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Handstand Scorpion

By Bac on June 14, 2012 in Bridging, Flexibility & Contortion, Handstands, Yoga

The handstand scorpion is a minor contortion exercise where you go into a big back bend and bend the knees, usually touching them to the top of the head. Sometimes it’s taken even further and the feet come beneath the head.

How to do the One Hand Handstand by Professor Orlick

Here’s a really good video that shows the handstand scorpion and more.

She is also doing a movement she calls the Tic Toc which is going into the bridge and back. There may be a different use of that name for a move in gymnastics.

I’ve seen the handstand fall into a bridge before and done it myself. However getting back into the handstand from that position is much harder. Give it a try yourself. It’s helpful to have a great base in bridging movements before trying any of this.

This Scorpion pose is also known as Vrschikasana in yoga, although that may refer to the version where it’s a forearm stand rather then on the hands. And an interesting little philosophy on this move.

The head, which is the seat of knowledge and power, is also the seat of pride, anger, hatred, jealousy, intolerance and malice. These emotions are more deadly than the poison which the scorpion carries in its sting. The yogi, by stamping on his head with his feet, attempts to eradicate these self-destroying emotions and passions. By kicking his head he seeks to develop humility, calmness and tolerance and thus to be free of ego. The subjugation of the ego leads to harmony and happiness. Read more here.

Work on your handstand scorpion and you’ll not only build balancing ability, but great back flexibility and it can lead up to the other movements shown here. Plus it may help you free yourself from your ego 🙂

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Handstand Backbend

By Bac on June 12, 2012 in Bridging, Flexibility & Contortion, Handstands

There are people that believe you should have no backbend in your handstand at all. That only the straight handstand is how to do a handstand.

But I don’t believe that. Just look at how many contortionists balance using excessive back bend.

When we’re talking about handstand backbend we can be talking about two things.

1) How much backbend you have in your handstand.
2) Going from a handstand into a backbend or a bridge. You might also call this a handstand to bridge.

This video shows you both.

Handstand Backbend

If you’re trying to do this, you don’t need as much back bend as this fellow has but it certainly helps. I would highly recommend improving your gymnast bridge before trying this exercise out.

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Handstand Blood Rush

By Bac on June 9, 2012 in Handstands

How do you deal with a handstand blood rush? I’m referring to when blood rushes into your head while doing any handstand movements.

This happens because of gravity. In an inversion you’re reversing the flow. While some people suffer more from this effect then others, there are a number of things you can do.

#1
Make sure you aren’t holding your breath. This is a natural tendency when people first start doing handstands. This will contribute to the problem and you can even burst some blood vessels in your face if you do it. Learn to breathe naturally.

#2
Use headstands for longer periods of time to get use to it. The headstand is the same as far as inversion and gravity flow is with the handstand but is much easier to hold. You can use to position especially to get use to being upside down. Another option would be hanging from the yoga trapeze.

#3
Build up the amount of handstand practice you do over time to acclimate to it. As your body becomes use to being upside down you won’t feel the same pressure inside your head. Be patient with it. Some people certainly get it worse then others, but everyone can get over it in time.

Get use to the position and there is no handstand blood rush!

This isn’t a harmful thing (with the exception of possibly bursting some blood vessels, but that won’t even cause permanent damage). Just follow these steps and you won’t even remember the handstand blood rush in no time.

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Handstand Record Time

By admin on June 7, 2012 in Hand-to-Hand, Handstands, One Hand

This is a message I received from a professional acrobat named Jonathan Ferland-Valois I got awhile back. I intended to post it but then left it as a draft for too long. I’m frequently asked what is the handstand record time. There is no definite answer but this guy could be the one holding it!

Hi Logan! I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the circus guy and ex-gymnast who sent you the story about the Chinese hand balancing master who was slapping a guy who went to see him while being in one arm handstand. I got two more cool examples of crazy Chinese acrobats excelling in the art of hand balancing. You don’t have to publish them, I just want to share them with you because I think they’re crazy.

Last week, I had a conversation with a guy I’m on a show with. He is a base for hand to hand, and he’ve been taught by a Chinese hand balancing expert. This expert is just badass. To teach him, he told him to hold him in his hands while he does a handstand, with his (the base’s) hands at shoulder height. My friend went in position to hold his teacher, and his teacher jumped into a handstand position. After a few seconds, my friend was getting tired. He told the Chinese master (he called him the greatest hand balancer ever, which is questionable, but is probably enough to say he’s a master) he couldn’t hold him anymore, and the master told him not to give up, and to hold him one more minute. My friend started panicking, saying he couldn’t do it, and tried to push the master off of him. Be he couldn’t. The master, still doing a handstand in my friend’s hands, started slapping him in the same time, while saying: “Keep holding it! Don’t stop!” My friend tried to make him get down during one full minute! And you know what? Once it made one minute, the master simply went down by himself, and said: “Rest a bit, we’ll do more sets.” My friend told me that to graduate from his school, his teacher had to succeed to do something nobody else ever did in the school. So, he chose to hold a handstand for a longer time than any other hand balancer from his school ever did. My friend isn’t sure anymore if it was two or four hours. But the fact is that he held it for more than an hour for sure!

