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Walking on Your Hands

By admin on June 14, 2008 in Handstands, Walking & Jumping

Here’s a good question from Tony.

“Dear Logan Christopher, I am a 44 year old male that just decided to do handstands since it was a great workout. I can do a handstand and pushups against the wall. I just read your 10 handstand tips and will work on these great ideas. My problem is when I try to walk on my hands my legs tend to fall toward the “wall direction” when I try to stand without the wall. I feel that it is fear of falling flat on my back. Sometimes my hand strides are a little too big as I am trying to go too fast and then my legs fall toward “the wall direction.” I can hold a handstand probably at least 30 sec. I am usually sustaining myself up after doing 13-15 handstand pushups through a short ROM. I initially thought it was my ab/core strength and I just started with Eddie Baran’s gymnastic abs dvd which is fun and challenging. I am improving but got a little concerned when you said that walking is easier than standing. Your hints have clued me into improving my body awareness with standing and increase my length of time. Any other ideas?”

I should have clarified the position on standing vs. walking. For most people the walking is going to be much easier. This is because you can shift your weight around and take a step with your hands toward any direction you are falling.

If you take the time to learn how to stand still, and remain in a good handstand position than you are much better off than someone who can merely walk on his hands.

When you are walking on your hands the legs tend to ‘fall forward’ in overbalancing. This is a good thing because that’s the forward momentum you want to walk with.

The key is to maintain control. You don’t want to be overbalancing so much that your hands can’t keep up or that you just fall out of the handstand.

To work on the control even more so, you should practice different size steps as Prof. Orlick teaches in Walking and Jumping on Your Hands. Go for small steps. Next try to clear a yard with each step.

You can also vary the speed with which you walk. Even try running on your hands!

But first and most important is to learn to stand on your hands. So that you can maintain a good handstand and not just stay on your hands by catching yourself from falling.

Just keep training and you’ll be able to walk, stand, run and hop on your hands without a problem.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Click here for more on walking, running and jumping on your hands.

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How to Hold a Handstand

By admin on June 10, 2008 in Handstands

A few things to cover today. First a questions from Brian.

“my handstand stays in air for less than 3 seconds. at times i do better and most times i do worse. i tried the wall to gain back strength but i never seem to get better. Its been 3 months that way. im not quiting so any suggestions will be appreciated.”

There’s a new article up on the site complete with a video that covers the most basic techniques on how to do a handstand.

Hopefully something on that page will help you. But without seeing your handstand or having a more descriptive question I can’t do much more.

If you want and have the means you can post a video on youtube or somewhere else on the internet. If you provide me a link I’ll take a look and give you feedback. Just send me a link to the video and any specific questions you have.

How to do the One Hand Handstand by Professor Orlick

Lastly, you’ve got less that one day to get any of the new Prof. Orlick ebooks or the Hand Balancing Mastery Course for the current price. Tomorrow morning the price will go up. Get them now.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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Handstand Pushups and Handstand Hand Positions

By admin on May 31, 2008 in Handstands

Got two more handstand questions I’ll dig into today. I have to admit the quality of the questions has stepped up recently at least for the most part. Submit yours at https://lostartofhandbalancing.com/question.html.Here we go. The first one is from Ari.

“OK, Logan, I can balance on my hands, and I have the strength to do handstand pushups, but maintaining balance in an HSPU seems almost impossible. As I lower from the handstand my weight always starts to move to the ventral (stomach) side and unless I bend my legs at the knees so my calves counterbalance the weight, I lose my handstand. How do you maintain a straight bodywhile doing a handstand pushup?”

The first step is to make sure you have the strength to perform the move. When most people do handstand pushups against the wall it’s in an alignment that makes the pushup easier than the form you have to take for a free standing handstand pushup. This is a big topic in and of itself that I’ll have to dig into another time.

The important thing is to have an excess of strength. It’s not good to be burned out after two attempts, since you need to ‘practice’ the move. Onto the balancing.

It is going to be slightly different depending on how straight or arched you are. The thing is that your body will be at an angle and not perfectly vertical from the ground. When your head touches the ground it should be in a triangle formation with the hands. Like the headstand except you don’t rest on the head.

Because of this the upper body and lower body are on different sides of your center of gravity. As if you were lowering down toward the planche.

The most important thing you have to do in order to keep the balance and not fall toward the feet is keeping yourself toward overbalancing. The pressure must be toward your fingers at all times. If you go toward your palms you’ll lose it.

Of course the body has to be kept real tight at the same time. But keep the weight toward your fingers and you’ll be able to stay balanced while doing the pushups.

And here’s one from Ron.

