Equilibre movements

[Vagabond]

Hi all! I would like to collect the names of equilibre movements.

Per example, the Mexican handstand refers to two different types of very arched handstands, one where the shoulders are also very arched, and the other where the shoulders have a pretty closed angle.

The one arm elbow lever, in French, is also called "le crocodile".

There is the flag (not the one on the pole), where one do a one arm handstand with his/her body parallel to the ground sideways, with a very big side curve in the ribs and upper spine (without that side curve, that's the shoulders that would be bearing the weight).

There's the pistole, but I'm not sure if it's the one with one knee on the elbow and one leg out horizontally in a one arm handstand, or the one where you do a one arm handstand in a pike straddle position with one leg on the side, the other on the front, the hips opposed to the legs, and the hand pointing up between the legs. Edit: on a blog I found searching "Kiev Circus School", the author says the one in a side pike straddle position is called a gufus or a figure. So the pistole would be the one with the knee on the elbow, and it makes sense since it kinda look like a handgun (that's what a pistole/pistolet is). (I'm not sure about the name of this cause I was thought by a Cuban hand balancer who didn't speak English very well. I could barely understand him, and he had to use a lot of Spanish words to express himself.)

I know there's a lot more techniques, I have images of them in my head, but I don't know their names, and I'd like to clear it out very much. I also know that the names vary a lot from one style to the other, and one language to the other, but I think it'd be interesting to have some kind of lexical containing all the names we can find for each position.

[Mikael Kristiansen]

The names of the positions, etc in equilibre varies who you ask really, though there are some that are more common.

Like you say, crokodile for the elbow lever and mexican for the open shoulder-arched back one are very common.

My first coach said "pistole" for the one where the legs are piked above you and the arm is between the legs. It was his russian coach that told him that. However, here(I also have an old russian coach) we call that one "figa" which is russian and means something along the lines of "you get nothing". http://twitpic.com/377j6r That is the russian hand sign which means figa. From my understanding it is something which often is said as an insult. The reason the position is called figa is because of the arm going trhough the legs, resembling the thumb through the other fingers. I have heard people say "figure" but they were all british, and I suspect it might be a misunderstanding of the word figa, though I dont know for sure.

All flag positions we usually just call "flags", even the one you talked about where the knee is by the elbow.

The one where the legs are together and the arm by the side, so you are straight up is called "candle" in russian. Its something like "svecha"(google translate "candle" to russian and click the sound button to hear how it is translated)

The arched back, closed shoulder one like conortionists do are usually called just "contortion" or "petit chinoise" hehe.

[Vagabond]

Thanks a lot for all those precisions, Handbalancer. It is very much appreciated.