Tag Archives | Handstand

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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Taking Time Off from Handstands

By admin on May 15, 2008 in Uncategorized

Every once in a while you need to take a little time off from your training. This could be a few days or a week. Maybe a month while you focus on other goals.

This is not a bad thing. Sure, you won’t be making direct progress during that time. But more often than not, you’ll come back with a fury, excited and supercharged to make big gains once again.

This is as true with hand balancing, as with any other form of training.

If you go about something the same way, day in and day out, for a long, long time you will go stale eventually. Your body and mind will get use to it.

Taking a break can be like re-fueling the engine.

It goes without saying that you do have to devote time to practicing and working toward your goals. You can’t be on a break all the time.

And when you do come back there may be a day or more in which it doesn’t feel right. Where it seems your skills have gone down.

Not to worry, just get back into the flow of things and soon you’ll be surpassing old records.

Such is the case for myself. I’ve had to change up my training for reasons I won’t get into this time. Hand balancing had to take the back seat for a few weeks.

I still did some, but not with the same intensity and effort I was before. Believe it or not, many days I was left too sore to even hold a handstand. Certainly not in any shape to work on harder skills.

But I’m not beating myself self up over it. Because soon enough I’ll launch right back into it. With new energy I know I’ll be making some impressive gains.

How about you?

Know that at any time you can switch what you’re doing and go after something 100%. To get yourself back in gear instead of going through the motions.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Special announcement coming next week…

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A Good Handstand Pyramid Trick for the Triceps

By admin on May 12, 2008 in Uncategorized

Got another one from Stu Goldberg. That’s him in the middle in the jack-knife position.

3-Person Handstand Pyramid

According to Stu this is one of the toughest middle man tricks. A huge strain on the triceps, as I’m sure you could imagine. But its even worse when the top-mounter ‘planches’ his handstand, like in this case.

The next time you and two of your friends are looking for something to do, give this a shot. Except you might want to get a few years of practice under your belt first.

On another note, I want to remind you that the Tumbling Course launch is winding down. If you want to save $30 and get in on the tele-seminar you have to order before Tuesday at midnight (PST).

If you’ve already ordered I’ll be sending instructions regarding the tele-seminar soon.

Plus I just realized that we passed the One Year Anniversary of the Lost Art of Hand Balancing website last week. Its come a long way in that time, but there is so much more to do. Here’s looking forward to the next year being bigger and better.

A big thanks to all of you for being along for the ride, especially if you were here from the beginning. To celebrate I’m going to put together a special event of sorts. Watch out for that soon.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Not much time left. Join the others and get started tumbling now.

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Stories of Bob Jones and other Hand Balancers

By admin on May 10, 2008 in Uncategorized

Just a couple weeks ago I was contacted by a man who knew and trained with Bob Jones among many other hand balancers. His name is Stu Goldberg and he has a few stories to share.

I thought you might be interested. Plus there are many pictures too.

If you want to learn how Bob used a sewing thread to help balance, or who won the longest handstand contest there’s a new article up. Remembering the Old Hand Balancing Days

How to do the One Hand Handstand by Professor Orlick

Rest assured in the coming weeks I’ll be sharing even more with you.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Only a few days left to get the Tumbling Course at its launch price.

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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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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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Do you know your Hand Balancing Terms?

By admin on April 10, 2008 in Uncategorized

A few things for you today.

First up is another article. I had an idea for this a little while back. It’s a glossary of all kinds of hand balancing terms as well as alternative names for many moves.

You can check it out here: Hand Balancing Glossary.

Instead of finishing it up myself, why don’t you help me out? There’s quite a few terms up there but it’s by no means complete. At the bottom you can submit your ideas on terms to add.

So why don’t you help out and make the glossary full?

Secondly, in my last message I encouraged you to comment on the blog.

I was happy to see many people sign up but there was only one comment.

You can read what Ari thought here:

https://lostartofhandbalancing.com/blog/comment-on-the-hand-balancing-blog/

Thanks Ari. If there was any difficulty in the process let me know and I’ll look into making it easier.

But don’t worry if you didn’t post your thoughts, I’ll be sharing plenty of great stuff in the future that you’ll want to comment on.

Here’s a question to think about?

Are you spending more time upside down these days than you were last year or less? If you want to get good it should be the former.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. The Secrets of the Handstand Quickstart Guide should be hitting your mailbox soon if it hasn’t already for those of you who ordered. I’m anxious to here your initial impressions so send your thoughts my way. Just click reply and let me know what you think.

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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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What is the Perfect Handstand?

By admin on April 3, 2008 in Handstands

There are two new articles up. But first a question from Larry in Hawaii.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing

“I am a little confused on the perfect handstand? which from what Ive read leads up to the one-handed handstand…Is it maintaining a perfectly straight body shown on page 92 or is it what is pictured on page 78 of “the true art and science of hand balancing” in fig.4 showing correct body position?? My goal is to balance on one hand. I have drawn out the diagram pictured on 16 of ‘how to do a one handed handstand’…hands seem kinda close…but above all what kind of body position am I striving for??”

Are you confused too? The first article answers this question in detail. If you‘ve ever thought you had to have a straight bodied handstand to do a one hand handstand the answer might surprise you.

Either way thought there are a few drills revisited that can help you alter your position.

Check it out: The Perfect Handstand

The second article is actually a small download. This one is for beginners.

The Ten Biggest Mistakes People Make When Learning the Handstand

And a small housekeeping note. The first Secrets of the Handstand Quickstart Guide packages will be mailed out tomorrow. If you want yours to go out with them order today.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. If you’re having any trouble with the download just go to Hand Balancing Articles page and you’ll see it there.

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