Tag Archives | gymnast bridge

Handstand Stretching Drills

By on October 31, 2014 in Hand Balancing, Handstands

Apart from regular training, achieving your first handstand requires quite a bit of flexibility as well, especially for the straight handstand. Here are some great stretches to improve your flexibility for this particular handstand variation.

Hand Balancing Made EasyHandBalancingMadeEasy_on_Amazon

There are four stretching drills in the video – active dynamic, active static, passive dynamic and passive static. As you might have guessed, I like the one with the gymnast bridge the most.

In fact, I just recently wrote an article at Breaking Muscle on this very move in relation to back and shoulder pain. Check it out here.

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Handstand Backbend

By 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

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

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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