 Here he is, right on time. Yes! Oh yeah! Look out in Bristol, somewhere. Yeah, I decided I thought it'd be best to go somewhere where I've got a bit more space and a wall if I need it. I've got nearly statues, are you? Too soon? I don't know, too soon? Yes. I think he's quite an innocent one though, this one. Right, if you see a protest coming your way, let's wrap it up quickly. Yeah, I know, we'll just go on a rooftop or something. How are you, mate? Yeah, I'm good, I want a haircut. Mate, same, I was just saying to people before you joined in, I'm struggling now, it's like it's going nowhere but up. I can't really deal with it. Yeah, Millennium Square, someone's already recognised the space. Who cut, like, did your wife cut your hair or anything? Or did you do it yourself? Yeah, it had one trip, one trip since corona, but we just did the size and left the top, which is now causing me a problem. But we went for it, we went for it, it's like, what's the worst that can happen? Yeah, my wife did fit a bit and she said she'd done it years gone, so it's like different lengths and stuff. Yeah. Who would you call it? Have you thought about straight up? No, I haven't got a right head shape for it, I've too much jaw. Ah, strong jawline, mate, Vin Diesel stuff, take it off. David Courtaud. Right, let's talk handstands. Yeah, handstands. I don't really, give you a brief of the session, just some ideas, I'm open to your creative ingenuity. Tell the people that don't know who you are, who you are and what you've done and why we should be paying attention to you when it comes to handstands. Don't pay attention to me, you might just have, you might just have some advice that might be helpful. Come on. My name is Jonathan, I am a movement coach with a heavy specialist, heavy emphasis in hand balancing. So kind of been training various forms of movement, martial arts, all kinds of stuff since I was eight and I've not really stopped, I've just kind of gone all the way through. I like to think I spent a really decent amount of time in each discipline. I wasn't one of those kids who did it for like a month and quit. My parents were quite like, if you're gonna do this, you're gonna do it for a few years. And I was like, so, and I think my mum, I remember we spoke about this on the podcast. Was it your mum who was in the Beavers? Or was it Jaco's mum? I thought it was Jaco's. So my mum, my mum... Did you like Beaver? Yeah, she was like... See, it was juggle. So that made my wife laugh so much when we spoke about that. So my mum trained competitive judo, but she never got to black belt. She always got to brown belt. And I always had that in the back of my head, how much she regretted not going to the last bet. I mean, she cleared to a high level, like our loft upstairs was just filled with newspaper articles and trophies of her, like filled. She did really well, but she stopped before she got to black belt. So in my head, I always like, I like to finish while I've started. The trouble with handstands, when do you finish? It's never over, right? It's always more. It's never over. And like, it's so inconsistent. So yeah, my name is Johnson and I teach at a circus school. I teach hand balancing and movement. And I'm kind of a student of it still, right? I'm still kind of trying to work it all out. And I coach. I teach, that's my thing. Awesome. So as we kind of like talked about doing potentially today was if people are watching, we've got handstand problems, then we can do some triple shooting. We might run through a few kind of common, common errors. But the other thing I was quite keen to get a little bit of your insight on was a bit of play time. It's been quite a little bit, but we had some serious conversations today, had a bit of movement, but I think there's a room for a bit of play. You know how we enjoy that kind of thing. So have you got, do we need to do a warm-up? You have to do a bit of prep or should we, we've got something quite easy we can build in. It depends how much room people have. Like, so I think there's two stages of this. If you've got a wall, great. If you're in a living room, if you can do this outside, then great. If you're scared, but you have space outside, find a wall that you can use outside. So kind of three levels, right? Beginner, intermediate, advanced. I think warming up to the wrist is a good start. So what should I lead through? What a normal wrist warm-up is? Me, this is true. Yeah, I'm all yours. I want to learn something, teach something. It's pretty like, I think it's a lot of this wrist warm-up stuff, it's pretty universal, right? It's like, wrist serve. So I always start with index finger facing forward. I like to tuck the thumb in for handstands, because I find that that puts too much tension on that joint there, so I like to have the thumb in a little bit. Do you do handstands like that? Yeah, yeah, sometimes. It's changed my game, mate. I used to like, it feels really, it feels really weird for like a week, and then you're like, this feels really nice. Like tucking like this? Yeah. Yeah, I like to play around with that. I used to get like a lot of pressure here. Yeah. And here. So wait, it depends on the skill. If it's something that like endurance, I tuck my thumbs in, if I'm doing like a one-arm dynamic trick, which might be a bit new that I want a bit more scope of play, I'll pull my thumb out. Right. I would never recommend doing endurance with your thumb out, because it's too much pressure, really, on that, on this bit here. It's a bit of a bigger base of support with undoing like strength work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so if you're doing like, if you're doing like handstand press-ups or planche or anything, you have to have your thumb out because your hands have to be slightly in a planche. It helps to have your hands slightly externally rotated, right? So if your thumb's tucked in, you haven't got a front support. I haven't done my shadow planche for a few weeks. I might show you that before we go. Mate, how are you feeling now? Let's just keep this organic. Not warmed up. Okay, cool. Right, come on then. I'll show you. Unwarmed up. This is where it looks like. This is really great, because this is a cold planche, right? Yeah. Mate, big respect. Big respect. