Tag Archives | Planche

The First Stunt of 2017: Part 1

By Jon Magno on January 19, 2017 in Flexibility & Contortion, Hand Balancing, Handstands, Head Balancing, Mobility, One Hand, Planche, Presses & Pushup, Walking & Jumping

There are a number of different possibilities that will lead up to your first handstand. In fact we recommend 5 different lead-up stunts or body skills that can help you achieve this feat.. Whether its the Frogstand, Headstand, their variations or even today’s topic; you’ll gain a valuable piece of information that will help you progress to your goal or even build up to other goals.

Honestly, these lead-up stunts aren’t necessary to get your first handstand, but they build a pathway that can make it easier. All of these body skills share common traits to the handstand and therefore pave the way towards good handbalancing.

The different skills each put you into an inverted position, develop strength, balance and the motor control necessary to perform a handstand.

So without talking the skills up too much and not delivering, lets give you more insight on the move at hand:

The Elbow Lever

Don’t let this move scare you. It is an advanced Hand balancing skill and I’m only starting off with it to give you a long term skill to shoot for. Also, if what I’ve been saying is true, you’ll be able to gain some valuable experience towards you hand balancing Journey.

To perform this lead- stunt kneel on the floor, bring both elbows together and place them in your stomach and turn the palms of the hands facing upwards. Now lean forwards slowly and place the hands flat on the floor with your fingers pointing backwards. Arch your back slowly until your toes leave the floor and you will be doing the elbow lever.

You will find the balance a little difficult at first but just keep on practicing. The stunt can also be performed on the edge of a table or on the end of any ordinary bed.

Now that you know how to do an elbow lever, we challenge you to go ahead and give it a try. Also if you want some pointers, try posting a video on our facebook page and we’ll be there to direct and support you development in your hand balancing journey.

Stay Inverted
-Jonathan Magno

BTW if you want to skip some of the process and guesswork toward building you hand balance skills, check out our handstand mastery course.

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Difficult Hand Balancing Compilation

By admin on January 3, 2015 in Hand Balancing, Handstands, One Hand, Planche

16 year-old Artem from Rusia shows incredible strength and balance in this video compilation of difficult handstands and planches, including wide grip handstands, a planche and handstand on a rope, a one arm handstand and much more. Artem’s planche looks particularly awesome.

Make sure to check out Artem’s YouTube channel for more videos. To get started with your handstand training, click here.

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Advanced Frogstand for Planche Progression

By admin on September 2, 2014 in Hand Balancing, Handstands, Planche

Learning how to do a frogstand is a must for anyone who wants to master the handstand. If you can’t hold a basic frogstand for at least a minute or so, you have no business trying to perform a free standing handstand.

Mike Fitch from Global Bodyweight Training shows a couple of great frogstand variations for building your way up to the planche.

In advanced frogstand, you’re putting the knees on the inside of your fully extended elbows, whereas in the regular frogstand the knees are resting on the outside of bent elbows – making the exercise much easier. This frogstand variation will help you strengthen the entire body, but it’s particularly good for improving wrist flexibility and balance.

After you get in a starting advanced frogstand position, flex your elbows slowly and lean forward to lock yourself in a more stable position. From there you’ll begin with alternating hip extensions while shifting the weight from one leg to another to stay in balance. Keep your abs tight at all times. Make sure to watch the entire video for detailed explanation of this advanced frogstand variation.

If you want more detailed instructions from Mike Fitch, check out his Hand Balancing for the Bodyweight Athlete DVD here.

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Johnny Sapinoso Got Some Moves

By admin on July 28, 2014 in Bars, Flexibility & Contortion, Gymnastics, Hand Balancing, Handstands, One Hand, Planche, Presses & Pushup, Rings

In this video from Johnny Sapinoso we can see a number of very demanding workouts and feats, like:

Front and back flips
Cool moves on a bent bar
One arm pullups on gymnastic rings
Planche on rings and bars
Planche pushups
Amazing partner acrobatics (including a handstand)
One arm handstand at the end of the video

Johnny Sapinoso has been training since the age of 5. But you certainly can achieve some of the feats listed above much quicker. If you are interested in learning how to do a one hand handstand, a back flip or just want to get started with lever training, then make sure to check out this page.

