My handstand alignment

[Laggs]

First post here looking for advice. I finally was able to hold a solid 15+ second handstand at the end of May and realized I needed to fix my body line if I wanted to progress further. I had very closed shoulder some compensatory low-back arch.

Here's video from my session today. One free standing, one front to wall, one back to wall. As is pretty evident, I've developed a pretty bad piking issue in my freestanding handstand. Any other critique, or advice on how to fix the pike would be appreciated.

Also, should I be working more stomach to wall or back to wall into my training? I feel like front to wall encourages the piking.

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[Vagabond]

You generally need to open your shoulders more and try to align it with your back. Also, you have trouble kicking-up, you're not kicking enough and try to get up by bringing your butt forward. Keep your body tight, especially your glutes, and feel some hip flexors stretch, it might help you to gauge your position. Also, film yourself often, and make sure your shoulders are opened enough and your hips are straight. And don't try to lift the kick-up from the hips, lift it from your spine instead. You should do sets of kick-ups and aim to get perfect ones. Overshoot them a little bit, so you learn to use your fingers to stop yourself from over balancing.

[yuri marmerstein]

Everything that vagabond said, and I will add a couple of my own ideas.

When you kick up, you are going almost from a pushup position. Look how far your hips have to move. Try starting with your feet closer to your hands. Also, try to let the top leg kick a little past your head before you bring them together.

In the actual handstand you are very loose. Every part of the body that moves other than your hands is an extra variable in the equation of balance. You need to work more basic body tension drills to learn to keep the body as one piece.

[Vagabond]

Yeah, I forgot two things: practice your hollow position with your feet on the wall (facing) and your hands far away from the wall. Film yourself, and correct your posture. The first thing you want to do, before even starting to find your balance, is to have a good and steady posture. If you need it, ask someone to shake your ankles when you're in handstand, it will help you feeling what you have to tighten.

Second thing, before working on kick-ups a lot, I would suggest that you develop a slightly longer freestanding handstand facing or back to the wall. Right now, you have a hard time using your fingers even when you're back to the wall, so you should work on that before focusing on kick-ups a lot. There's a few drills on the wall to help getting the control over the hands and shoulders (the rest stay straight and tight). Per example, when you get off the wall when you're back to it, don't kick the wall away. Push it slowly and try do to as much as possible with your hands. Ideally, you should be able to get off the wall using your fingers strength, stop getting off the wall before your center of gravity switches the other side, and then go back to the wall in a slow and controlled way. If you can do that, you have a fair control of your hands to start with.

[Laggs]

Thanks guys! Your input is really valuable. I'll be filming my sets this afternoon with these things in mind:

-Full body tension (practiced through lower angle wall-holds)

-Open shoulders

-Balancing through the wrists (practiced by back-to-wall) slow lifts off the wall.

I'll try and post videos here again when I have some progress.

[Laggs]

Okay, a few hours ago I had another session. I started out working with front to wall handstands, specifically on holding the hollow. I then moved to back to wall working on balancing through the wrists. This was MUCH more difficult then I thought it would be. I still had a lot of trouble locking the hips. I tried to cue it by "reaching" as high as possible with my feet. This seemed to help a bit, but didn't entirely solve the problem. I'll keep working on this.

Questions:

-I feel like I am in a state of "balance" when my body is leaning at about at 15 degree angle. Whenever I reach vertical I feel entirely underbalanced and have to return to the ground. Is this a product of looseness through the hips?

-I feel that opening the shoulder further will only exaggerate the problem above. How open should they be compared to where I am now?

Thanks

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[Vagabond]

So many videos... Sorry, but it's late and I only watched the first two. Now your shoulders are too open. Notice how in the first one, they go even passed your wrists. You want your shoulders to be around above your knuckles. At first they were too close. Now they're too open. But good effort, tho. When you film yourself and look at your position, think to align that:

-Knuckles

-Shoulders

-Spine

-Hips

-Feet

They should all be on an axis of balance, a line which weight's just forward enough to keep weight on your fingers so you don't lose control. Also, how open should the shoulders be, ideally your humerus would aligne with your spine, or close to it. In this image, I need a tiny bit more hips opening. I'd actually have to push them forward slightly to make it work.

[Laggs]

Okay, had another session today. Just posting the best vid. I purposely closed my shoulders a tiny bit and it definitely seemed to help keep everything straight. Hopefully they aren't too closed? Still moving a lot above the shoulders; will work on this more.

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[Vagabond]

That's a lot better. Now you should just keep working on it and make it more steady (avoid moving anything you're not supposed to move and learn to hold it for a bit longer), then fine-tune it to get the best alignment you can.