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready to give you some perspective of the garden. Give him a shot, that'll do. That's great. Oh, mate. I have no idea. It was that good. I had no idea what hips there were. No, that was so flat. I remember you learning that. Just get super strong and then... No, I remember you not being able to do that. That's what's crazy. A lot of people I know who do planche have always been able to planche. I don't know many people who I've seen not be able to do it, then do it. We're trying to go from straddle to spool planche. It's brutally difficult and also really boring. I stopped doing it because I got bored. Yeah, I've got a friend who's got a... In Bristol, who has got a really nice straddle planche. And the full journey, he's hit it now. He can get it for like three seconds. Not completely straight, it's a bit like that. But man, it's a different ballgame, isn't it? Yeah, silly. But it's full on straight arm strength. The pressure goes to your elbows and stuff is like hectic. What was your pre-requisite before you went to full? Were you like, I want to do five, ten seconds in straddle before you go to full? Yeah, roughly. Probably when I was training full before, it wasn't as comfortable as it is now. So it's whether I go back to training full at some point. Do you just do eccentric, or do you go from that same position you did then? So it's just that position, normally go from tuck and extend out. Have you tried handstand? Yeah, I don't think I've got the strength to slow down. So... I don't know, mate. I think you do. From straddle or from full? From full, straight handstand. Mate, I'll go, all right. This was supposed to be about other people. Have you ever tried this before? Have you ever tried this before? OK, well, then what you got to lose, mate, first time. So full handstand, lower down and try and hit it. I'm not going to get 90, but I'll go as low as I go before I can feel I can control. I reckon it'll be about 45 degrees. Can I get a screenshot, or is that going to mess this up? It'll mess up, I'll leave it. All right. I'm going to give it a bit of angle, because I'm quite close to the raised bed. If I disappear, because I've done a screenshot, I'll just come join straight back in. OK. You ready, people? Can you see my hands? Yeah, I can see everything, bro. I don't even know if that was good or not. You've lost Jonathan. Is anybody else still with me? Guys, you still with me? I've lost him. I've got a word of death on him. He's on me. He tried to screenshot. He's gone. Right, we'll get him back in. I don't know how, where it was on that one. Felt like a reusable effort. Let's try and get him back. Let's see if we can get him back in. Am I here? Right, I've got no idea how it went. Mate, it was... Mate, I've got this screenshot, right. I pressed the middle button before the other one, but you were like... That was so good. Right, I'll have to try it when I know it. I'll give it some practice. No! It felt like... Mate, you went flat. Are you even... I even re-watched it, I entered back in, because there was a bit of a time delay, so I saw it twice. All right. Right, enough about me. Yeah. Let's get the people. Warm up your wrist. Index finger facing forward. You see, what you've done to me there, mate, is you've kind of messed up my whole teaching methodology, because what do we always say, never do things cold, never do things like... I'm sorry. And the other thing is... You're doing it on grass as well, which is super hard. Artificial lawn. But still, it's pretty soft, so it wouldn't feel so nice if you trained all day on your wrist. Yeah. Right, let's get the people going. OK. We're going to do five rotations one way. I'm really working into, like, the front part, just there, the front flexion, and then we're going to go the other direction. So tell everybody else, follow along if you want to get some handstand action going, you can join in on most ones. It's not just about me showing off. Mate, I love that. OK, so internal rotation, trying to get the little finger facing each other, and we're going to go five that way. Circles. Yeah. Good. And then we'll go the other way. OK, good. And then here we're going to go wrist-facing forward, so I'm turning my hands outwards, external rotation. And then I'm doing really small circles here, because I don't want to... There's quite a limited range, what is for me. Yeah. And then go the other way. I look like a nutter, mate. People don't, people are just looking at me. You all right? Are you doing this in public? No, just for Instagram. You need a sign that says I'm on IG live. It's OK. She was like, you've got a bad back. Right. So there's two ways of this. Be really careful for anyone who's a total beginner doing this. OK, so I'm going to go sideways, and I'm going to do it, I'm on my knees first, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to lean forward, and I'm just going to pick up my heels. OK. And I'm going to do five of them, and you want to keep control of the whole way. You don't want to just go clap up and down, down. And then... You're keeping your fingers on the floor. Yeah, I'm