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Capoeira: Music, Skills, and Martial Arts

I’m going to say that I’ve been excited about Capoeira for a while. It involves alot of my favorite things; music, rhythm, martial arts, acrobatics, and of course hand balancing. Today I’m going to be giving you a primer on the Subject. In all honesty I’ll probably be doing a few posts on Capoeira. The reason being that I’m excited at the fact of introducing it in my own little training studio. I’ve found an instructor with similar goals, so these are exciting times!

Back to the subject. What is Capoeira?

Truthfully there isn’t much written record of Capoeira. But we do know that it was created in Brazil by African Slaves. It’s a Martial Art that was taught in secret by the slaves for self protection and was delivered through traditional music, singing, dancing.

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Combining Rhythm, movement, and music; Capoeira is a very engrossing system that will help to build up body skills. Take a look at this video to get a better idea about what it is!

Stay Inverted!

-Jonathan Magno

PS If you want a full system on hand balancing, check out the Secrets of the Handstand Bundle!

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A Legendary Expansion

 

If you’ve been a part of this community for a while, you’ll know that it was started by the gentleman above, Logan Christopher. A true renaissance man; he was able to reinvigorate and expand the hand balancing community with a nothing but a keyboard.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing
The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing on Amazon

Over the years, he moved into different facets of fitness and life in general. One of the biggest steps he made was transitioning over Legendary Strength. Hence now I’m becoming the main voice for LAOHB. As we grow and push forward in life, new opportunities arise.

Once such opportunity happened to Logan recently as he was able to purchase his first house. With that good fortune comes many other benefits. One being that there is a Legendary Strength Training Home and second that more videos will be coming your way!

The last benefit is that Logan is offering 50% his Legendary Strength Courses, which you can pick up here!

Take Advantage of this while you can because the sale is only on for 24 more hours and as always… Stay Inverted!

-Jonathan Magno

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Stressing Over a Skill and 3 Ways To Overcoming Obstacles

 

Training is a huge part of my life. Its fun, tests my limits, and is a HUGE stress reliever. But what happens when something key to that chill factor adds to the stress. Living in Silicon Valley, stress is a very common thing. Fear, anxiousness, and doubt are always just around the corner. With the pressures of being around some of the most intelligent people, helping to move the world around, this anxiety and doubt can creep into the oddest places.

Once such occasion happened to me just yesterday. I was training in Tricking. If you don’t know what that is, its all those cool martial arts guys spinning and flipping in the air while throwing kicks. While working on a normal Butterfly kick but with a new entry, my anxiousness started setting in. Its an odd fact, but even I get this way.

I’m human.

With the stress of building a business, personal stuff, and helping clients through their own processes in getting better; the fear, anxiousness, and more started to set in. Luckily with supportive people around me, I was able to push and move forward.

But what do you do if you don’t have that support?

Try these 3 ways to overcome that negativity and keep moving!

Way #1 Move Into The Fear.

It’s all about meeting your fears and facing them head-on. Aim to recognize your fears, acknowledge them and then move through them. Ask yourself what is it that makes you uncomfortable? Have you let yourself get out of shape and are afraid you’ll never get back? Do you have an injury that’s caused you to be afraid of your body? If you can visualize creatively, then you can put your fears in check.  Remember: your body has knack at baselining itself. Your only job is to trust it and listen.

Way #2 Trust Your Intuition.

It is important when overcoming obstacles and learning to break through barriers that you begin to listen to the still small voice of your body. In most cases, we all want the comfort of having someone telling us what we can and cannot do. However, our highest truth is usually deep down. This is not to say that good opinion of others are not important, but ultimately the decision making comes from within.

Learn How to Back Flip in 31 Days
Learn How to Back Flip in 31 Days on Amazon

When facing a challenge or an obstacle look to how you feel. What are your instincts telling you? Often it is simply your instinct that will move you into a new mindset and raise your consciousness. It’s simply about changing your perspective. Although in order to do this you have to find where your restrictions and boundaries are so that you can move past. Once you know what they are, remember “WAY #1” and meet them head-on.

Way #3 Live Beyond the Boundaries

So what’s the final takeaway from all of this? Staying afraid often keeps us from truly living. Moving forward starts with your attitude. Are you going to keep letting things beat you down and miss whats happening today. Or will you make today the right time to face them.

Life Beyond The Boundaries.

Push past your fears and boundaries and when you’ve settled with that, look for another skill, trick, or plateau to jump.

Stay Inverted!

-Jonathan Magno

PS On a different note, if you want all the tricks of the trade for hand balancing, check out the Secrets of the Handstand Bundle!

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Igniting Your Reason. What keeps you Motivated?

So I was coaching a small group of three people today working on unilateral body weight strengthening and finishing off with balance skill work focusing on the frogger lead-up stunt. After the session ended an all too familiar question came up from one of the ladies that was training this afternoon.

“How do you keep doing it? How do you keep working out?”

My immediate answer was that its hard, I’m currently having trouble staying as motivated, and I don’t consistently work out.(Although I am probably a bit more active than the average person!)

