 Welcome back to the school of calisthenics, I am here with the amazing Fanny Josephine and we are going to learn some hand balancing and I'm going to teach you the express handstand. So elbows on knees, grip on the floor with your fingertips, rock yourself forwards and see if you can balance. Just keep pushing the floor down nice and hard. Good, let's go again. So just for the purpose for you guys, just check out here, she's done a really good job of keeping those hips nice and high, so trying to hold that position there, trying to keep weight forward. That's the one, yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect. So yeah, look at the position there from the hip on top of the elbow on top of the wrist, really great alignment and that creates a nice stable shape, have a rest. Perfect. But you've got a really nice little foundation there to build from, so if we can get the frog stand nail down, that means that we can start to stack other movements on top of that. So ultimately, what you might want to be able to do is go from a frog stand and then press out and then we can go from here into our handstand. We're going to jump a step up and see if we can just go straight into the handstand without having to press out because it's trying to take some time to develop. So your next one then, let's have a look at whether we can go one leg off and then one leg back on. So, hand balance, leg off, leg back on. Good, yes. Nice. Yeah, that's it. Here? Yeah, and then so if you're just going to your frog stand, I'll put the ball behind your foot, that's fine. Good, yeah, that's the one. That's it. Good. So the trick there is the ball is just helping to keep the hip nice and high and you can start to feel that position of where the body needs to be. There's just a little bit of like specific strength that you need to develop in there because it's around the shoulders ability just to be able to stay strong and then keep the hip stacked up nice and high. As soon as they come down, the shoulder loses its advantage position to where the body mass is and then you just find out where your feet back on the floor. Let's go headstand because I reckon that's a strong one for you. It looks like you're pretty comfortable with the head on the ground. So you can kick into it however you want. We would normally kind of go frog stand, head on the ground, knees up, then nice and straight. Good. I've got you. Hold that shape. There you go. Good. All right, now try and straighten the legs if I know I've got you. Good. Another one. Tommy nice and tight. Squeeze your abs. There you go. Headstand in. Very nice. Okay, have a relax and get high five for that one. Position. So what we're going to do is we're going to try and see if we can go straight arms. So ultimately, if you're to get into a handstand today, what I want you to try and do is go from a straight arm position and then just kick into shape and if we can create a stable base in that chair position, which is just like what you did with your headstand, but with the arms supporting the body, if we get a nice stable position there, then it's really easy just to straighten the legs. But that first setting point is going to be the foundation for the rest of the movement. So we're going to practice with the wall for some support. Nice and soft. Just push yourself up and just try and get your bum on the wall. Okay, there's the wall. Try and hold your feet against the wall. Now we're hand standing. Perfect. Okay, come back down. See if you can, and then when you get up there, what I want you to think about doing is making yourself nice and long. So it's quite easy to kind of fall into a bit of like a slumped shape. Like you kind of rather than feeling like when I get up there, I'm kind of like arched or wobbly, trying to think about arrow straight, nice and long. So push your hands down, feet up the wall and then just try and make yourself as straight and strong as you can. You want to be like an arrow. Good. Okay, straight and strong like an arrow. Push up nice, try and get your feet as high at the wall as you can. Good. So I'm going to be super tight, squeezing strong in here. Good. All right, nice. Let's have a rest. What you need to have to think about is you want to keep your shoulders here, and that's normal. Like the brain is kind of thinking this is much more stable for the shoulders. So when you go into this position, you've got to get comfortable with just going a little bit, hands overhead a little bit more, rather than being here. The shoulder likes this because it's not quite as such a end of range position. If you do a lot of pull-ups, like 1,111, that's going to be bad for your shoulders all the way in here. So just think about trying to get up nice and tall. So I'll show you that one again. All you're going to do is have this same thing, but this time you can go from two, but just keep to stay in a little ball. Small objects rotate faster. So rather than thinking you're going to kick your legs out, just keep your feet close, tucked into your bum. So if I'm here and just hold, that's all I've got to do. Okay, so we're going to let's just try and go, we'll shorten the lever from the top position. So if we're comfortable getting the feet up in a straight body line against the wall, then we're just going to put our hips against the wall and bring the