keeping the base of my fingers on the floor, and then I'm just trying to extend over my fingers. And then the base to make it slightly harder is, there's next stage where you bring your knees further away, so you're elongated, so you're more this position. And then from here, you can try it in a press-up position. Now, have you got that? Mate, skills. I haven't got the finger strength for that. I've never done those before. But also, I've got super mobile fingers, which I think helps. Although, like, Quinny hasn't got super mobile fingers, and he can do it. There's like a momentum thing to it. So, if you're going to, like, a shrug through protraction and kind of go with that motion, it can't... Do you know what I mean? Okay, so the next one is index finger facing forward, thumb sticking out, and I'm going to lean over and bring my shoulder over here, getting a bit of a nice stretch. Yeah, there we go. And then to the other side, you want to do this really slowly, because I pulled my thumb pretty bad doing this. Let's just see what the comments are. I broke my right radius last year and have some impingement. Any recommendation? One at a time. You can talk... Nice one. So, we can go through these in a bit, maybe. Yeah, we'll go for the next one. In with an outward... Yeah, we'll talk about it. Okay, cool. Now, what we're going to do, we're going to do two... Actually, we'll do three leg drills with an active range going on in our kick, like a bit of dynamic flexibility, because that's the kind of stuff you can't want to do before you start kicking up into handstands. So, we're going to do... First one is called ostrich walks. And if you're not flexible enough for that, it's really important that you keep extension for your spine. You try not to round your back too much. If you have lower back issues, don't do this. And what you can do is you can fold your... Yeah, there we go. Try and put one foot in front of the other, Tim. And then do it with one foot in front of the other. And then, yeah, press down. And then the other one. Yeah, there we go. Nice. For anyone who... I need to work on the... Your hand action was better than mine. Oh, mate, it's all about the contemporary circus, mate. You've got to make it look pretty. Tim, can you do it again, but fold your arms for anyone who can't touch the floor, because you can do the same thing, where you just fold your arms like this. And just... Yeah, just keep it extended through the spine. You're aiming to bring your elbows down to the floor. Yeah, just bring the elbows... There we go. Yeah, so this is like... This is the first stage that anyone can start. This is an everyday drill. So someone said everyday drills that are a must. Yeah, do this. These are really... These are really nice to start in the morning, but when you're doing it in the morning, you want to make sure you do some kind of calf flexibility and like hamstring. I'm just trying to see if I can do it. I haven't really got space here. I'll show you, like, if you're doing this in the morning, like, and you haven't done anything... Let's bring you over here. I put my foot on the wall, and I just gently hinge forwards. Now, if you keep your spine full, if you keep complete extension, and try and almost go into, like, a tilt here, anterior tilt, you won't actually go very far down before you feel it. Whereas what a lot of people do is they curve their spine right, so they're doing this. They're actually fully extended and do, like, really small pulses. So if you imagine, like, ten is complete end range where you're, like, you're going to snap and zero is doing nothing. I never take it in the morning, anything past, like, six and a half. I just think that people jump to him. That's going to help people get that kick up, isn't it? It's going to split out and get the momentum of the feet going on. Exactly, which is the next... the next job we're going to do. So we'll just do the other side if anyone's following along to even it out. And I go wide. I put my foot on three, and then I go up, down for three, up, and I'm keeping my foot flexed. I'm pushing, extending through my knee. Up. Yeah, nice. Tim, you've got a yoga block with you. No. I've got a... I've got a parallel and sit on. Yeah, like, that might... that might do. We want to do a calf stretch for the next one. So... If you imagine, like, the walls there, you put your foot on the raised surface. Yeah. And you would... I'll get the other shoe, just... So shoes don't work. You want to use something... like a yoga block. So I'm in extension here. And then I'm pushing through the car. And in the morning, if you see... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Probably doesn't feel so nice on the parallel. Getting a foot massage at the same time. This is really, like, loads of the time I see people saying that their hamstrings are tight. And, like, yeah, most people's hamstrings are tight. Definitely. But also, I think, just as much people's calves are super tight where it connects the back of the knee. Yeah. So you want to make sure we're working on the hamstring and the calf. And I do... I don't do these every morning. I'm not going to lie, but I do do these as a regular part of my, like, warm-up, if I'm doing, like, flex-beer session or handstands. And then it's just started raining. So this is going to be fun. And then what we're going to do now is we're going to do something called some half-kick-ups. Half-handstands. Now, a lot of people are probably watching. They might be scared to... if you can say what the comments might be, nice to watch. Oh. Yeah, I don't want to say one because we're going to try and get some questions in from people. So I'm going to leave the comments