Are handstand walks a prerequisite for static handstand?

Hello,

I'm a capoeirista, and while I'm not the best qualified teacher, I'm in a position where I'm teaching handstands to my juniors. I can hold one for 30s consistently.

My juniors (especially the girls) are comfortable with wall and partner-held handstands but have difficulty walking. Is walking on hands a prerequisite for balancing statically? I learnt to walk first, but am wondering if this it's a necessary progression.

Also, what exercises should I be getting them to do to build strength to walk? Apart from a lot of handstands, I've tried handstand shrugs, and handstand wall "runs" but they're having trouble lifting off one arm for more than a second.

Thanks for the advice!

Until they can do a 60s wall HS, it's probably too much to ask for HS wall runs.

The benefit of HS walking is it teaches "Gross" balance of holding the HS besides awareness. The biggest issue of HS walking is HS form generally gets worse.

I would say the opposite, a solid handstand should be learned before trying to become proficient at walking on the hands or you will not be able to do a controlled walk...just a constant overbalance

I wouldn't say its a pre-req, but it definitely won't hurt to mess around with walking. Worst comes to worst, you learn where your tipping points are while gaining some strength.

My static HS is fairly decent at this point but I have shied away from walking because of concern over my wrist strength. Coming to this stuff later in life than most of you I have been very concerned about injury and lack of strength. While I feel very comfortable in static positions and think I've done a decent job building up to the necessary elements required for them I still worry somewhat about what a dynamic movement, such as HS walking, might mean to my joints, tendons, etc...

Similarly, for a while I was doing Ido's rotations into low bridge against the wall but just didn't feel comfortable with the dynamic element there. I have since transitioned to Blairbob's raised-feet bridge and have experienced good progress with that.

jl5555 said:

Similarly, for a while I was doing Ido's rotations into low bridge against the wall but just didn't feel comfortable with the dynamic element there. I have since transitioned to Blairbob's raised-feet bridge and have experienced good progress with that.

The rotations to me have provided a huge benefit but were a bit hard to figure out. Combined with the static position has led to much better gains in flexibility and control for me. For me the proper cue was thinking about rotating over my head as opposed to just twisting to the side. That might be something to play around with.

If you want à static Hs work on your HS stomach against the Wall

30-60 seconds 5 times à week , 33 cm between hands for 3-6 months.

I just taught myself to do a handstand so I'll write how I did it and maybe something in there will be applicable to your students.

4 months ago, I couldn't maintain a freestanding handstand if my life depended on it. Now, I can consistently hold 30s handstands.

I started off fairly strong - 60s wall handstand was already within my grasp. What really helped was the stomach to wall handstands with only 1 foot on the wall. That kind of helped me get a feel for the balance. After I became comfortable with only one foot on the wall, I started trying to remove the second foot as well. Eventually, I found the technique with my hands to be able to use them to adjust balance and it fell into place. I only used handstand wall runs during WODs as they were recommended. I still cannot walk on my hands,mostly because I don't spend a lot of time trying to do it. I'll occasionally take one "step" while I try to save a faltering handstand, but it usually doesn't work anyway.

I know many more people (in person) who can walk or stagger around on their hands, than can hold a neat static handstand.

When people try to learn it, it seems that most naturally stagger around in trying to stay balanced, always with legs hanging loosely over and knees bent. The few who progress then can stay up fairly well but still need to make large adjustments to stay relatively still, but they can walk around pretty well.

I think that might be how most people intuitively try to handstand when they first try. I was always exposed to the "proper" way to do it and so never started taking hand-steps to balance.

They are two completely different skills. Static balance is about moving your center of mass to above the pivot, walking is about moving your pivot to below your center of mass. As walking can interfere with static balance, but static balance doesn't interfere with walking it makes sense to become proficient at static HS first. Just enough so you don't start walking in an attempt to hold static balance, because that type of practice is a waste of your time