A tip that made a big difference to me

After struggling with handstands for, well, 7-8 years in all, I finally noticed a small point mentioned in a video tutorial for some other skill. It demonstrated a handstand as a pre-requisite and the tip is simply this:

Kick up as slowly as you can, and bring the leading leg up to the balance long before the second one. Then raise your second leg slowly to meet the first, feeling your balance the whole way.

Bringing the second leg up feels very slow, but it's really only one or two seconds. But you consciously bring it up, under control, until it's just right.

Apparently many people do this intuitively, but the idea apparently completely passed me by for quite a while. I used to just kick up both legs very quickly (one after the other), and only chanced upon the balance point maybe one in 10-20 times. Now I suddenly can get up around half the time, and am holding 10-30s handstands very easily - finally often enough and for long enough to start trying variations or straightening out my body shape.

I hope this helps some of you!

Hey, thanks for sharing this. I've been working on handstand rebalancing drills using a wall. I've been able to get up with leaning into the wall, using this advice, and when I do end up on the wall, it's much softer. My wall is very grateful to you

Yes this is a very good tip.

A way of practicing how to soften the kick up is to do them back to a wall with your finger tips touching the wall. This way if you kick too hard the wall will mercilessly throw you back down.

Dont forget about other ways of getting into a handstand. Like my all time favorite, the tuck up.

Agreed, this makes a very big deal. I added to my pre-handstand kick up 'checklist' that another poster in this thread suggested.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5637

Amazing how much of this is a technical challenge of making our entire body work as one....

cheer,

David