going. If you tap on the top screen, it'll shut them down a little bit so you won't get all of them. Oh, does it? Oh, great. It should do. Yeah. So this one, basically, if you're scared, I'll demonstrate the end result and then I'm going to scale it right back. Look at that graceful. So that's like a half-handstand. I'm keeping one leg up and I'm keeping one leg down. If people are super scared with this drill, there's two exercises that you can do. Yes, Lady Bird. Come on, get off me, mate. There we go. If you're scared, you're going to imagine the foot closest to the floor. It's like your safety net. It's your protection. So you just don't bring that as high. So that's a really good... Yeah, I like that. Do you always get people to throw straight legs because sometimes we'll get people to split stands, but then they've got to do quite a lot of power. So if we get them in here to kick, but that movement is trying to get that... Yeah. Yeah. This is like... Using that straight leg is like a pendulum almost. Yeah. And then the other one, if people feel confident with that one and they want to try something a bit harder, there's two more steps. You go up and you switch the legs. Okay, cool, let's try that. Yeah, great. So now what I want you to try and do is touch your feet at 12 o'clock and then bring the legs down. So same thing. So it's trying to get a touch. Try and get a touch and then switch on the way down, yeah. This is technical now. Yeah, good. Yeah, there we go. Nice. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. It encourages that little pause and that hang time. Yeah, which is the bit people get scared of, right? So if people are learning handstands, I think it's super important that people... If people have a fear of handstands, I think they want to develop a confident cartwheel before they learn a handstand. And my recommendation is develop a really strong cartwheel on one side so you know in your head that when you come to do a handstand, you know which way your cartwheel out. So if I can... Can I just spare a few moments to talk about that? Because I think there'll be some people... Is anyone here who's super scared of handstands just so I can break this down? There might not be anyone in here who's... Yeah, we have to define people at workshops to get like the kick of the scares of being upside down. So which is what... Yeah, so just quickly. So when I... I cartwheel kicking my right leg up first, right? So I do this motion. So my right leg goes up first. Yeah. If I was to put my hands in a handstand position that would be a half handstand because I'm kicking up with the same leg. What you can practice is starting with your hands together in a straight line, kick up into a cartwheel and then just move one arm but stay in a half handstand the whole time so you don't have to worry about this joint. I'll demo. Johnny, just bring your camera down a bit, mate. Just point yourself down a little bit. There you go. Do it this way, then I'll do it that way. Yeah. See how my legs are the same the whole... So I'm keeping the half handstand idea of not bringing my legs... This is the bit that people find scary. Not this bit. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. You've got such weight going over the top. They're scared of going over. So why... What we should teach... I think everyone should take time to invest in learning how to cartwheel and then learning how to adapt the half handstand into a cartwheel because then... Yeah. And then you do drills where... You do the drills like we did earlier where you just bring the legs together for a little bit and then come down but then you just put that into the... Obviously it's really hard to go through it super quickly on here because it's like... Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Let's go through those things. There's a couple of people... There's a few people in the comments saying they've been training for a while to kick off. So let's go back and just give that... So look at that cartwheel again. Just show people one more time because I think it's like you're saying build that, build the confidence. Is it more helpful going this way? Side on I think. Side on. Yeah, go side on, yeah. Cool. So if you're scared of the cartwheel if you're so scared of the cartwheel you can cheat it and go around the side a lot. Yeah. Do you see what I mean? It doesn't go. Yeah, go on then. Yeah. And then we can show people to see. Something not quite as good at these cartwheels is probably my kryptonite. So kick up but then allow myself to like just helicopter one leg over. Yeah, so when you handstand do you have a way that you always twist out? Yeah, I always go to my right. You always go to your right as in like you move your left hand. Yeah, great. So just do that. Extend the leg up. So do a cartwheel takeoff but put your hands in a handstand position. Yeah. Okay, cool. So you want to kick up the other leg. You'd want to kick up the other leg into that direction. So left leg kicks up. Hang on a minute. What do you want? Come on, Dodger. Trying to do a master class here. Yeah. You want to kick your left leg up. Yeah, you want to go left. So you want to kick up the other leg. You'd either want to kick up. If you're doing, you're kicking up your right leg first. So you'd want to move your right arm or you kick your left leg and then you move your left leg. Coordination. