 Welcome back to the School of Calisthenics with Tim and Jacko and today we're going to give you the tools to help improve your balance so that you can finally hold that handstand. Now the handstand population falls largely into three categories, those that can hold a handstand, those that can't hold a handstand but would like to and those that can do a handstand walk but can't stand still and actually balance it and let's be honest those are people that are just falling over the style. Although they might be wanting to handstand walk and then they're handstand walking. Either way, holding a handstand is cool and we're going to show you how to do it by breaking down the process and giving you a few drills which are really going to take you from where you are now, being able to get upside down on your hands to ultimately be able to stick that position, hold it and be a handstand badass. Alright so buckle up princess, we're in for a good one. And princess. Let's be clear, there's not one thing that's going to fix your handstand all of a sudden. What we want to try and do here is give you the tools and some drills that you can work on and build up over time you're going to see that progression take you through to fixing in inverted commas over a period of time it's going to help improve that so that you can actually hold and fine tune your handstand. The reality is we'd love to be able to just give you one thing to say it's going to fix it but just the reality of that is it's not going to happen it's not how the skill acquisition process works. Yeah we're talking about developing a complex movement pattern so to make sure we can train that in the most progressive and effective way we need to break the components down and what we do what we call neural chunking. We want to take a segment, master that kind of smaller component and then build that back into the complex pattern of a handstand. So work on these, identify which one is most important for you, think about where you're at on your journey and put the time in because a brain has got to learn to take that isolated movement that we're going to show you and then you've got to rebuild it back in when there's loads of the variables to control. It's a journey and a process but these are some of the really important and key things that we think are going to help you to hold that handstand for the very first time. So before we get started with the drills we just want to go through one free requisite which is range of movement. If you're lacking range of movement in the wrist, shoulder, particularly in those areas you're going to have a hard time starting to get into a good alignment position which means you can then stack and then balance in a stable handstand shape. So one thing we want you to do before you go through into these drills is just clear yourself through this range of movement test. Jacko's going to lock his ribcage down on top of his hips, imagine he's going to take a punch in the tummy, he's going to crack a wall up between his butt cheeks. Standing up against the wall his feet are about six inches away from the wall, 15 centimetres and then he's going to just bring his hands up, thumbs facing behind him. And what we want to see is the hands coming up close to the wall and without his back arching significantly. If we can get into this shape we have the range of movement at the shoulder and able to make a good stable shape when we are away from the wall upside down. If we find that we're somewhere here and we can't get any higher or we're compensating through the lower back we're just going to find that when we go upside down we're going to replicate that exact same pattern and it's going to make balancing the handstand really difficult. So before you move on to the next section of this video make sure that you've got this section nailed down, you've got range of movement and place that as your priority and then we can start to think about implementing some of these more progressive strategies to help you to balance your handstand. So if you're struggling with your range of movement and mobility in all of our handstand training programmes in the virtual classroom we've got a full movement preparation programme which is going to help you to get good range of movement to the shoulders and that is going to be the biggest investment you can make in starting your handstand journey. So one of the major things where people lose their handstand is they're going over the top and they haven't got the brakes to stop those feet going over and they keep falling in that same pattern particularly when we're kicking up. And what we need to start to do is use these fingers gripping and it's the grip strength through your fingertips to use them as brakes and we're going to do this in two parts here, a very simple one in our frog stand where we just bring everything in tight so you can focus on just that one thing. So you can see a little bit of space underneath the hands where Tim is gripping with those fingertips and the tips of his fingers go white and he's letting himself come forward look and then he's using gripping with the fingers to stop him falling in his head touch on the floor and he's challenging how far he can go. The bigger you can make this movement down and then back up the more strength you're having to use and utilise through those fingertips. So grip hard with the fingertips and think about clawing to pull you back to that start position and then we're going to take that into what does it look like when you're doing that in a full handstand but using the wall. So we're going to kick up to the wall and use those fingers to help be the brakes and be sort of more than the brakes. We're going to teach the brain how to grip super hard and actually pull herself back away from the wall. So you're going to go into your normal kick up, so make sure you've got one of those in the opposite. Tim kicks up against the wall, feet on the wall, he's going to think about trying to be nice and long and strong in that shape but his focus is gripping with those fingertips to pull the feet off the wall and down onto the floor. Now when you watch this you might think oh well Tim's just pulling his feet off. No he's not actually actively through the legs pulling the feet, he's just staying nice and straight if he does want more for us. He's gripping with those fingertips and that force of pulling against the floor is what's pulling those feet down away from the wall. So if that grip is strong enough and you've got that connection through the body you've got the ability then and the strength to pull yourself away from the wall. You've got to think when we now go and start to use the wall less and less and less you have those as that break to stop you going over the top. They're going to help pull you back. Your job then is to have the fine motor control to not pull yourself so far back that you come back down onto the floor. That is exactly what we're going to cover next. The second drill we're going to have a look at is all focused around alignment. What we often find when people kick up into free space in a handstand is you don't create a nice stacked position. So the feet, the hips, the shoulders and the hands aren't in alignment and it makes it really difficult to control our centre of mass over our base of support. If we can kick up in a better shape, we're in better alignment. It stops us from having the possibility of going too far over because the segments are lined up and we're not sending weight in the wrong direction and also kicking up hard enough. If we're nice and aligned, we've got a much better chance of being able to nail that middle position of the balanced handstand in a really nice stable shape. So, Jaco is going to show us that alignment