Stuck trying to balance away from wall

[Dean Brown]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and very excited about gymnastic training. I've always been fascinated by gymnastics, but have never had any idea how to try to accomplish gymnastic feats on my own.

I'm 44 but recently got into the best shape of my life doing the Beachbody P90X program. There are a lot of bodyweight exercises in that program that led me to learning more about handstand pushups, etc.

I have read as much as I can online about the handstand and have moved through the progressions of the frogstand and headstand pretty well, and I can kick up against the wall fine.

However, I've been at this point since about March 1.

I can get my feet away from the wall and balance for maybe 5 seconds, but that is about as good as it ever gets.

I'm so frustrated trying to balance better. My body is tight and all that stuff that I've read everywhere.

It just seems like such a delicate, tough balance.

Especially, when I start falling away from the wall, towards my stomach, it seems impossible to regain balance.

Any pointers to finally start making more progress? Mental images? Anything?

I am able to hold for about 1 minute and 40 seconds against the wall. I'm also able to do handstand (I see you call them headstand) pushups against a wall pretty well also.

Thanks in Advance,

Dean

[Blairbob]

Have you worked just kicking to HS on floor as well?

[Dean Brown]

Blairbob,

I have not done that very much except for some outside where I have a soft landing. Maybe that would help. Do you think it is just good to get away from the wall sometimes?

[Marlon]

Handstands just take a really long time to learn there no way around it. It took me something like 9 months to be able to consistantly balance for 15 seconds. Despite how hard it is, it's a very simple concept and I don't really think that any sort of visualization or mental imaging is going to make a difference. The only technique advice that I think could make a significant difference in a short amount of time would be to focus on keeping your weight centered over the first row of knuckles on your hand. With the weight in that place, you are able to push through your fingers to make corrections if you are falling toward your back, and still push through the heel of your palm slightly if you are falling toward your stomach.

Beyond that; learning how to hold the proper body tension for a handstand is a very lengthy prosses, just knowing that you need to stay tight and squeezing some of the muscles in your body doesn't mean that you are effectively and efficiently doing it properly. In fact, if you can't hold a handstand for very long and started hand balancing recently I can almost assure you still need to be actively working on and trying to improve your body tension. But that doesn't meen that you need to squeeze harder necessarily, just that you may need to tension more consistantly or hold more tension through certain parts of your body and less in others. I've found that Doing Hollow body holds on the ground (laying on your back lifting your legs and shoulders off of the ground while trying to suck your abs in and keep your lower back on the ground) is a great way to work on the endurance you need to stay tight while doing handstands, and it will also teach you how to engage your lower back and hips through your core.

1 min 40 seconds is a pretty good time so i doubt that strength or endurance are really holding you back, but remember to push through your shoulders whenever you are doing handstands as this will give you more control and stability through the shoulder joint. Your goal should be to squeeze your ears between your shoulders.

I don't really know what the most effective drills would be to train a handstand. Frogstands and headstands are great progressions, Endurance holds against a wall are very important so that you can focus on form without worrying about balancing and so that when you do work freestanding you can focus on actually balancing and not worry about having the endurance to stay up. Kicking up to a wall and trying to find your balance by tapping off the wall is probably how you should spend most of your time, but you should also spend time working on kicking up without a wall. If you can find a spotter to tap you back into balance when you start to fall thats fantastic as well. Out side of actually working handstands, forearm stands and elbow levers are great just to vary up your training while still working on your balance and wrist strength.

All that said the most important piece of advice I can give you when it comes to handstands is to just keep doing them as much as you can. The more time you spend on your hands the quicker you'll make progress, so if you train 15 minutes a day, you may only make 1/4th of the progress in a year that you would make training an hour a day. If you want a handstand as fast as possible then the limiting factor on how much you train should be pain. Most often people have trouble with wrist pain while handbalancing, but the elbows and shouders can be probelmatic too. If you have pain while training that subsides when you stop, you have to make a judgement call on whether you want to back off or not, but If you start develop chronic joint pain then you are probably training too much for where you are currently at.

This turned out to be a much longer post that I thought it would, I hope that you get some useful info out of it and good luck with your training!

[Dean Brown]

Excellent help, Marlon. Thanks a lot! I think I just needed an understanding of how long it can take to be able to balance well. The impression you get from some tutorials is that it should all happen pretty fast.

