, watch the split handstand at 0.20 seconds, I release the forearm first, THEN I lift the arm, while the shoulder stays in the same place. On my right arm I tend to go directly because I am pretty safe, but bent elbow-release forearm is always the safest.

This text became a mess, but I hope it can help, keep training, you are doing pretty well!

Ya, I've seen your video in the past, I think you seldomly posted on TT and that's when I saw it. Tried talking to you but I don't think you returned. Anyway, I was (and still am) extremely impressed with your hand balance skills, probably the only one better than me on TT/TS. I was wondering your background and training schedule (hours and frequency). In my own experience, I didn't seem to start getting the hand of one handed stand until I started doing high frequency training (a little practice in morning, a little more mid-day, a little more at night) as opposed to one longer session.

Hey again, you are right, I did post on TT, but not so often. I started handbalancing about 2 and a half years ago, and before theat I was breaking for about 6 years. I started very late(im now 25) but I had a very good working capacity from my dancing, so I progressed rather quickly. I had also been doing 1 hand jumps as well as some 1 arm handstands on my right arm with very bad form, which gave me a tremendous advantage because I had what takes the longest time to find on 1 arm; the sensation of actually balancing. I also had good shoulder flexibility along with a decent press handstand. I know a lot of circus artists, as I am now in circus school, who have EXCELLENT 1arm positioning and alignment, but who have a hard time balancing, especially on the floor.

My training nowadays is pretty much all day, every day. I do rest more or less on saturdays, but almost no day go by without at least some handstands. 3 years in school sounds like a long time, but they go by faster than I thought, and I want to get the most out of them. About handstands you are absolutely correct; high frequency training is a must if you want good progress. I tend to try to have a kind of grease the groove perspective on my training, especially with 1 arm presses and flags, as well as my 1 arm work on aerial straps as all of these movements require a lot of strength. This way I feel that the more I work the better I become, as I do not need to exhaust myself on each exercise to feel that I have worked. So basically I would say that do handstands whenever you can and feel like it. Be careful though, so you wont get injured. Experiment as well, bent arms straight arms, leg positions, look at your toes, crossed arms, blindfolded, etc etc etc. The more fun you have with it the better=)

For the tuck position on the side, keep your legs tight and the closer they are to your body, the easier it should be. The most important is that they are tight so they dont flop around.

If yuo have any other questions, dont hesistate to ask!

Handbalancer, I remember you from TT

Your posts on there were extremely helpful to me and were part of the reason I started taking hand balancing more seriously and started working it with proper form.

I think your presence on TT was very under-appreciated.

I just want to say thanks for all your insight. Every one of your posts helps me in some way or another.