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Tuck Handstand

By Bac on March 7, 2012 in Handstands, Presses & Pushup

Here is a new handstand exercise that I’ve been playing with lately – the tuck handstand.

What is this move? First you get up into a handstand then you get into a tuck position while keeping the arms straight.

This can be done from a curved handstand or a flat one. You’ll notice there’s quite a bit of arch in the lower back as I do it in the video here. An even more advanced version would be to round the back and hold the position. By keeping your body more vertical then horizontal it is quite a different position then the tuck planche.

What this move requires is the shift your weight forward, planching the shoulders slightly. I found that by bending the legs at the knees first and then bending at the hips it was easier to get into this movement.

Here is a picture of the tuck handstand. If your thighs only go to parallel with the floor as they are here its pretty easy to hold. Lowering them even more makes it tougher. And going into the round back position is the hardest.

Photo by Natalie Anfield - Kamloops Photography

My thoughts are that this move would help with straight arm pressing movements.

Have you done the tuck handstand before? Any other similar handstand exercises you like to do?

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Fingertip Planche

By admin on August 13, 2010 in Planche

This came into today and I thought it was worth sharing.

Hey logan i was just able to check out the amazing feat video and i have to say thanks for sharing that with all of us, i love how the monks train and the one and two finger zen are always legendary. I wanted to tell you to keep up all your hard work man! yourself and jim are great motivators and i loved the teleseminar you guys posted out awhile back. I can not do a one handed handstand pushup yet, but ive always had strong fingers and i recently not too long ago was able to do (Not Perfect Form) but a three finger planche and since i read the Feats message i wanted to share the picture with you i hope you receive it, its not the best at all man but im training and having fun hoping to promote others to exercise and keep healthy. Im alittle late on the video since you sended it but i just got to the message now. I always try my best to catch any new information that you give out.

Never stop training,
Alejandro

Fingertip Planche

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Which Course To Get?

By admin on January 14, 2010 in Uncategorized

Regular Handstand

All I can say is WOW!

The demand for the Hand Balancing Mastery Course is overwhelming.

That’s entirely understandable when you see the systematic approach Prof. Orlick takes in his books and all the added bonuses you can get like the interviews and DVD’s.

For all of you who ordered your courses will be shipping out very soon. In fact some of the first orders have already gone out. For those that haven’t ordered yours yet, what are you waiting for?

I’ve received a few questions asking about the new course in relation to the others I have available. How does the Hand Balancing Mastery Course compare to The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing?

First off, what’s the same? They both talk about hand balancing from beginning skills up to very advanced. But that’s about it!

The Hand Balancing Mastery Course is much more systematic in its approach. In most cases you’ll work on one move right before the next and you can honestly come close to following the book in order as its laid out.

While there is some crossover in skills there’s also a lot of difference. The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing is almost devoid of walking on the hands. The Mastery Course has a whole book on it. The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing covers the planche in some depth which the Mastery Course doesn‘t have in the books, but its covered in both the CD’s and DVD’s.

I will give The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing extra points for having real photographs to display the skills. The Mastery Course has drawings for most of the skills which do the job well, especially since I had every single one re-drawn. And yes the drawings you see here and on that page is what you’ll find in the books.

The biggest difference is the amount of content. The Hand Balancing Mastery Course has so much more. In the books alone you’ll find at least twice as much. And that doesn’t even include the several hours of audio and video.

There’s even less crossover between other products.

