Meet Jyoti Raju also known as the Monkey King. Watching this video you’ll see how he earned that name.
According to the videos he commonly entertains the visitors at the Chitradurga Fort in southern India.
As in all forms of rock climbing this takes lots of skill and full body strength, especially in the hands and fingers. My favorite move is when he flips upside down.
Thanks to Tony for first pointing me out to this video.
This past weekend at a longevity conference I learn one more benefit of inversions.
Did you know that every species on this earth suffers from osteoarthritis? That is except for two, bats and sloths. What makes these two immune to this disease? They spend so much time hanging upside down!
The simple headstand can give you the benefits of inversion
I’m not saying headstands or hand balancing will cure arthritis, but isn’t that interesting.
By reversing the flow of gravity you do your body many benefits.
It allows the body to clear the often stagnant blood from your legs and feet. You heart needs to work hard to pump blood back up the body. Getting upside down makes this easy.
Inversion helps with not only circulation, but to increase oxygen to the brain which has obvious benefits.
Inverting can help relax the muscles, re-align the body and train your balance. In fact, being completely upside down is the only time your spinal discs get a break from the normal pull of gravity.
For more details on the benefits of inversion check out this page.
Now you don’t have to be a yogi or professional equilibrist to reap these benefits.
Doing a headstand even against the wall will give you all these benefits. You can also try hanging upside down.
But you can imagine what doing 30 minutes a day of hand balancing can do for your health.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
I got an email the other day from a student who had purchased the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
I teach a Crossfit-style strength and conditioning class at a Krav Maga school in Dallas, and I’ve added 1 minute of crow stands to our warm-up every time. It is working nicely. A few students have remarked how their striking has improved with the enhanced wrist/forearm strength. People are kicking up into handstands against the wall, and showing progress in their handstand pushups. I have a yoga instructor as a student who has some amazing handbalancing skill, so everyone sees what is possible. Granted it will be even more impressive when I get it at 225lbs! My class is kick butt and your handbalancing course is one of my secret weapons.
Best regards,
Jon Burroughs
Crowstand AKA Frogstand or Knees-on-Elbows Stand
Not everyone may want to be able to do a one handed handstand or a planche, but I think everyone should be capable of holding a handstand at least against a wall. And with a bit more practice the free standing handstand is not too difficult.
The benefits of working on these basic skills make them worth it for virtually anyone.
This is something I discussed in the teleseminar with Jim Bathurst last night.
You need to choose how far you want to go. You can reach the basic skills in a relatively short time, especially if you train smart. It also won’t take much time. But if you want to go for the advanced skills, realize that you’re going to have to prove your dedication. (The proper roadmap and coaching on these is now next to essential.)
For the basics or advanced skills I try to offer the best resources available. There may even be some more personal help available soon…
Stay tuned for that and I’ll also be providing a few more takeaways from that call soon.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
I just paid for a new banner to this site. Unfortunately, I’m not impressed.
But maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?
Any graphic designers out there that would be interested in designing a new banner for this site? I’d be more then happy to make a trade for something that looks great. Comment below or send an email to [email protected]
The site here is newly revamped. Its not quite done yet but getting close. Leave a comment below and tell me what you think.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. If you’re a follower of my site, Legendary Strength, then this should look familiar to you. If not, this is a completely new look never before seen. 🙂
Rafael's High One Arm to Arm
Here is another great picture from Rafael Guerrero. It’s an interesting hand to hand balance. Similar to a one arm handstand but at still quite different.
Regardless, its a balance you don’t see very often. For those of you who are experienced hand balancers give this one a try if you have the partner to do it.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Don’t forget the Free Success in Hand Balancing Teleseminar I’m doing this Wednesday night with Beast Skills’ Jim Bathurst. Sign up and ask your questions here.
I get tons of questions sent in everyday. I try to answer them as best I can writing these emails or posts on the blog but there’s more than I can keep up with.
So I invited Jim Bathurst, from Beast Skills, to join me live on a call and answer all your questions as best we can.
Next Wednesday night, March 10th, we’ll answer all your questions for an hour or maybe longer. In order to join us on this call you need to signup at this page.
Our goal is to hold nothing back and give you the best information we can to just help you get better at hand balancing right away.
Sign up at the following link and you can ask your questions right away. As I expect hundreds of them, there’s no way we’ll cover everything but we’ll take the best and try for the rest.
Signup for the Free Hand Balancing Teleseminar Here
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
Today’s post will answer another question from the many I regularly receive.
“Hey I am Stefan I am now starting out with doing the handstand, but my question is what muscles are involved in doing the handstand and what exercises can I do to improve it?”
Let’s start with the first question, what muscles are involved in the handstand? And the answer is all of them.
When you’re starting out you need to be able to keep your body tight if you want to have any chance of staying upside down. This means every muscle must be engaged from the tips of your fingertips down to your toes.
This doesn’t mean you flex everything as hard as possible but you must stay tight. As you advance you’ll learn how to use only as much tension as is needed and no more. This allows you to go for longer periods. But to start out with squeeze all those muscles, arms, back, abs, legs and even the toes.
Now onto the second question. There is a rule of thumb in training. In order to get good at something you must do that thing. So if you want to get good at handstands you must do a lot of handstands. There is no way around this.
This is true but in some cases you’re better off working on easier skills. Do skills that are easier then the handstand itself that build up the same abilities that the handstand needs. For the handstand these include a wall handstand, frogstand, forearm stand, and headstand. All the details and proper progression for this is laid out in the Secrets of the Handstand Quickstart DVD.
Work on easier skills that lead up to the harder ones. For anything else in hand balancing check out the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
As an analogy, if you wanted to learn the piano you wouldn’t start out with the Rach 3 but instead focus on scales and simple songs first. This concept holds true for all skills you desire to build.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
The Winter Olympics are here. Are you watching?
While I must say that I am a bigger fan of the Summer Olympics I very much enjoy these events as well.
There may not be many handstands but there sure are some crazy aerial acrobatics of many different kinds. Whether going of a jump on skies, snowboarding or even figure skating you have some advanced flips and spins.
Of course all the events are great in their different ways. You can watch some of the greatest athletes from around the world compete for one of the highest awards in the world.
Even if it’s a sport you know nothing about you can easily get into it. After all it’s the Olympics.
Good Luck and Good Olympics,
Logan Christopher
The One Arm Handstand
Today I’ll be giving you a tip towards working on a one arm handstand. I’ve been doing this hand balancing skill a lot lately.
Professor Orlick lists it as one of the lead-up stunts to the one arm handstand. And this one utilizes both arms. What is it? It’s the handstand done on the fists.
Now how does this help with the one arm handstand? As explained in How to do the One Hand Handstand:
Handstand on Fists
“Now, lean forward and very carefully kick your feet up into the handstand position. Do this easily and gently because your base will be even smaller than before and you won’t have the use of your fingertips to help hold you up. If you kick too hard you are liable to topple right over. At first, the weight of your body resting on your knuckles will probably hurt but just grin and bear it for soon you will get used to it. Once again be sure to stretch up as high as you can and lock-out at the elbows and shoulders and point your toes up toward the ceiling. The position is shown quite clearly to the right in No. 22. Like the others, this too is a fine lead-up stunt so keep it up until you master it.”
The reason this can help move you toward the one arm handstand is that you’ll get use to balancing on a smaller base of support. You just can’t apply the hand pressure you can in a normal handstand when you’re on your fists. A small amount of wrist pressure can be used but you must learn to keep your body stable and balance from the shoulders.
Mixed with other lead-up stunts and the proper progression this will help you eventually reach the one arm handstand. For much more check out the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
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