“I’ve been doing handstand training for the past 4 months. For the purpose of experimentation, what are the effects of different hand positioning? In other words, if you spread your hands wider apart, does that provide any benefits, as opposed to keeping the hands at shoulder width?”

Here’s the words of Professor Orlick, from the beginning of chapter 11 in Hand Balancing Made Easy.

There is a two-fold purpose for learning these (that is handstands with different hand and arm positions). The first is for the stunts themselves, they look good, impress your audiences and give you personal satisfaction.

The second is for excellent balance they develop. When you vary the position of the hands you are forced to balance less and less with the fingers and hands themselves and more and more with the body as a unified whole. This may not be clear to you right here but after you learn a few of the stunts which are described you will understand exactly what is meant.

He then goes on to list 14 handstand exercises with different hand and arm position and even more in the next chapter. For details on the exact ones check out Handbalancing Made Easy.

But that explains it well enough. Changing your arm position will work your balance to a higher degree. These variations are good to throw into the mix from time to time.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Just to let you know there’s going to be changes to a few of the products next week.

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Fish Tail Press Up to Handstand

By admin on May 24, 2008 in Presses & Pushup

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAnuz6_3avc]
Fish Tail Press Up to Handstand

Got another video for you. This one is from next month’s Acrobat Accelerator.

A slightly more advanced move, but in the complete video you’ll be taken through the steps to get up to this move.

Here’s what it says in The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing about the Fish Tail Press Up.

Lie flat on the back, with the hands and arms close to the sides, with the hands flat on the floor, then by resisting with the hands, you draw the legs up slowly, and rigid, keep the legs going until you are up, resting on your head and shoulders, then change the position of the hands by placing them along side of the head flat on the floor; then let the feet drop about six inches, then drive them up, and push up to a handstand, the legs are kept rigid all the time.

That’s one long run on sentence but it describes the move well.

This move takes strong abs just to get into the plough position and hold it with your legs over your head. I suppose you could call this move the Plough press too. The more you drive with the legs the less you have to push with your arms but you have to do both.

Give it a shot and see how it goes.

On another note the May Sale is moving fast. Many items are sold out but others like the Paulinetti and Jones’ book and the Tumbling Course still have many in stock. https://lostartofhandbalancing.com/maysale.html

If you’ve stalled, wait no longer. The sale will come down late Sunday even if there’s a few items left.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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David Webster on Hand Balancing

By admin on May 17, 2008 in Handstands

Strength historian David Webster wrote this about hand balancing in 1963:

“Few physical culturists attracted to balancing have any ambitions to perfect a first class act and top the bill at the variety theatres or on television, this has happened time and time again to fellows who set out to learn a handstand just for the fun of it.

Few forms of training are as enjoyable as balancing and not only the participators find it so; those watching the activity derive a great deal of pleasure from seeing the thrills and spills of training sessions as well as enjoying the final polished performance of the feats.

With a little conscientious practice, most people can master the elementary balances and this in itself encourages them to try harder stunts. Those who have a background in strength athletics of any description will have a great advantage over the less experienced.

The strong men will find their strength in the arms and shoulders a great asset, but don’t worry if you don’t possess strength or experience because the first balances can be practiced even by schoolboys.

Master the basic balances before trying the harder stunts. These lay the foundation for future success.”

I would agree with David completely.

I decided to master the handstand one day and look where that has led me. I’m not one of the best by any means but I’m teaching hundreds across the world.

Just look where you can be in 10 or 20 years. That’s a lot of time to practice!

It starts with the foundation. One simple move, the handstand.

From there you can take it in so many directions.

Finger Balancing

Walking and Jumping on Your Hands

The One Hand Handstand

Contorting Body Position

And much more. Once you learn the basics the next step is up to you. As long as you keep pushing forward, in a little time, you’ll be doing moves that will impress others and get them started on the hand balancing path.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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Handstand Rolls

By admin on April 29, 2008 in Handstands, Tumbling

How does tumbling and hand balancing go together?

Here’s your answer in the simplest form. Combining the normal handstand with basic forward and backward rolls.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6msSyaXU_J4]

Of course, there are many other ways to combine them. Here’s just two examples. Back Handspring to Hand Balance and Dive to Hand Balance, Chest Roll Down. There are tons of ways to get into and out of a handstand. Use your imagination.

These are great because it will really work your balance coming into the handstand from all these moves. Especially since you’re going to have to stop your momentum most of the time.

One more caveat. As much as possible don’t do hand balancing in sand. It’s a lot harder and throws off your balance. Much better to find a surface that won’t give.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. If you missed it, the new countdown page to the Tumbling Course is up. The date and time have been set. It’s only a matter of time now.

