Performance:
Work up to a heavy single.
Fitness:
Work up to a heavy triple
These weights will help infer your starting loads for the next cycle. go heavy but don’t fail.
Post loads to comments.
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15 Minutes NFRs of
Run 270m
10 Box Jumps
10 Toes to Bars
Ariel Splittin’ Some Jerks
Developing Your Handstand
Anyone who came in on Monday or Tuesday had an opportunity to work on their handstands in class. Some folks were seasoned hand balancers while others were working towards their first full inversion. If you’re new to the handstand game, read over these tips to start moving in the right direction.
Basics
- “Active Shoulders” mean that you’re shrugging up and back slightly. Try to open your armpits and push the floor down.
- Your elbows must ALWAYS be locked out. If they bend, you’ll collapse
- Grab the floor with your spread out fingers, your fingernails should turn white
- Eyes are looking right between your hands on the floor the entire time. Your neck will be extended JUST enough to make this happen. No more, no less.
- When in doubt.. SQUEEZE!! The more moving parts you allow in the system, the harder it is to organize. Think of making your body as rigid as possible.
- Practice makes good enough. Being on your hands is weird at first. Practice the skill 2-4 times per week in order to accelerate your development. A handstand session can be anywhere from 3-10 minutes, the latter being with LOTS of rest. Don’t practice in a fatigued state. Less is more sometimes.
Static before Dynamic
Before you attempt kicking up to full handstand you have to develop the shoulder strength and body control required to take your weight from your feet all the way to your hands. Wall walks are a great place to start and an easy way to develop some shoulder integrity without worrying about coordinating a kick up. Start slow with these and do sets of 3-5 walks holding your most inverted position for 3-5 seconds. Some folks will have to start only going up about half way to a 45 degree angle while others may be able to get within a hands length of the wall. Focus on active shoulders and a rock solid midline. Minimize knee bend as you go up and down the wall, try to tip toe down using your ankles. Finally, you should never go up further than you’re comfortable with and your hands should never go within 6-8 inches to the wall. If your hands are touching the wall you’ll probably flip over onto your back. NO BUENO.
Halvsies before Wholsies
Once you feel comfortable supporting your body weight on your hands you can start working on kick ups. We did this in class with a spotter but you can also do this on your own using a wall. Organizing the initial approach into the kick up is critical. If you start this process slowly there will be much less extraneous momentum that you’ll need to deal with later on. Remember, you can SLOWLY kick up into a handstand, it should feel more like a big reach that a flip. Watch this video to understand how to position your body for this portion. Once you can do that consistently start kicking up higher and higher with your lead leg while your trail leg stays low in a split. This will allow you to get all your body weight onto your hands while still controlling your body position By keeping the back leg low you increase your margin for error on each kick up. Get to the point where your lead leg’s heel can gently tap the wall and come back down. The final step would be to gently get both heels to the wall. While he’s not using a wall, this video shows you what I’m talking about. Practice this regularly and focus on how graceful you can make the whole process. Get good at kicking up with both legs.
In a future article we’ll talk about the next steps in handstand development.
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