position to start off with. Hands on the floor, normal kick up position and he's going to drive himself up and try and think about hitting that upright position in a nice good stable shape. So we're pushing ourselves straight, strong and long. Rib cage feel like it's pulling down on top of the rib cage like he's ready to take a punch, cracking a walnut between the butt cheeks and just spend some time racking up some practice in that position and ultimately building the strength. The big thing is about pushing yourself up to hold that. That's going to give us some capacity to be able to nail that free standing space with a good alignment when we move on to the next progression. A really useful little tool to get this working whether to film yourself so you can actually see the position that you're in and give yourself a little bit of visual feedback. So often what we find in an alignment position and a kick up is people will slump into a shape and they don't necessarily know where their body is in this position. You can see Jaco just arched through. So have a play around with trying to get that in and out of that shape. Feel the difference and then see what's happening. Film yourself kicking up against the wall and in free space and see if you can identify any potential areas of your alignment which are out of balance or out of shape and then those are the things which you can focus on when you come back to the drill against the wall. When we're confident we've got a good alignment position the next job is to start using that kick up pattern but then trying not to touch the wall. So we're going to try and kick up in a good alignment position and then try and nail that handstand balance without touching the wall. The benefit being if we want it, it's there. We can make these small corrections and get the time on the task but ultimately the drill is thinking about hitting that upright position in a really nice shape. As you can see Jaco is moving his hands backwards each time as he's successful. As he's starting to move away from the wall just breaks that little bit of the comfort blanket requires a little bit more confidence and getting used to what it's going to be like in free space of where is vertical and where is that balance point. This takes some time so spend a little bit of regular practice with it. Kicking up, hitting that nice balance position and focusing on the alignment. Moving your way away from the wall and that sooner or later you're going to find yourself doing it in free space which you can then transfer into any environment you want to. So in this final piece we're going to try and bring all of those things together. So the gripping strength from the fingers and using those as breaks from stopping the legs to go to the top and then focusing on that long strong alignment as best you can pushing his feet towards the ceiling and we've gradually worked ourselves away from the wall that they're now going to do no wall at all and what Tim's going to look at just one final part of this is using a little bit of a pendulum or a split position where the front leg in the kick up is going to be sort of like the seeker. If you think about a boxer when they're just trying to have a little bit of a feel of where that jab is that foot is trying to figure out where the position is to get into some sort of handstand shape and the leg behind stays behind to work as a little bit of a counterbalance movement that then gradually he's going to allow those two things once they get into that shape they're going to start to then gradually come together and they're moving slowly so you can be fine with those changes of control. Thinking about then just final parts is the things are working hard to maintain that balance when the feet feel like they're going slightly over the top they grip and they pull back but not too much to pull you back down to the floor and then you're constantly playing this little game of a little bit of breaks, a little bit off, a little bit of breaks, a little bit off. That takes time to build up the fine motor control to do that rather than it being sort of what we call gross motor control like squeezing really hard and stopping yourself going over the top and doing a great job on that but pulling yourself back down onto the floor so that's something that's just going to take a little bit of time to practice and hone that as a skill in its own right. So we hope that's given you some ideas and you can see how those three drills fit into part of a process that's going to help you to build up the quality of the movement and the control that you've got and help you ultimately balance your handstand better and for longer. Now we do know that for everyone out there and for ourselves as well learning to fine-tune that alignment and the control strategies to hold that balance for longer is something that is an ongoing process and is sort of going to potentially last forever or until the point that you feel like you're happy and comfortable with it but it is something that takes time to build up that ability to balance better and for longer, right? Yeah, when you're first starting, you've effectively got this margin for error when you kick up and think of it like a funnel. You've got this area where too far is over here and you've got an area here where kicking up not hard enough is going to happen as well. Ultimately, when you first begin, you're going to find something that you hit right and you'll get it and you'll feel like, yeah, I've got a handstand balance but ultimately, you're playing in this margin of error and what we want to do with these drills is start to bring that together. So this, you've got the control strategies of the alignment, you've got the grip, you've got the balance strategies that you've built up through your different handstand progressions which mean that ultimately, you're probably actually, if you hit this point, you can hold it. Not every time you kick up into a handstand, you're going to hit that perfect alignment. You need to have this ability to operate within this margin. The reality is to start off with though, it's just too great and you're probably not strong enough to stop yourself when you've got so much weight going over too far into this area. So just work on it over time. You will find that your skill process is going to become more precise, more accurate, more subconscious and you'll start kicking up and you'll just hit more reps and you'll be able to hold them there for longer. Where you go from here with your handstand journey is entirely up to you but don't forget the importance of the basics of making sure that you can create nice, strong, stable shapes and that you are starting to tie all these little pieces together to get that handstand balance right on point. We hope you found this video helpful but if you do feel like you need a little bit more help and a little bit more structure and actual programs followed, we do inside our virtual classroom which where our online training is, we have our handstand programs in there which take you week by week broken down into modules through from the starting point all the way into everything including flexibility, mobility, skill acquisition, all those bits, the strength, everything to get your full handstand. We've also got a frog stand to handstand training program which is a bit more of a strength based movement so if you're wanting to start there or you've done your work and your handstand and you're wondering what next frog to handstand is just like pressing out to that bad boy that's where you want to be. So we've got one of those for you as well and if you've enjoyed this video click subscribe we've got loads of great content coming send us a little message in the comments Class dismissed.