Tag Archives | Handstand

How to Kick-up into a Handstand

By admin on March 22, 2008 in Handstands

The kick-up is one of the most important skills you have to learn if you want to do a handstand, next to balancing with your hands and keeping your body tight.The question is, how consistent is your kick-up?I didn’t figure this out right away when I started, but if you can kick up the exact same each time then getting into and holding a handstand is easy.

If your kick-up is all over the place, then there’s no wonder why you have a hard time getting into a hand balance.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing

Of course, there are several different ways to kick-up. I cover all the basic ways for the beginner and even more advanced variation in the April issue of the newsletter.

My favorite regular kick-up I learned from Bob Jones in The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing. That one is shown here.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usTC0oXqXtI]

There are a bunch of fine details that make a kick-up work. I am not gonna lie and say that I never miss a single one, but after concentrating on this for some time I no longer hit only one handstand out of ten like I use to.

If you’re having trouble with yours, start practicing. Better yet get the newsletter and learn all about how to get it done, the best method of practicing, and how far you can take it.

I wish it was ready to go right now, but I’m just putting the finishing touches and final edits on it before it the newsletter and DVD’s go to press.

In the mean time, I hope you enjoy these video clips.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. You can learn more about Bob Jones’ 4-step method of kicking-up into a handstand here.

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Cirque du Soleil: Kooza

By admin on March 17, 2008 in Uncategorized

Went to Cirque du Soleil this past weekend. The shows title was Kooza.

As expected I was amazed. But I have to say it even exceeded my expectations.

The show is touring through the eastern States now. If it’s coming nearby to you, Go and See It. But the same can be said for any Cirque du Soleil performance.

Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed otherwise I would love to share with you a few of the amazing feats performed.

From the synchronized contortionists to people on stilts being launched in a double back flip. From jumping over people on high wires to the best juggler I’ve ever seen. My favorite was the Wheel of Death. Every single thing was astounding.

Not to mention the funniest clowns ever. I’m not usually a big fan of the clowns but these guys were good.

One great thing was the answer to a question I had posed just a few weeks ago was shown in full force.

I’m talking about the Chinese acrobats hand balancing on chairs.

The hand balancer stacked one chair on top of the other. When he got high up, assistants would hand him chairs by using long poles.

Mind you these are not your average chairs but very sturdy things. They’ve got to be because he went up over 10 chairs high.

By standing on each chair he would place the next on top and press up to get into position. Every couple of chairs he would do a new feat.

A head balance on one. A handstand on another.

To top it off the last chair was not laid flat but tilted to be at a diagonal angle. On top of this the acrobat performed a one arm half-planche or elbow lever.

You could see the chairs wobble and shake.

After he was done they took the chairs done one by one and the act was over.

One thing I realized at this show is that you tend to have great respect for the people practicing the things you know. I could see the contortionists using their hands to balance. I understand how they do what they do (not so much their ungodly flexibility).

Same with some of the acrobatics.

But unicycling or balancing on the tight wire I have no experience with. Not to say I didn’t respect these people, because I did.

But when you know how hard it is to do something it makes you appreciate it more.

Not a lot of people understand the patience and effort over the long haul it takes to accomplish this kind of thing. But you do.

Are you looking for a quick fix or are your prepared to go the distance? The time is going to pass either way so why not become a master at a few things.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. For less than the cost of a ticket, you can get your hands on The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing, to see a bunch of similar feats and learn how to do them.

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Frog Stand

By admin on March 13, 2008 in Uncategorized

The frog stand makes it easier to learn the handstand by training your hand balancing skills in an easier manner.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp86vFUlV84]

They call it hand balancing for a reason after all. The frogstand lowers your center of gravity and makes this learning the skills of manipulating your balance with your hands easier.

If you can’t hold the frog stand for at least a minute you have no reason to go after a free standing handstand. That’s my stance and I’m sticking to it.

But it’s not the only move. In fact there’s four. Master these and the handstand becomes much easier to learn.

You want to know what the four are?

Okay, it’s the frogstand, headstand, forearm stand, and handstand against the wall. But make sure you do them right.

The Secrets of the Handstand Quick Start DVD covers all four lead-up stunts and much more.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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Yoga Headstands

By admin on March 11, 2008 in Uncategorized

Yoga headstands, known as Sirshasana, are different than the standard gymnastic headstand. Instead of resting your palms flat on the ground you interlock your fingers and place them behind your head.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rh-lIyJgqk]

The headstand is a great stunt. Very much underrated. Here is a more difficult variation of the headstand. In fact this would be an excellent exercise to move you forward to holding headstand with no hands at all.

