Tag Archives | Attempts

Straightening Handstand, Wrist Strength & More

By on January 26, 2009 in Bridging, Flexibility & Contortion, Handstands

Diving into a few questions and comments today.

“In the hand stand, and especially in the bridge, the main persisting difficulty is an inherent wrist weakness. In fact I observe steady improvement in back and shoulder flexibility, but the wrist is always setting me back!”
Joseph

I know your pain Joseph, having my own share of wrist problems. But I’ve come a long way in part thanks to handstands.

Here’s a few things you can try out. Always stretch before hand balancing or bridging. Just open the wrist back as far as it will go. And afterwards its great to work it the other direction too.

Try working some of the positions of the fists as well. This is known to help strengthen the wrists.

How to do the One Hand Handstand by Professor Orlick
ow to do the One Hand Handstand on Amazon

Of course there is much else to do, including many mobility drills for the hands and fingers. Since this is a problem for many people I’ll be covering it in more detail in the future. But for now I hope that helps.

Onto another comment.

“I got it! Thanks a bunch. I’m pleased with the quality of the material and your service.

“The handstand is really one of the most difficult skill I’m trying to learn, I’m almost there. Been practising since august but I was doing it wrongly by starting to do the handstands and not the build up moves! now I know what I know I’m doing wrong.

“Unfortunately my online friend who is into handbalancing didn’t tell me about the build up moves so I ended up wasting a lot of time practising doing handstands immediately. And most of the resources over the internet failed to teach this important aspect in learning this skill. Out of desperation I even attended a gymnastics class once. After many months of practice (4months) out of 10 attempts 1 will get thru and I would consider that a lucky day if I could hold it for 3seconds! It got so frustrating that I was ready to give up.

“I’m not back to ground zero but I could feel its just a matter of time in learning this. I’ve already mastered the frogstand, headstand and now been practising the kick up. Next would be the forearm stand.

“Here in the philippines, there isn’t much interest in handbalancing. I could only see some B-boys doing a walking handstands but doing static holds? I’ve never seen one. Though when I saw the press to handstand I was blown away by some guy at the gymnastics class.

“Ok got to read the books and dvd! I can’t wait till I can master the handstand! Once I could balance for 30 seconds then on to the advance course.

“Handbalancing is truly a lost art. It’s great that you that you decided to open this resource site.”

Regards,
Gerald

Thanks for sending in the report Gerald. You are too right. Learning the handstand can be frustrating, especially if you take the long slow road of going right to it.

That’s why I created the Secrets of the Handstand Quickstart Guide to give you the lead-up stunts you mentioned and plan to attack the handstand in an easier way.

Once you have that its just a matter of time and practice. You’ll be holding a handstand for 30 seconds in no time.

“How do you correct the arch of the back in a handstand?”
Martha

Let me start off by saying that arching in a handstand is not wrong to do as many people believe. But if you want to straighten out here’s what to do.

Go back to the wall.

Walls are flat so kick up into a handstand and straighten out to the point where all the points on your body are in contact with it.

Of course, you’ll also bring your head down in between your arms and this alone will help to eliminate the arch.

But don’t expect this to go away overnight, and especially be able to balance in the position. You’ll have to work at it to re-configure the body to do as you please since an arched handstand is not only easier but more natural.

That’s it for today. Going to have some new stuff for you this week so stay tuned.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Frustrated with the difficulty of the handstand? Don’t know the best place to begin? Find the proper path with the Secrets of the Handstand Quickstart Guide

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First Attempts at Parkour

By on January 8, 2009 in Parkour

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

 I was filming another project and I figured I had to give a few of these Parkour moves a shot. As you’ll see in the video, I didn’t have all that much crazy terrain to go off of. But I did manage a few different vaults.

Even that little bit was fun to do. And, after all, you have to start somewhere. You can be sure in the future I’ll be on the lookout for some spots to practice more.

After watching the Parkour Tutorial DVD all you have to do is get out there and start doing it.

Good Luck and Good Free Running,
Logan Christopher

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Handstand Pushups and Handstand Hand Positions

By 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?”

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

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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Secrets of the Handstand Comments

By 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.

Trampoline Handbook
Trampoline Handbook on Amazon

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