This wasn’t the most sales invoked answer but it was honest. I tend to try to be honest about these things as it won’t serve any purpose to the person to give them a half-made answer. Especially when I’m supposed to be there to guide them and support them in the right direction.

This next piece is where I got deeper into the question. I said that if you want to work out or train more, its gotta be something more than the workout.

For me, it was always about being able to perform. To be able to utilize the human body in ways that others could only dream of. Whether it was in combat situations or amazing feats.

I then asked her what does she like to do. Things that are active and with body.

She came up with multiple sports and multiple activities. ( She’s a very driven and motivated type. Being in the silicon valley, that’s a given. But it also means that motivation is usually directed to work.)

None of the activities had anything really in common. Some were team sports, while others were individual.

I could have left it there, but I had to dig deeper. I then asked her what made her stay. What was the defining reason that got her to keep going to one of the activites.

Now I’m not going to go into more details so we can fast forward to the reason for this story. ( hint: it involved milestones and progression)

Ultimate Guide to Handstand Pushups
Ultimate Guide to Handstand Pushups on Amazon

So the reason for this story is that if you really want to make working out a consistent part of your life, you’ve got to find a goal bigger than just working out. ( Remember working out as it is today wasn’t even really a thing until the 1980s.)

Once you’ve found that one thing. Take a look at what things you’ve done the longest. Then find out why.

Finally; and this is probably those most important part.

Make a decision. Pull the trigger. Flip the light switch on.

Because if you don’t do anything, nothing will happen.

To help you with flipping the switch, take a look at this motivational video below!

Finally, since this site is all about hand balancing, check out the  Secrets of the Handstand System!

Stay Inverted!
-Jonathan Magno

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Movement Flow to Overcome Plateaus!

Have you ever been stuck on a task that you couldn’t get past? You try to understand or finish the task but seem to meet consistent stops. You go through all the different variations you can try to accomplish the task, and probably all of the different levels of frustration, but still can’t seem to complete your goal.

Truth be told. This happens quite a bit. Especially when you’re learning a new body skill. When this occurs, it just means that we don’t internally have enough information to make a change. So if that’s the case, what can we do to make the change happen.

Simple.

Change your perspective and safely experiment.

The basic idea is that once you start adding new connected stimuli and experiences, you give your mind more to work and play with.

Let’s put it into the framework of skill development. When you’re working on a new skill, a good thing to do is isolate the skill. People tend to do this by breaking it down into separated movements, which is an excellent way to drill the skill. Although, they don’t think of the working on the skill as an isolated training method in itself. When you work on the handstand for example. Your main focus is to get the handstand and in turn that causes you to laser beam all your energy and thoughts into that one move.

But to gain mastery or even just attain a move you also have to test it. Honestly, the best way that I’ve found to test new moves is to place them in combinations or flows. Sometimes the combinations are predetermined to work on specific aspects and other times they are done in a free-flow to really gauge where everything is at.

This is important because it causes you to put your body in situations you would never have thought of while going through the different transition. In a sense, you add more information to utilize in your library with each flow session.

 

I’ll get more into the state of flows later. But, just in case you want a different way to look at it, check out the video below!

For another way to play with and test your skilled flow, check out the GMB Vitamin Program

Stay Inverted!
-Jonathan Magno

Learn How to Back Flip in 31 Days
Learn How to Back Flip in 31 Days on Amazon
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Drifting Cars and Your Hand Positions for the Handstands!

So this post comes a bit later than usual because I’ve been busy doing a small update on the training studio while getting ready for a bigger update. Hint: Colors are awesome!

For today’s post I’m going to be talking about cars and your handstand.

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Specifically how your hand positioning can affect how much drive and control you need to balance while you kick up into the handstand.

There are two main hand positions your see. Either with your fingers facing forward or with you fingers externally rotated to the side. Although I have been known to play with my hands turned in as well.

Either way you choose to position your hands will work. But each position has its own set of rules to help you achieve the balance you’re looking for.

Lets take the turned out or externally rotated position. You can liken this position to a force choke in star wars. With the alignment of this position, your kick up becomes smoother and faster. Which means that you need to have good solid control to put on the brakes once you’ve reached the apex and are ready to keep the hold.

In contrast, the fingers forward position is similar to drifting. The muscles and fascia counterbalance each other to create drag and slow down your kick up. This gives you a little more control so that you don’t fall over on your backside. Although you might have a problem with underkicking the handstand or not kicking with enough force to get into position.

 

Test which version works best for you and look at the video below for deeper information and demonstrations on learning how to drift your handstands.

To get a done-for-you blueprint on the handstand check out The Secrets of the Handstand System today!

Stay Inverted!
-Jonathan Magno

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Autoregulation – A Framework for Building Skill

In a previous post, I covered overcoming hurdles and changing things up. I even discussed an interesting buzzword; autoregulation.