So if you’re only holding a handstand for a few seconds or even minutes, you’ve got a long way to go. Come back tomorrow when we have what may be an even more amazing story for you.

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Handstand Blocks for Sale

By Bac on June 6, 2012 in Handstands

As far as I know this is the only site that has handstand blocks for sale.

Let me tell you about how these came about. A couple years after starting this site, an older hand balancer was enjoying it and sent me a pair of stands as a gift. I was very pleased and I also figured other people would be interested in them. When I asked they said YES! So my friend and I reverse engineered them and came up with the model I’ve been selling ever since.

If you want you can easily make them yourselves, assuming you have the tools, resources and the know-how. I don’t make much money off of these, and it’s a bit of a hassle getting them made, but I like being able to offer it to hand balancers around the world.

If you’d like to get a pair you can order the handstand blocks here.

Also if you’re looking for something custom let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

There are a number of other similar handstand blocks I’ve seen around.

These ones are on a solid base. Great if it’s custom made for you. Not if your shoulder span happens to be bigger or smaller then fits. You’ll also notice the sloped hand blocks as these may aid in making balancing easier.

Once again a set base. Also the hand blocks themselves are a bit too square for my tastes.

If you want to pay a ton of money for a professional setup you can over at Unicycle.fr. They have all manner of setups, but be forewarned it is going to cost you.

So if you’re looking for handstand blocks for sale you’ve come to the right place. You can buy them here, make your own, or try to find them anywhere else (not recommended).

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How to do a Handstand Against the Wall

By Bac on June 4, 2012 in Handstands

In this article I’ll be showing you the most beginner stage of hand balancing, that is how to do a handstand against the wall. While most of this site is devoted to getting out in the open for freestanding handstands, there are many people that can’t yet do this simple stunt. And that’s okay. You have to start where you are and that’s what you’ll learn here.

There are a number of things you must focus on when doing this. The first and foremost is getting into position. Doing a kick-up is by far this easiest way to do that.

This older video of mine shows focuses on the kick-up and how to do it to get into a handstand against the wall.

How to do a Handstand Against the Wall

The next important part is holding the handstand position. There are a number of important points here.

Keep the arms locked out. This places the stress on your bone structure rather then relying on muscle, which would occur with any bend in the arms.
Shrug the shoulders up to the ears.
Keep the legs together and toes pointed. This isn’t just for aesthetics. When you move further into balancing, having your legs tight really helps, so get in the habit now.
The back can be arched or kept straight. Both versions are legitimate handstands, they just have some differences in them.
Your head can be looking down at the ground or through the arms and looking opposite the wall.

When practicing first get comfortable with kicking up. You’ll need to increase or decrease the amount of force you use. Once you are good at that you can begin to hold the handstand position for time. And to progress you’ll continue to add more and more time.

Eventually when this is easy, you can begin working on balancing in the handstand.

If you’ve enjoyed this article on how to do a handstand against the wall please leave your comments or questions below.

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Handstand Crossfit

By Bac on June 2, 2012 in Handstands, Presses & Pushup

I don’t agree with everything Crossfit does, but they still are doing a good amount right. One of which is that there are some handstands in Crossfit. With all their cross training they do hit a little on many different things, In this post I’ll offer a little advice on how to take it further. First, a quote from the founder:

Handstands crossfit, hand walking, and pressing to the handstand are critical exercises to developing your athletic potential and essential components to becoming “CrossFit.”

Historically, these exercises have been collectively referred to as “hand balancing” and have been an integral part of strength and health culture since antiquity, yet today hand balancing seems to have followed the passenger pigeon to extinction. From Crossfit.com

I agree with him that handstands have become a lost art, hence the name of this site. Now let’s look at how handstands are typically included in a Crossfit workout. There are two basic ways.

Handstand crossfit holds against the wall
Handstand pushups

Of course being Crossfit they love kipping. And they even kip with handstand pushups! (It’s not just a pullup thing)

An interesting exercise but I would certainly not use it as your mainstay for training. Build strength through other progressions like in this handstand pushups book and you will building stronger arms and shoulders.

Don’t be so concerned with getting 21-15-9 reps of handstand pushups in your workout, when you can’t do one strictly, but start where you are and build from there.

Handstand holds against the wall are great. They help train your position and can build stability and endurance in the position. Great to finish off your training with that.

Unfortunately in most Crossfits this is as far as their handstand training goes. What about the balancing aspect?