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Acrobatic Conditioning Report is coming…

By admin on April 19, 2008 in Handstands, Tumbling

I’m hard at work finishing up a Special Report I’ll be releasing next week. I was almost done but then your questions from the survey came in and I realized there was a lot more ground to cover.

So if you want your questions answered head on over to the survey.

It’s real short. And I know it asks for two questions but if you only got one that’s good enough.

This report is on what I call Acrobatic Conditioning. Its going to cover ways to train to improve your tumbling skills even if you’ve never worked on them before. How you can get started and where to train.

I’m about to go write more but I just want to take the time to answer at least one question here.

“Which skills should I attempt to learn first? and Should one master the handstand before attempting skills like cartwheel, round-off, and handsprings?”

Hand Balancing and Tumbling skills are related but definitely separate skill groups. You don’t really need to be good in one to do the other. That being said many tumbling moves move through the handstand position.

It can help to work both hand balancing and tumbling at the same time though you certainly don‘t need to be a master the handstand first.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing

As for which skills to work on that is easy. Start with what you can do and move on from there. If this is just basic rolls than start with that. Any moves where some part of you stays in contact with the ground would be next on the chain like cartwheels, roundoffs, and handsprings.

Of course the aerial moves like flips take a bit more work and are something you have to be careful with. More on that later.

But the idea is like with any other training. You work tumbling progressively.

Alright back to the report. Oh, and there’ll be new videos soon too.

Good Luck and Good Tumbling,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Seriously hit up the survey if you haven’t already.

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Secrets of the Handstand Comments

By admin on April 12, 2008 in Handstands

The first comments have come in as Secrets of the Handstand Quickstart packages have arrived. Here’s a great one:

I really liked your quick start guide. I have been hand balancing for a while now and can perform a half dozen variations of the head stand as well as hold a gymnastics style hand stand. I am currently working the start and stop method to learn how to walk on my hands.

But one thing that seemed to always elude me was the tiger stand. I practiced this move a lot against the wall but after weeks of practice I could never consistently find that “sweet spot.” After seeing you do a tiger stand in the video, that same day, when I went to the gym it took me 2 tries and now I can easily and consistently find the “sweet spot” hold the tiger stand. I must of unconsciously picked up something when I watched you kick up and hold the tiger stand.

Another thing I learned from the video is that the kick up is way more important than I originally thought. I was basically muscling the handstand back from my kick up (which was way to hard). I could do it but it took a lot of energy. For the past few days I just worked my kick up over and over again. After only 2 days of working my kick up I am hitting my “sweet spot” 8 times out of 10 when before I was only hitting it 1 or 2 times out of 10 and the other hand stand attempts I was muscling back from an over anxious kick up.

So, your videos were helpful to even someone like myself who has been practicing handstands successfully for several weeks. Just seeing someone else do the move and step me through the process, which is something I have read about and knew all ready, helped me greatly.

Thanks a lot,
Ricky
aka “Nifty”

I’m glad to see you got a lot out of it ‘Nifty’ and you aren’t the only one.

If you haven’t checked it out, you might’ve been under the impression that it was only for beginner’s.

And you’d be right…partially.

That guide is to get beginner’s up into a free standing handstand as soon as possible. I’ve spent much time and effort helping the beginner’s because, well there are more of them, and its harder than anything to get started.

But its just the start. The launching pad for a program that will help out all but the very best in this art.

And of course that is the Acrobat Accelerator program. In the monthly DVD and newsletter I will delve into various hand balancing topics in more depth.

This month the first issue covered everything you could possibly want to know about kicking-up into a handstand. I share my story of holding a handstand for 30 seconds for the first time ever but then relate the fact that I was able to hold only about one out of every ten handstands.

The kick-up is of utmost importance to really dial in if you want consistency in your handstand ability. Even if you don’t get this DVD you need to understand this concept.

But once again that’s just the beginning.

From there I cover advanced variations that will make you even better. When you learn to control your body from any angle that it comes up in your hand balancing ability shoots through the roof.

The variations I cover in detail are opposite leg kick-ups, two leg kick-ups, raised kick-ups, and the cartwheel stall. Are you able to do all of them?

There’s about 30 issues left. If you want in on a trial membership just get your free order (except shipping) to try it out.

If you miss out, it’ll be your last chance to get the April issue.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Next week I’ll post some new videos up on the blog on some moves closely related but outside of hand balancing which I am putting together right now. Stay tuned.

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Comment on the Hand Balancing Blog

By admin on April 8, 2008 in Handstands

I wanted to share with you an interesting debate I had with one of my subscriber’s and than I want to encourage you to add your own comments.

