correct under balance

This is driving me crazy, I know when I kick into a handstand, I press the heel of my hands to not under balance. But, when I am already in the freestanding HS and I start to under balance, even what seems like an inch or so, there is no way I can press hard enough to bring my hips back in line. I can hold a freestanding HS for more than 30s, but when it comes to an under balance, it seems as though it requires incredible strength to correct. I've tried piking, bending my legs and nothing helps.

Any ideas or is this just a matter of brute strength?

Firstly, when I teach handstands to the kids I coach, I teach not to kick up into handstand with the back leg but to extend the leading leg and bring yourself up into handstand that way. This tends to lead to more control in the HS and stops over/under balancing in the first place.

Secondly as well as the heels of the hands, inner knuckles and fingertips being excellent tools to aid HS balance, your next port of call (in my opinion) is head placement and shoulder flexion.

If you are in a HS with a nice open shoulder angle and looking at the ground, your body line is solid with a "sucked and tucked" core and you start to over balance (as in going forward over your shoulders) try flexing you shoulders slightly (a movement which is often barely visible) similar the pulse in the shoulders when performing a front hand spring. If pressing with your finger tips to correct the problem isn't enough I find that this small squeeze with the shoulders works well.

If you begin to under balance (coming back the way you came) and pushing the heels of your hands isn't enough then looking through your arms and moving the head through can help to correct the balance point.

Hope this helps a little. If not then i'm sure someone else will post something more helpful soon as we have a lot of excellent hand balancers on here

Under balance is quite difficult and is more requiring when it comes to both strength and technique than staying on your fingers.

You cant simply try to push your heels back, because your legs are moving away from your centre of gravity, which forces you to make corrections in the shoulders and/or hips. When your legs go this way you get into a sort of "press handstand" position. There are 2 or 3 general ways of doing this(and they can also be combined more or less). It is complicated to explain this in text format, but I will try.

First(and maybe most properly) you can stay on straight arms, pike at the hips, press HEAVILY through your trapezius as your shoulders lean slightly forward, and let the abdominals work hard to keep your legs from falling to the floor. This requires good shoulder flexibility to be able to "stack" the torso on top of the arms.

The second way is by bending the arms, and thus letting yourself lean forwards by the strength of your shoulders and triceps. This can be done both with and without piking at the hips. Working up to handstand pushups is basically what is needed to learn this variation.

The third way is to keep the body and arms straight and pressing as if dropping to planche from a hanstand, which is obviously the heaviest of the 3.

In all of these 3 the LEAN FORWARD is crucial for success. The interesting thing is that people have a tendency to do it in different ways depending on where they are strong. Most people who have some strength from regular weight training tend to bend their arms to compensate for lacking scapula and straight arm strength. People lacking shoulder mobility do either do the same or lean their shoulders far forwards to get their centre of gravity over their palms. In general, the first way, by proper shoulder extension and piking, is the way to go. It does take strength to be able to do this. To get the feeling of how your hips and abdominals should be working, try doing the same in a headstand. If it is not very easy to do several pike-ups in a headstand, I would reccomend you to work on these, since doing it in handstand is much heavier.

The hardest part is the shoulders however. A lot of mobility exercises and static stretching helps a lot, since it makes you able to align your arms under your body better when the legs are piked. However, you will ALWAYS have to work in the shoudlers because some sort of lean forward is neccesary. The strength part is slowly built up as you get better control in your handstands. In the beginning it will probably help you to bend your legs and try to tuck them tightly to your body to controll them, or straddle if you have decent spilt flexibility. Doing negative handstand presses is a core part of building presses as well.

This became a lot of information, and maybe not so specific, but it is hard to say exactly how you should work without seeing a video. Hope it helps some at least!

Breaks said:

Firstly, when I teach handstands to the kids I coach, I teach not to kick up into handstand with the back leg but to extend the leading leg and bring yourself up into handstand that way. This tends to lead to more control in the HS and stops over/under balancing in the first place.

This actually helped me! Thanks!

Thanks guys, I'll try the suggestions tomorrow.

When this happens to me, if I'm not too tired, I'm of the variety who will bend my elbows to give me time to get my body back to a more vertical situation and then push back to straight arms. I don't think I can make the piking thing work for me yet....