Handstand Tips Needed, aka Why You Should Video

After thinking I was making handstand progress, I made a video to have a look at how I was doing. I figured I was getting there, and although this video doesn't have any, I did manage a 10 second handstand once (golf clap everyone...).

So looking at this video was humbling; needless to say, my line is terrible, and I am flopping all over the place. I think a strand of cooked spaghetti could stay vertical longer than me. A far cry from what I expected, and a good demonstration of why video is a great tool for improvement. So instead of feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would post it here for both public humiliation and perhaps a tip or two...

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I have been doing some stomach to wall work, but I don't have to many places where I can train and safety roll out.

thanks for any help,

David

You're so far from the wall. If you're going to practice back-to-wall, then do it as close as you can, and still have room for your head. If you want to practice kickups that far away, that's ok, as the wall is a safety, but DON'T pull your legs off the wall into a handstand. If you hit the wall, reset and try again.

One note on the floppy legs that worked for me: everyone says "squeeze your glutes", but that wasn't enough for me. To fully lock my legs, I actually actively rotate them out slightly while squeezing my glutes.

Here goes, second time lucky... Video'd with my hands a lot closer to the wall. Still work to be done.

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Doesn't look like you are getting much scapular elevation and the general arm positioning isn't quite what it should be.

So, someone recently posted the USA gymnastics material for how they tend to try and develop a ring handstand, and the first thing they did was outline the proper form for the floor handstand. The bold and altered text size is my modification.

Source: https://usagym.org/pages/home/publicati ... lrings.pdf

The hands should be placed on the floor shoulder width apart with the middle finger

perpendicular with an imaginary line drawn between them. The fingers should be spread in

order to help produce a wide base of support. Weight should be dispersed to the finger tips.

The body should not be entirely supported on the palms of the hand. Balance is controlled at

the finger tips.

The elbows are locked and turned so that the inside of the elbow faces

straight forward.

The head is positioned neutral with ears between the arms. There should

be equal parts of the head on both sides of the arm so that the line of the arms, bisect the

head equally when viewing from the side. The eyes are focused on the floor between the

hands. The back is straight and chest is slightly convexed, as if a string were connecting the

shoulders together. The back is straight and the seat is tight with the hips turned under so

that the lower back is straight. The legs, beginning at the hips, are in turn out with the heels

and toes touching.

I don't like the turning the elbows out method on floor, makes me close my shoulders. I have never done or taught it that way.

I also don't really agree with turning out the feet, usually in turn out the glutes start to deactivate. I actually visualize a slight internal rotation of the hips when my legs start to go loose.

Anyway, to the OP. First, you need to work more basic body tension drills. Hollow and arch holds, front and rear support, etc for time. If you can, get someone to manipulate you so you can try to stay in one piece.

For the HS itself, you are trying to do everything from the hips and shoulders. That's adding two extra variables to a fairly simple equation. Imagine the difference between trying to balance a stick on your hand with trying to balance a 3-section staff on one end.

The reason you are forced to do this not only is your body too relaxed, your hands are as well. You can tell by how flat they are.

The first step would be to redefine your handstand without balance. Do some line drills and go back to just holding it against the wall. Get used to the open shoulder, flat back, posterior pelvic tilt position without trying to balance in it.

Then, go have a look at my recent thread in the Handstand training section and start incorporating this exercise to learn to balance from your hands bu being aware of your feet.

Interesting. I certainly defer to you when it comes to handstand work lol

The elbows out helps me immensely with opening the shoulders. At first it didn't, but then I realized I wasn't relying on the uppermost traps (collarbone to nuchal line) and that making those worked made it easier to make my external rotators work. I just figured this out today, and it made me realize that HS work, especially pressing, on PB probably has an enormous strengthening effect on the external rotators because the position is so similar. I will say, I am doing this with a PB hand position on the floor. It is very hard, but I definitely feel all the right things working and I was surprised at how much the uppermost traps helped me open the shoulder.

I wasn't really sure what they meant by turning the legs out but still keeping the heels and toes together... I have trouble visualizing that.

Hang from a bar with relaxed legs and rotate your legs from your hips. Your glutes should be engaging. My problem with to much focus on that is that it could lead to sloppy leg position with a gap.

I keep my elbows facing each other on floor and PB the only time I rotate them out is on rings and my ring handstands are slightly closed in the shoulder.

Another reason I keep my elbows facing in is that if I turned them forward and went to one arm it would rotate the rest of my body.

As far as feet turned out, I try not to if I am in a straight body. I can't say that I will ever use that cue for teaching either unless someone has really big internal rotation.

For straddle it helps to open the hips though.

Yuval said on Youtube that the elbows should face each other... Yuval is... Yuval...

I*m guessing that since the article Josh referred to is specifically for developing XR HS that the elbows turned out on floor was meant as developmental step.

In general would think the main advantage of the elbows forward position is it allows easy transition to bent elbows, doing HS Roll outs, HSPU etc. I've seen a number of article on gymnastic HS and this is the first that mentions this point.

Now in yoga, the elbows out position is commonly taught, and is how I USED to do them, to the point of causing over use injuries to my shoulders from over externally rotating. Though my HS is nowhere near Yuri's I totally agree that purposefully turning the elbows out in HS has no purpose for the HS itself and makes getting a good body line more difficult for me at least. More importantly it's much harder to drive the traps up this way.

That's easy to test, just lift you arms over head, rotate your arms internally and externally and more than likely your scaps will rise and fall with the movement.

In yoga the HS commonly doesn't have the same amount of lift from the scaps. I think this is because of a myth that if you use the upper traps it will cause tension in them at rest, and everyone in yoga wants to get rid of upper trap tension. There is also another silly idea that in yoga one uses the deep muscles as if they were somehow better than the more superficial multi-joint muscles.

As a side note I actually had teachers, try to teach how to lift the arms overhead without using the upper traps at all. Well then again we were also taught to do back bridges without using the glutes at all. Good grief!

yuri said:

I also don't really agree with turning out the feet, usually in turn out the glutes start to deactivate. I actually visualize a slight internal rotation of the hips when my legs start to go loose.

I assume this refers to my comment. But I wonder if we're talking about the same thing - internal and external rotation of the hips gets confusing. What I mean by "externally rotating" it a rotation of the hips. This manifests as, in essence, bringing the soles of the feet closer together - the extreme being sole touching sole.

Is this what you mean?

Thank you everyone for the well thought out and informative replies. Yet another example of why gymnastic bodies is such an excellent resource.

all the best, and back to the handstand wall

David

It is definitely a harder thing to keep the shoulders open with elbows forward, because you have to have some very ridiculously strong upper traps and external rotators to do so. I have started doing this on the floor as suggested in the article just to see what the difference is and that's pretty much it... much harder on the rear shoulder and upper trap musculatures.

I seriously couldn't even hold a good position against the wall for 10 seconds, but I felt those muscles working like they had never worked. Of course now that I can find them, I think I will be able to engage that stuff regardless of elbow and hand position. I would definitely never try the elbows forward with hands also forward, I slowly tried that and it felt like a horrible idea. From what I can tell through trying the elbows out, you can't really have the elbows externally rotated more than 90 degrees from where the wrist is pointing, so hands forward + elbows facing each other makes sense. My hands were completely sideways, to simulate the XR position and it is definitely a lot more difficult.

And of course, all we really have to do is watch Yuri's videos and see how good his handstand work has gotten. Success like that isn't random.