That was inciteful. Thanks again.

[Cole Dano]

Glad you decided to 'ramble' a bit Marlon!

When you talk about working for an hour as opposed to 15 minutes, how much of that hour are you actually on your hands?

One of my top goals is to get my hand stand much more stable, consistent and to build up more time.

I've been doing very short times on my hands for many years with little progress. Largely thanks to information learned here, i see that it really requires time per session than just a few wall stands, esp for someone like myself who isn't in any way a natural.

[Marlon]

Glad I could be of help Dean.

@ Mr Brady

To be honest I'm not sure how much of the time I train is actually spent on my hands. Right now I'm training in 1 hour 30 minute sessions and spending most of that time working on one arms. If training is going really well, I'll get into my handstand, settle for bit, go to one arm and hold it for 5-10 seconds, switch to the other arm hold for 5-10 seconds, then either come down or do another 2 holds. After that I'll rest for a little bit, (up to a minute maybe) before going back up. I don't know what more accomplished hand balancers would tell you in terms of what pace you should work at while training, but since I don't have a coach to keep poking me back into balance at the moment, my endurance isn't all that great (only just barely 2 minutes in a handstand), and I can only get short holds of one arms on good days and spend a lot of time falling out of one arms on bad days, I try to go slow and be fresh before each attempt to get the highest quality and likelihood of success for each one.

My advice for how much time you should spend on your hands if you are spending most of your training time against a wall would be "as much time as possible". That doesn't mean you should stay up against the wall until you hit failure each time you go into a handstand, because doing so would severely limit the actual volume of time you would be able to spend inverted over the course of a long session. You just have to play around and try manage your time in handstand and your rest times to get the most volume out of each training session.

[Razz]

Ido has once mentioned something about a 1:4 work to rest ratio for building HS endurance...not bothered to search for that post but searching around for posts by ido portal with keywords around: handstand, endurance, work, to rest ratio, might be helpful

[Cole Dano]

Thanks for that Marlon, its really helpfull to have an idea of what folks like yourself do.

I'm doing pretty much as you suggest just need to keep at it, honestly i'd be very happy to have a consistent 2 minute free hands stand which is right now only about 15s.

Of course at the wall its a different thing, but i realized that i kinda skipped that step. I'm dong timed sets at the wall now because we learned hs via doing dropbacks to backbends so my hs tends to be way too arched and not too long. I know i need to get the form and build some endurance. I still do lots of work on freestanding but in moving to a straighter body the time and consitency totally crashed from so so to oh no.

Thankfully i've seen some progress, but always wondered if i'm just not spending enough time on the hands to begin with.

[Richard Duelley]

I try to go slow and be fresh before each attempt to get the highest quality and likelihood of success for each one.

Thats what I do, its no fun getting all tired and beat up after only 20 min of practice! I want to go for a solid hour or more if possible. I have also found that mixing in elbow lever, headstands, forearm stands, airbaby work and other things helps as well.

[Joshua Naterman]

Wall handstands are definitely important. Ido has some great body line drills on his youtube account, and EVERYONE should be doing body line work if you are working handstands, which we all should be lol!

For me, working wall handstands both stomach AND back to wall were important. Stomach to wall helped me with body line and strength, while back to wall helped me open my shoulders more.

As far as free-balancing work, I just started kicking up into handstands all over the place. Once I got to where I could always hold for at least a few seconds in the handstand I started kicking up slower, until I could do it almost slo-motion. Then I started kicking up into handstands on benches and holding them. The constant practice, at least 10 minutes a day, helped me a lot. My shoulder issues prevented me from having a lot o f volume, but most people shouldn't run into anything like that. Just practice a lot! Focus on body tension and trying to stand on the sky with your feet! You will get it.

[Mark Weaver]

Lots of handstands on parallettes helped me. I used them almost exclusively for a month or so for handstand work while strengthening my wrist, and when I went back to just the floor, i held my handstand much better.

[Dean Brown]

Thanks for all your help.

I am now able to go about 15 seconds on a good attempt away from the wall.

Getting my weight on the first row of knuckles has helped a lot.

I've also used forearm stands as a training aide which I have found helpful.

It's just a matter of time.

I also have been working front and back lever progressions as well as planches. I'm finally able to almost get a straddle back lever so, even though progress is slow getting to these positions, I can finally at least see some progress.