bum, the feet down, just to try and create that tuck position. So I'm going to set myself up, I'm going to progressively just find that kick position, get a little bit higher, find the wall, and then from here, just rest your bum on the wall and then bring the knees down. Okay, just keep pushing hard with the hands. I'm going to spot you through this. Good, put on the wall. So bend your hips, that's it, now bring your knees down. I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you. Confidence, so go legs up against the wall. Good. Okay, watch this look at the floor. Okay, now bend your hips and stick your bum on the wall. That's it, good. Now bend your knees down. Perfect, that's the one. Good job. So hands against on the floor, kick up, get nice and long, position, and then if I start looking my fingertips, if I just start gripping, I can actually pull myself all the way down. I'm not doing anything else apart from just trying to squeeze the floor and it pulls me back down. All right, let's give it a go. Good. All right, so make yourself comfortable, that's it. Now really squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, that's it. All right. Okay, so let's try and we'll start off. You're going to go frog stand and then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to come, I'm going to put my hands just between your hips in here and I'm just going to lift you up into that position, so I'm going to get you to feel comfortable in that position. So when I, when you're going to frog stand, all I want you to do is just push and I'm going to help you lift up into that position. Okay? Okay, so I'm going to come in here, you're ready? So three, two, one, push. Good, I've got you. All right, now use your fingers, tummy nice and tight and all I'm going to do then is keep concentrating, watch the floor, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, squeeze your bum. Good, come back down. That was it. There's a split second there where you had it. We're going to do that again. Yeah, because probably for you where it feels like you are, is maybe like way over the top, but actually then you're really straight. Head, tummy, super tight. Imagine I'm going to get that hammer. What I'm trying to do like this, my shoulders are coming. They're linked. So this, so that's why we need range of movement and then tummy. Yeah. So just think about lots of tummy. Straight and strong. Let's go. Good. All right, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally high five. Yeah, that's where it starts. Okay, last one. Ready? Let's go. Okay, tummy tight, make yourself strong, straight and strong. Okay, keep going, keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing. I've got you, I've got you, I've got you. Keep pushing, keep pushing. Legs straight. Good. So we got, that was good in that we were getting lower down and then you were starting to make corrections on your feet. So you're like, well, no way now to start. And I think what you've done today was a massive positive is you've got better awareness of where your body's in space when you're upside down, which is like the key to hand standing. If you can understand where your feet are in relation to your head, then you can start to make the corrections. It's when people don't, don't have that awareness that it becomes really difficult because they just don't know where the small corrections are they need to make. So I think you made some good progress today. So your take-homes, homework from us, you can practice that frog stand, see if you can with the ball and see if you can do it up to take one leg on one leg off. And then you can go against the wall, get, get really confident with kicking up so that you can hold that position. When you can feel you get confident kicking up, I want you to practice those fingertips of pulling yourself off and then back on. Don't pull so hard that you come all the way down. Just pull a little bit and then let your feet go back against the wall. Pull a little bit and back because that's the correction you need to make. Lots of shoulder mobility and then you can practice the kind of the take-home for you at this stage and we can give you some more lessons later is to then see if you can do the kick up with the hips tucked in. So that last one of sit up against the wall, can we then get, can we practice just that position? And then sooner or later you're going to build the strength overhead to be able to catch it and then when you can hold, when you can do this and use the fingers, the next job of straightening the legs is easy. All right? Yep. So that is handstand lesson. Fanny Jo's teaching us some awesome work today. It's not an easy process to learn to handstand. It takes time so you need to give yourself a decent run at this as we were talking about short sessions, little bits on a regular basis, but like it's one of the most frustrating things whilst you're learning it, but sooner or later you're going to start to feel those things connect together and then you're going to start to really see some progress. But it takes time, stick with the process, practice regularly. Before long the handstand is going to be out of the impossible box and you are going to really find your impossible just like Fanny is going to do in how long? Six months? Yeah. Six months. So until next time, class dismissed.