First off all this should not be included in a typical Crossfit workout. When you’re gassed and fatigued is not the time to work on fine motor skills. Instead you can perform a little bit of free hand balancing practice before hand. Use it as part of your warmup.

Most people will try to jump right into the handstand but this would be the perfect time to start out with easier lead-up stunts like the frogstand and headstand as outline in the Secrets of the Handstand book.

You build better balancing skills this way and soon be outperforming all your handstand Crossfit buddies at handstands.

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Why Handstands Take So Long To Learn

By Bac on May 29, 2012 in Handstands

I received this email the other day from Dunte and I thought it was worth sharing with you.

Especially in this day and age everyone wants instant success in anything they do. And if you can’t deliver that to them, they don’t want your help, as they aren’t willing to do the work to get it. This is as true with handstands as anything else. Read the message below then I’ll follow it up with a few more ideas…

I am a personal trainer full-time, but am also a trained educator and have studied human development pretty extensively.

Short version: for those getting frustrated with their “apparent” lack of progress in the handstand (or any other balancing or fine motor skill), this general timeline from infant motor development might be illuminating.

7 months – can stand or pull up to standing, supported by objects
9 months – can walk/move while standing, with support
10 months – can stand freely (briefly)
11 months – can stand freely with confidence
12 months – can walk freely
14-17 months – can walk/climb freely
18 months – can manipulate objects while moving

So, total elapsed time for the “average” infant is 11 months from getting upright to playing in the standing position! My daughter took roughly that long as well. Thinking this way has made me much more comfortable with the small, incremental improvements that regular handbalancing practice brings, instead of being frustrated about “not getting it” for so long. Considering this, as well as the timeline for training my clients toward graceful single-leg movements, I feel pretty good about the long path ahead to the single-arm free handstand push-up as well.

Maybe that insight would help some of your readers!

Best,
Dunte
The Fit Life

Thank you Dunte and I completely agree with you.

Just imagine if your average person stuck to standing and walking like they do to other things in their life. We’d have a lot of people that were immobile. Yet the baby keeps on trying. And if you want to learn the handstand, and any more complicated movements you’ll have to do the same.

As much as I wish I could sell you a Magic Pill that gave you instant hand balancing mastery, that’s just not going to happen. As hard as learning to stand on your feet was, the hands and arms are smaller and you’re bigger, making it even harder to do.

With the Secrets of the Handstand Quick Start I try to give you the best proven path to attaining a handstand. Even then with time spent doing the lead-up stunts, it will still take some work. With this system you may be able to shave months off your learning curve, but it will still take practice and dedication.

Stay dedicated and you can accomplish anything you desire.

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Yoga Hand Balancing Flow Video

By Bac on May 24, 2012 in Handstands, Yoga

Here is a yoga video that includes hand balancing.

Yes, it is an attractive woman in her underwear but don’t let that distract you 🙂

By watching this you can observe a couple things.

One, that yoga and hand balancing go hand in hand (pun intended). Yoga has many hand balances in it. You’ll see pressups to a handstand, a version of the frogstand, the headstand, handstands with different leg positions including the lotus position, and more.

You can also see how you might want to put a little hand balancing flow together, going from one move to the next.

Thanks to John for sending this video to me.

Want some more yoga positions. Check out the Yoga Trapeze as a fun tool for making inversions easy.

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Handstand Games

By Bac on March 21, 2012 in Handstands

Hand balancing is fun. If you can even more fun to your training why not do it? That’s where handstand games can come into play.

We’ll list some handstand games here, but you can come up with your own. Creativity is key!

For any of these games you’ll need two or more people who are approximately at the same level of handstand ability. If one person is way better then another you may need to come up with some other games, as these are best for evenly matched opponents.

Timed Holds
Hold a handstand for time. This can be a regular handstand or a different position from normal. Both people start at the same time and the longer hold wins.

Handstand HORSE
You’ve likely played the basketball game of horse sometime in the past. This is where a person gets a letter if they can’t match what their opponent does. The first person to spell the word HORSE loses. Instead of trying trick shots you’ll do any handstand skill. This can involve holds, walking, hopping, presses, different positions and anything else you can think of.

Handstand Race
There are a couple variations of this game. You an an opponent can go for time and thus speed while handstand walking or running. You can cover a distance and whoever gets there in the least number of attempts would win.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing

Obstacle Course
This is a great one in a gym where you can easily setup steps or objects to circumnavigate. See who can get through the entire course within falling out of a handstand.

Handstand Battles
This involves actually trying to take the other person out of the handstand while you remain in it. Warning this is more dangerous then any of the other games.

This video with Roger Harrell from Crossfit may give you more ideas of handstand games to play.

Try out some of these games with your friends. You’ll have fun while improving your skills.

If you want more details on how to do all these hand balancing skills and more then I recommend you check out the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.

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