Informative article about One Arm HS development

Where to get more info on this French system?

One of the videos linked on the beastskills site is of French acrobat Willie Weldens (whose parents were apparently French circus performers) using the curled fingers "Chinese" method ...

acegerter said:

The french system seems more my style because it focuses on technique rather than conditioning. After my session with Lu Yi, which consisted of 5+ sets of 30-45sec spotted OAHS followed by 3x5 presses, I was exhausted. After a lesson with Yuval I felt like I found balance positions and I was fairly energized afterwards.

@ nautee

The "tiger claw" thing is basically how your hand looks when you press the floor hard. I have seen different people press differently, which I think is just personal preference. Anatoly Zalievsky and Sergej Timofeev, both graduates from the Kiev circus school has a completely different hand position, and they are both some of the best in the business. The important thing is just that you learn to apply as much force to the floor as you can through your fingers so you are able to keep position if you get too much weight forwards.

I might be wrong, but I think Wily Weldens is from a circus family, so he has probably been taught since young age. He is insanely strong and does very crazy tricks. However, his form is not very "proper" if you compare to the way sports acro and circus teaches alignment and 1 arms. I think his style is cool because he can work so much on his strength he can disregard certain things that would make others fall at once.

There is very little difference between the "systems" as far as I understand. The most imporant about the chinese is that they teach from very young age with extremely hard training. The french seems to center itself around Claude Victoria and Eric Varelas who both were amazing artists, and are teaching in france still. The russian technique seems to be the one that is the most wide spread because of all the sports acro coming out of eastern europe. This technique works a lot around alignment and a high shrugged position in the shoulder, as well as getting you to the point where almost all balance is done in the palm Russia also has a long tradition with handbalancing and are still producing excellent artists. The Kiev school in Ukraine is known in the circus world to produce some of the most hardcore handbalancers outside china.

Have you ever tried balancing with Sergej's hand position? (If you haven't seen him, it looks like he is covering a candle with his hands instead of a flat palm) It feels so weird and I don't understand how he is keeping pressure with it. I like to experiment with it for fun though.

I really want to go train at the Kiev Circus School since I saw Yvan Zubkevych performing his straps and hand balancing act. I'm interested in both disciplines, and would love to train with these guys, since they seem to be pretty damn strong.