I didn’t want to get too deep into autoregulation at that point because I wanted to keep things simple. Although I think today is a perfect time to discuss what this whole autoregulation thing is about.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing
The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing on Amazon
Autoregulation in its base training terms means to adjust the training session to the body’s needs at that point in time. First off let me say that this doesn’t mean to jump into every session without a plan and guns shooting. That is off course from what we are looking for in our own training, although having time to play while you train has its merits.
What we are talking about is having an adjustable framework to work from.
Lets take our wall assisted handstand as an example. To add to this, lets set a simple baseline to follow while your understanding this method. There are many methods to autoregulation including those from our friends at Gold Medal Bodies.
To start off, lets take the ideas of quality, quantity, and time. Say that our chosen training activity, the wall assisted handstand, will be given a time frame of 20 minutes. In that 10 minute time frame, I set a goal(quantity) of a 30 second handstand with a quality of a controlled kick-up lightly touching the wall and straight line. I have an added base point of stopping after not being able to hold a quality 20 second handstand even if its before the 20 minute time frame ends.
So what I’ve done is set up some “soft” parameters that i can play with in order to adjust my body accordingly to the task. This is important when building a skill, because you are learning to utilize your body. We have the added biological mess, that your bodies current state is a result of stimuli received previously.
You can look up more on the subject by doing a quick google search. But if you want to get a tasted of auto-regulated skill training, test out one of the many Gold Medal Bodies training programs.

Stay Inverted!
-Jonathan Magno

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Forest Vance and his Sneaky Trick to Do More Push Ups – Instantly

We’ve got another guest post from  Certified Progressive Calisthenics Instructor Forest Vance. Last time he discussed a bodyweight apparatus mainstay with the pull up.

Today he’s coming back with a sneaky trick in order to develop your push up.


Sneaky Trick to Do More Push Ups –
Instantly by Forest Vance, creator, Bodyweight Strong

A couple of years ago – after charity event we had held at FVT Boot Camp – we went out to a bar to eat, drink, and celebrate.

Several of us get to talking about how many push ups we think we can do … one thing leads to another, and before you know it, I’m in the middle of a push up contest!

The guy I was going against could do a surprising amount of push ups…I ended up squeaking out a victory, but barely …and the big way I was able to do it was using the technique I am going to share with you in today’s article.

Try this technique today … if you do it right, you’ll be able to do more push ups, instantly!

Sneaky Trick to Do More Push Ups – Instantly

– At the top of your push up, get as tight as you can. Take a deep breath to load up your muscles. Tighten your upper body, legs, core, everything.

– Drop into your push up without letting your breath out. Maintain tension in your abdominals and throughout your entire body. Do NOT exhale or let tension ‘escape’ in any way!

– Exhale as you press through your sticking point in the push up or after you finish the move. This will also help you keep tension throughout.

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– Once finished with the push up, pause at the top and take a breath or two. Either lower back down to the ground and repeat, or rest.

This is a technique that can be used to tap into additional strength reserves, and boost your strength and power instantly. You can use this technique not only for push ups, but for other bodyweight moves as well, and also when lifting heavy weights. Give it a try today – I think you’ll be surprised at the results!

Train hard, and talk soon –

Forest Vance Author, Bodyweight Strong


Stay Inverted!
-Coach Jon

PS – For more tricks like the one outlined in this article, and for a full 12 week bodyweight only training program that will take you from whereEVER you are now, to bodyweight STRONG, click the link below:

Bodyweight Strong.

 

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Can’t Do Pull Ups? Forest Vance Will Show You How to Get There!

We’ve got a special post on  the pull-ups by Forest Vance for you today.

If you have problems, with this pulling motion, take a look at some of the things Forest will show you below!

— The difference between a pull up and a chin up .. and which one is easier
— What “counts” as a legit pull up or chin up rep
— The PROPER way to do a jumping or assisted pull up or chin up
— The PROPER way to do a band-assisted pull up or chin up
— How to work to full, unassisted pull ups / chins ups – and beyond

Have a look at the video below!

Stay Inverted!
-Coach Jon

PS If you liked the information he gave out, have a look at his program Bodyweight Strong.

 

Walking and Jumping On Your HandsWalking and Jumping On Your Hands on Amazon
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Building your core to handle your balance skills or get more athletic!

We’ve got something a bit different for you today. As many of you who have attempted to do a freestanding handstand or even a wall handstand know, having a strong core is one of the key factors in keeping yourself inverted or even in safely getting up into a handstand safely. You also need to be dynamic in your mobility and flexibility.

Now, the reason why today is different is because you’ll rarely see me posting a movement drill with weights, although I do them myself. I like to stay focused on the buildup of the skill. But once the skill is built up to a certain point, you need to start testing it in different modalities in order to develop the dynamic nature of the skill. Remember, even though we are doing a “handstand hold”, we are actually dynamically adjusting to all the different changes while in the inverted position.

So, for today’s post we have a simple yet effective QM(quadredal movement) that you can do in order to test your functional movement and build your core to handle those dynamic changes. An added tip is to add a hollow body to movement to really engage your mid-thoracic and lower lumber!

Here is the video.

Walking and Jumping On Your HandsWalking and Jumping On Your Hands on Amazon

Stay Inverted!
-Coach Jon

PS If you really liked the drill, its by our good friend Nick Nilsson. You can find other great core exercises in his Best Core Exercises ebook!

 

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