The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing

The Secrets of the Handstand Quick Start DVD was born out of the ideas I learned from the Hand Balancing Mastery Course in using the lead-up stunts as Professor Orlick describes. That DVD covers just working up to the handstand and nothing beyond it. If you were just starting out I would recommend starting there and once you have some proficiency then getting the Mastery Course.

The Ultimate Guide to Handstand Pushups is more about building strength then balancing. Sure it has a chapter on doing freestanding handstand pushups (which is covered in one of the DVD’s in the Mastery Course) but that’s the only real similarity.

That should give you an idea of the differences. To get more details take the time to read the product pages. Sure, they might be a little salesy but I do my best to actually show you what’s inside each book, DVD or course.

If you have any other specific questions let me know.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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Advanced Progression

By admin on November 7, 2009 in One Hand, Planche

A One Hand Balance in the Old Style

Here’s a question from Matthew on the difficulties and progression of advanced hand balancing skills.

“What would say is the difficulty of a planche vs a handstand, one handed handstand, 2 man planche, how should I be progressing if I am fairly competent in all of these skills?”

Each skill is very different from the next. The skill and strength it takes to do a planche is very different from that it takes to do a one handed handstand. Some people will find certain skills harder then others and to give them arbitrary difficulties wouldn’t really help.

But as a basic idea so you can know what you’re getting yourself into I would say the one hand handstand (and the planche too) are about 100 times as difficult as the two hand handstand.

How should you be progressing? The same as everyone else. Whether you are working on a basic handstand or and advanced skill like the one arm handstand you can progress by adding a second at a time.

If you are competent at the skills you listed, first off, congratulations. You are doing great. If you want to know where to go from that point there is a wide variety of options.

You can work on a one handed planche. You can learn to hop on one hand. How about a tiger bend? And if that’s easy try it on one arm!

(By the way, all these skills are found in The True Art and Science of Hand Balancing.)

The sky is the limit. Just keep progressing. It’s the name of the game.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher.

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Planche and Hand Position

By admin on July 20, 2009 in Flexibility & Contortion, Hand-to-Hand, Planche

A few comments were raised about the hand position in Rafael Guerrero’s planche in a previous post.

Why was he up on the fingertips? Is this necessary to do a planche in good form?

Unless you have hyper-flexible wrists you won’t be able to do a planche with the fingers pointing forwards and flat on the ground. Most people turn their wrists out to the sides to alleviate this sort of strain or come up on the fingers.

But there are other ways to do a planche with the hands not taking as much stress as these other pictures by Rafael show. You can do it on some sort of parallel bars.

Planche on Bars
Or completely on the fingertips.

Top Planche on Fingertips
Even in a hand-to-hand balance.

Top Planche in High Hand to Hand Balance
But if you do have the wrist flexibility you can do it on flat ground with the palms flat on the ground and facing forward. In the True Art and Science of Hand Balancing the chapter on planches showcases W.H. Mering doing just that.

And if you’re seeking to build incredible strength like these planches show I have an important announcement later this week. Stay tuned!

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

A few comments were raised about the hand position in Rafael Guerrero’s planche in a previous post. (If you missed that you can find it at https://lostartofhandbalancing.com/blog/the-true-planche/.)

Why was he up on the fingertips? Is this necessary to do a planche in good form?

But there are other ways to do a planche with the hands not taking as much stress as these other pictures by Rafael show. You can do it on some sort of parallel bars.

Or completely on the fingertips.

Even in a hand-to-hand balance.

But if you do have the wrist flexibility you can do it on flat ground with the palms flat on the ground and facing forward. In the True Art and Science of Hand Balancing the chapter on planches showcases W.H. Mering doing just that. Check out the book for more.

If you’re seeking to build incredible strength like these planches show I have an important announcement later this week. Stay tuned!

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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Correcting Bad Handstand Habits

By admin on July 17, 2009 in Handstands, Walking & Jumping

First off thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the short survey. I appreciate you spending your time to help me out even it its just a couple minutes. I’ll be sharing what everyone said a little later on but today I thought I’d tackle a couple questions.