I would recommend you start off this move against a wall as your base of support is quite a bit smaller than the regular headstand.

Kicking up can be tricky too. Instead of kicking up you may want to raise your legs from the floor at the same time. Good ab move too.

This is just one clip from the Handstand Quick-start Guide. I’ll be putting more video up as development continues.

As this is the first informative video, please let me know what you think.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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Doug Hepburn Handstand

By admin on March 8, 2008 in Uncategorized

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time with Doug Hepburn balancing a 205 lb. barbell plus a 145 lb. man doing a handstand on top.. Just recently I came across the same picture from another view. A perfect blend of strength and balancing.

Doug Hepburn Handstand Balance

Not any strong person could hold this. Besides the 350 lbs. of weight it is really the responsibility of the under-stander to keep the person in the handstand balanced.

If you haven’t heard of Doug Hepburn you may want to check him out. Suffice to say he was an all-around strongman, setting many weightlifting records in his time, and this was starting crippled at a young age.

What most people don’t know is that he was also a fine hand balancer.

Early in his career he was capable of twelve reps in the handstand press and five reps in the tiger-bend.

That’s some strength there.

Seeing and hearing about people like Doug Hepburn and Bert Assirati all doing hand balancing you can’t possibly think that hand balancing is only for the small framed.

Large size is no excuse.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Can’t say that being small doesn’t help though. Professor Paulinetti weighed around 110 lbs which made the One Arm Planche possible. To duplicate some of his feats check out The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing.

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Handstand on Blocks

By admin on March 1, 2008 in Uncategorized

My first thought when I saw this picture was ‘Uh-Oh.’

Handstand on Blocks

The reason I was thinking this, is because if I (or most people for that matter) was in his position I’d be in for quite a fall. But I think this acrobat has it under control.

This is from The Art of Chinese Acrobatics. Here’s the comments in the book about it.

‘Handstands on Movable Wooden Blocks puts the basic acrobatic skill of the handstand in a new perspective. An acrobat, balancing upside down, piles two parallel rows of wooden blocks on a bench while establishing various poses along the way. The performance in which the acrobat pushes away the piled blocks and drops himself onto the bench is particulary impressive.’

If you look at the first sentence you’ll notice it calls the handstand a basic acrobatic skill. That it is, though it might be painful to hear if you’re struglling with this ‘basic’ move. But the truth is the handstand is only the beginning, the foundation from which so much else is built.

It takes quite the skill to catch yourself in a handstand from a drop. You have to agree that this is an impressive feat especially at that height, where lack of balance means possible pain and injury.

Dropping into a handstand is a move you can practice in many other ways though, even if its just you jumping into one on the floor.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. To build that handstand foundation be sure to check out Hand Balancing Made Easy.

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Leading up to any Handstand Stunt

By admin on February 28, 2008 in One Hand

Seemed to have raised some interest with my last email. So I’ve decided to go into a little more depth on the subject.

To sum up what I said last time: The best way to learn the handstand, one hand handstand, or any stunt is not to do the move itself, in the beginning, but work on lead-up stunts.

Obviously at a certain point you will need to work on the skill itself in order to master it but you shouldn’t start there.

If you look at a weightlifting move like the deadlift, let’s say you have a goal to lift 500 lbs. You wouldn’t start out trying to lift this weight because most likely you could not even budge it. No, you start with what you can do and move up in weight from there.

If your goal is to do a move like the one hand handstand you can’t just start with a lighter weight. Most bodyweight exercises don’t work this way. Just going for the move is like trying to deadlift 500 lbs. when your max is 300. Not gonna happen.

An easier version of the move is essentially the same thing as a lighter weight. When you are good with one move you move on to a harder variation, just like adding weight.

Failing to do this is why so many people never reach their goal. They just try the move over and over seeing little or no progress.

One move for the one hand handstand is to place your other arm on a raised box or chair and use it to help balance.

For the normal handstand you have moves like the headstand and frogstand. But there are many more for these moves and others.

That’s the genius in how Professor Orlick taught his students. Each move leads in to the next. For the best methods of mastering any hand balancing move check out the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.