So here is part of Nathan’s comments:
“I take issue with some of the things you say on this site, also I do not believe you should be creating videos and tutorials that teach people handstands when you yourself use the technique deemed improper by Gymnasts and Circus Artists alike.

“Handstands should not be taught over the internet as it is an incredibly precise discipline that requires constant feedback and personalized training, something which with this medium you cannot deliver.”

And my response:
Deemed improper? Perhaps the straight body style is better but its not easier to learn. Having an arch is natural which is why it ‘use’ to be the only way up until about the 70’s. All the gymnasts (don’t actually know any circus artists myself) I’ve talked to say its just a matter of style anyway. In the end you should be able to take any position and balance right. After all look at many contortionists. Are they doing straight handstands?

I agree with you partially here. Yes personalized instruction would be best but its not really feasible. But isn’t some instruction better than nothing? Not all the people that come to my site are looking at this as a career, just something they’d like to be able to do.

And his comments back:
“Just to add to the perfect handstand discussion that’s going on. I believe the straight bodied handstand came around when people were trying to emulate the standing up normally position on their hands to create a more stable position. Hands below shoulders below hips below feet, in essence standing up but reversed.

“The arched position handstand is the beginners preference as the body naturally falls into that position and requires less core strength. The scorpion handstand common among contortionists is an entirely different type as this is a handstand trick rather than a base handstand. As you said earlier both work and are fine, but the more solid and versatile handstand in my opinion is the straight body one.

“Just my two cents, was an interesting little debate to read.”

And now here is your chance to weigh in on the situation. You know blogs are made to be two-way communication tools. But I haven’t ever encouraged this in the past. Well now I am.

All you have to do to post your comment is register here:
https://lostartofhandbalancing.com/blog/wp-login.php

And then go to the post itself to leave your comments:
https://lostartofhandbalancing.com/blog/comment-on-the-hand-balancing-blog

Think you can do that? I’d be happy if you took the time to give it a shot, so you can let me know what you think.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. It really sounds harder than it is. I’ve resisted this blog stuff in the past but once I got into it, its actually a lot of fun.

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Handstand Positions, One Hand Balancing and more

By admin on April 5, 2008 in Handstands, One Hand, Planche

Dipping into the mailbag today to answer a few questions. If you’ve got something on your mind, send it my way. You can easily click here to ask away.Here’s a good one from Rose talking about the new 10 Handstand Mistakes report.

“I really love the guide, but some things, to me, are a little confusing. Like where exactly should you bend your back, and what will it feel like when you hit that perfect thing? Is that just something that should be experienced simply by experience? And also, on my hands, I have a hard time really keeping the balance depending on the position of my hands…if I’m leaning forward slightly, or if my fingers are even the slightest moved…Is there anything you can write in there about your experiences with hand positions? Other than that, I can’t really think of anything. Thanks! :D”

Where you bend your back will be dependent on you. Yes you have to experience it but you can learn a lot from looking at pictures and of course watching video.

Most of the bend is in the low back, and personally I feel like I get ‘locked in’ to the right position whenever I do a handstand. Keep at it and you’ll get the feel.

As for the hands, there is much you can do with them. Honestly any position you take with your hands is doable for the handstand, whether its on the fists, hands backwards, or just the thumbs.

But the standard position is hands flat on the ground with either the middle or index fingers pointing forward. Work on this position first and foremost until you have build up your balancing ability.

Once you have a decent handstand feel free to mix up your hand positions. Professor Orlick gives you 25 different hand positions and 10 different finger positions to work on it Hand Balancing Made Easy. Many of these I had never even though about trying.And here’s one from Aldy.

“I can do straddle planche well enough, but I cant do one handstand balance. what is d secret of one hand handstand and one hand planche. for notes, I am not learning gymnastic, because in my country gymnast is not popular. Thank You!!!”

The secret? Alright you asked so I am going to give it to you. The secret is…You have to work up to it progressively.

First off, congratulations on doing the planche. That is a move few can do. But there is a big difference in the planche and the one hand handstand. One requires more strength while the other requires much more balance. And you have to be progressive in your balance training.

Jim Bathurst and I talked at length about this in the interview for the Hand Balancing Mastery Course. Basically you are going to have to train a bit differently for each. Just like you would train the free standing handstand and handstand pushups against the wall differently you should do the same here.

And like the normal handstand, the way I teach it, you have to work on a series of lead up stunts that will give you the ability to balance on one hand. There are many helpful variations that lead up to the one hand handstand. Professor Orlick lays them all out in as easy to use manner in How to do the One Hand Handstand.

I am working on my own plan, exactly what is working for me, but details on that another time.

Since this is already running long I’ll have to save more for next time.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. If you want to get all of Professor Orlick’s works plus the interview with Jim and more than click here.

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