But before that a few other updates. That last blog post on the planche brought a couple great comments. I’ll delve further into that subject soon (with a few more pictures). In fact, there’s been a few comments on several different blog posts which I’m pleased with. Keep the conversation going.

And recently, I was notified that the company that makes the Elite Rings and Ring Strength DVD has switched over to fre e shipping within the USA. And I’m passing that offer on to you.

So if you are in the US you can get these products even cheaper now!

Now onto the questions. It’s a long one but worth reading.

“I’ve been practicing (more or less playing with) handstands and handbalancing for about a year. I taught myself 100% and so I’ve adopted ALOT of bad habits. I can walk yards forward or backwards on my hands, I’ve held a handstand for 42 seconds once, and I’ve even been expirimenting with walking up and down stairs with some mild success.

“Unfortunately, despite the impressive feets that I can achieve I get criticized frequently on my form. My back has a huge arch and I let my legs dangle over my head. It works for me, but just doesn’t have that impressive look to it. I’m sure it’s not hard to teach someone to keep their legs together and toes pointed, but after a year of success it’s a little bit harder to break the habit. Plus I get frustrated easier because I think ”I can just do it better my way anyway.” So as you may have already guessed, because I usually let my legs dangle, when I try to pick them up I underbalance. It’s like trying to learn it all over again and It’s quite frustrating. If you have any tips on gradually recovering from this habit as opposed to just relearning it I would appreciate your advice. And is it suppose to be harder or easier with you legs together?

“A second question I have is a specific skill question. I can walk in a circle on my hands, but I can’t stay in one place and pivot around. It would be a cool tutorial for you to make if you can teach how to pivot on your hands. Or if you could just point me in the right direction that would be cool too.”

Thank you for your time,
Josh Reed

Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed question. Much easier to answer this when there’s lots to draw from.

About the form and how to correct it. First let me start by saying why some people go towards the feet hanging form. Because of the bend at the knees the lower legs are hanging down and this effectively lowers your center of gravity. Also like you mentioned it throws your weight a bit more forward toward an overbalance.

If its easier why is it not generally recommended? The key word is the legs were ‘dangling’ over the head. In this position it is harder to keep the legs under control, and without control hand balancing becomes much harder. You want the legs together and straight so that they act like one object, which is easy to control.

It may be a bit harder in the beginning but in the long run it’ll make more advanced stunts (and doing simpler ones for longer) that much easier.

This is a case of taking two steps back so you can move three steps forward. Yes, you’ll have to go back to re-learn the move in a sense. Going back to the wall will help.

But the best thing I think would be to learn how to move from one position to the other. Learn to stay in a stationary handstand. Raise and bring the feet together from your hanging, knees bent position, then go back and forth. Raising and lowering them under control.

Your handstand position isn’t wrong (even if others say its ugly). You should be able to assume any position you want. Learn to control your legs and make them do what they want.

Which brings me to the next question regarding doing pirouettes. Turning around in one spot is much harder than just walking forwards.

I’ll likely do a longer tutorial later on but for now just a couple tips. Start off with small steps and gradually reduce the number you use over time. Eventually it should only take two steps to turn around, but start with up to six if you need to.

Also pay attention to the feet. Its common just to focus on the hands as you do the move but giving mind to the furthest point from your balance will help you even more to stay up. And this goes for all walking and even standing still.

“I have subscribed to your Updater and it seems like Every time I learn of something new from a friend or somewhere on the internet I come to my e-mail to find you have already e-mailed me with a new set of tips or instructions JUST ON THE VERY THING! This is far from a question but I wanted to let you know you personally inspired me to continue my journey to become stronger and more powerful then I ever thought possible.”

Balancing diligently
~Matt

Thanks a lot Matt. I am happy to inspire and teach. And that’s going to wrap it up for today.

Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher

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