If you learn this lesson well, you can apply to many other forms of exercise.By training in this manner you can and will progress much faster. I guarantee it.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Right now you can do no better than to get what has been affectionately referred to as the “Hand Balancing Bible“.

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One Handed Handstand

By admin on February 26, 2008 in One Hand

Got another question regarding the one handed handstand.

Hi . i have kinda a problem using one arm handbalancing because i have been practicing on it since long time and i believe i have a good strength in my shoulders yet i cant hold it more than 5 sec but i can hold it for one 1 min if lay against the wall ( same thing goes 2 the left hand ) so my question is what do i have to do to hold it as much as i can ??( is there any particular training should i attempt ? ) (if ya want, i can take a photo of my self while doing it )
Best Regards.

Actually what I am about to tell you applies to the regular handstand as well.

Being able to hold a one arm handstand against a wall is great, especially for a minute long, but this isn’t going to transfer to a free hand balance.

The strength is there, but it doesn’t take much strength to do this move. What it takes is balance and skill.

Using the wall will build your strength and it will help you learn the position if you do it right. What it won’t do is teach you how to balance.

This takes doing the move in the open. The problem is most people try to go straight from a two hand handstand into one by raising the arm. This is not the way and what stops many from mastering this skill.

Balancing in the one hand handstand is very difficult. You will not be able to figure it out by doing the one hand handstand itself, not in the beginning.

Just like I teach with the normal handstand there are a series of different lead-up stunts you should perfect before you move up to the one handstand.

No one covers this better than Prof. Orlick in How to do the One Hand Handstand. He outlines a step-by-step approach to reaching the one hand handstand.If you seriously want to hold a one-hand handstand you have to work up to this balance.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. If you want to see a bonehead move and some good old fashioned physical comedy check out this video I came across – https://www.break.com/index/treadmill-handstand-attempt.html. I hope this guy ain’t a student of mine.

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Chinese Acrobats do Handstands on Chairs

By admin on February 14, 2008 in Uncategorized

Chinese Acrobats Handstand on Chairs

Whoa!

This is just a sneak peak of what they best acrobats from China can do and one of many hand balancing tricks involving chairs shown in The Art of Chinese Acrobatics.

That’s 16 people doing handstands on top of more than a dozen chairs and some other apparatus.

My biggest question is how do you get into that? I’ve seen some crazy pyramid formations but this takes the cake. In this case it might actually be harder to get into position than hold it!

Now you may not be able to pull of this stunt, but there’s no reason you can’t use a chair to increase your handstand skills.

Try to press up into a handstand from a normal sitting position. Not a novice move but by no means a very difficult one either. It’s sure to amaze any onlookers though.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. You can see a picture of Bob Jones doing a hand balance on a chair on page 121 of The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing. Except in this case it’s a rocking chair adding even more difficulty to the balancing. As you can see the sky is the limit in what you can accomplish.

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Tiger Bend

By admin on February 7, 2008 in Presses & Pushup

I was shooting some video a couple days ago doing a variety of hand balancing stunts. One of them was the Forearm Stand. Prof. Orlick also called it a Tiger Stand. From the stand you can do what is called a Tiger Bend, but we’ll start with the stand first.

This is a great trick in and of itself but its also a good way to work up to a full on handstand. Since you are resting on your entire lower arm and hand you have a bigger base with which to balance.

One you overcome the oddness factor of trying this exercise for the first time you can see the benefits. All the main points of holding a handstand are still there, like keeping tight, but you may have to arch your back a little more for this one.

Of course the ultimate goal with this exercise is to do what’s known as a Tiger Bend. An advanced exercise for sure. It involves going from the Forearm Stand up into a Handstand. With a little overbalancing and strong triceps you can get there.

Sig Klein doing a Tiger Bend

Since few of us will be able to pull that one off at the present time here are two easier ways. Do the negative movement which is dropping from a Handstand into a Forearm Stand. When you go for this don’t just fall into the position but control it as much as possible.

You can also do Tiger Bend Pushups. Get in a normal pushup position except you are resting on your forearms instead of the hands. Without any rocking motion pushup on to your hands to the top position and lower back down.

You don’t see these moves too often but that doesn’t mean they aren’t great.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

P.S. For the super advanced hand balancer you can try to duplicate Johnny Weber’s one arm Tiger Bend. Find out how to do it in The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing. The picture above is of Sig Klein from the same book.

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