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BEYOND BALANCE
YOUR HANDSTAND 101
DEMANDS
1 //
STRONG END RANGE IN OVERHEAD SHOULDER FLEXION
Work on your active overhead shoulder flexion (the ability to bring your straight arm to your ears withouth having to compensate with your lower back). This will help you to fight a bananaback and get you closer to a straight line (which besides looking pretty is also more energy efficient 🙂
2 //
HIP MOBILITY
Work on your anterior and posterior tilt coordination (rolling the hip back and forward – think cat/cow in the hip). Also: good hamstring mobility is VERY helpful with handstand entrances!
3//
ACTIVE FINGERS
Your Fingers are your joystick – use it! And no worries, they will get stronger 🙂Â
BALANCE
THE 3 F's
FOCUS – Take mini breaks and think about what you want to do & refelct on why you fell. Once you find your balance point: don’t freak out. It’s exciting and a can feel scary, Try to keep your cool and think about your 3F’sÂ
FINGERS – As said above – use them!Â
FIGHT – this seems self explanatory. But it’s a good reminder. Don’t just fall out of your handstand because your handstand isn’t perfect. It never is. Fight for every second. Control your fall if possible to gain strength on the way down.
ENTRANCES
GET UPSIDE DOWN
WALL/BOXÂ
Great for technique, to built strength and to find your balance point.
KICK
Great to learn how to balance and bring your hip over your shoulders.
JUMP
Can be a tuck, straddle, straight jump, keep the shape you intend to jump into.
PRESS
No momentum – hard af
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+ CONFIDENCE!
ON THe inside
tHE BALANCE OF BEING HUMBLE & CONFIDENCE
Being confronted with a practice that is less forgivable than a lot of other asanas and one of the greatest things handstands taught me is to become completely indifferent to failure. It’s just unavoidable. You’ll fail over and over (and over) again. It taught me that all those things are not ME. I learned to see a failure as what it is. Information. Information that I can take in, acknowledge, interpret and use to evolve and to get better.