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do the same thing but kick up with your left leg. Other leg. Yeah. Are we mirrored? Is that your left leg? Yeah, we're mirrored. That's my right leg. Okay, yeah. Kick up with your right leg. Sorry, that was your left leg on this camera. Yeah, good. And then move your hands into a cartwheel position as you twist out. Yeah, so start the handstand and then just move your right arm. Yeah, just like that. Just like that. Yeah, I find that it's like almost a little bit more like thinking I'm going to have to move in that position is almost a bit scary than just kind of let myself go over the top. Yeah, exactly. So anyone who's learning to twist out, you're getting to do it from the wall first. So can I break that down super quick? Yeah, yeah, go for it, yeah. But I'm still using the wall to take my weight. So it means that I'm not just falling. I'm resting on the wall. I'm moving my arm and then I'm cartwheeling down. Yeah, yeah. So let's just build this up because if someone's like, say someone's watching this and they're like, I haven't promised my kick up. Let's just go from like in sequential and what are the progressions that you suggest you work with? Just start there with the wall. So there's two parts to it, right? There's the enter into the handstand and the safety of exiting out. So going up into a handstand first, the first thing you want to do is the half handstands but against the wall and then building up those drills that we spoke about earlier but the whole thing using a wall and then when you're confident with the half handstands you would then start, you wouldn't train the full handstands until you understand how to twist out the normal handstand. So I get people to do half handstands pretty soon on their own but when they understand the concept of how to do a cartwheel. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Should we touch on like a free standing cartwheel? Pardon? Do you teach like a normal cartwheel at the beginning of the beginners? In my own programming I put like a cartwheel tutorial, yeah. Like I think, so my wife is a prime example she was scared of doing a handstand she can't handstand, she can kick up and hold it for like a second, maybe two seconds but her thing was she was scared of doing handstands away from the wall but she could cartwheel so all I had to do was teach her how to twist out the handstand into a cartwheel and that literally took five minutes because she knew how to cartwheel it was like, she was like, you can just do it now anyway if she wants she's like, yeah I just know how to fall out and she's someone who isn't got background in fitness or any kind of like high level exercise she doesn't go to the gym, she doesn't run she just knows how to cartwheel so I was like, okay so you can do it two ways if you've got someone who can spot you into twisting out, that's really helpful because they hold your legs and they basically take your weight falling movement or you can burn against the wall and I've had loads of shit like, you know none of my students I teach online can, like, I'm there to spot I just get them to learn to cartwheel and then learn to handstand twist out away from the wall yeah, you know what I mean and then the final drill the final with the wall one is then what you would do when you build confidence is bring your legs together and then you twist into the cartwheel that's the final stage I get okay so they would learn to do the half handstand twist out and then they'd learn to bring the legs together that's the cartwheel nice so hopefully for people who are watching who are having problems with kick-up hopefully that's helped I want you to teach us something fun like a little something you had said you had some what I don't know if you called it some questions around kind of specific handstand issues now and then we can go into a bit of playtime afterwards I'm just looking back through for what tips on press the handstand on parallel bars I guess that's got a series of questions that I'd want to ask with it can they press the handstand on the floor how long can they hold a handstand for do you know what's funny actually some people find parallettes easier to learn skills on right because you get the grip you've got a lot more control for me parallel bars actually cause me quite a lot of wrist pain yeah I can't do it I find this motion over my thumb pretty painful so I guess two things to clarify if there's any injury related questions I've always got to say that I can't physically what's going on if you've got any injuries I can't give any advice on really how to treat those injuries but I would always recommend to go to physio just cause I have three questions and I don't want to especially in this conversation there's a lot of handstand related injuries that I've got experience with golf and tennis elbow and stuff with the rotator cuff and certain drills but on here I wouldn't be able to go through I wouldn't feel safe with press to handstand it really comes down to like how confident you are on your arms how strong your handstand is and what's your mobility like can you touch your toes because I teach that press to handstands on like a spectrum like there's flexibility and strength you get people on the calisthenics then people on Miami beach who can't touch their toes but can straddle press cause they just plant your foot up and then you get these gymnasts not high level gymnasts they're like they're strong but they're more flexible than they are strong but because they've got such amazing flexibility they can press up and the idea is that both sides can do it you want to kind of merge into the middle of bringing the flexibility and the strength as a I'll show you mine in a minute a good question from George I'm struggling with a bit of catching the chain for a free standing handstand I can do when the wall is there as a comfort blanket and not actually hit the wall but when it's not there I struggle so I guess he's kicking up to the wall when the wall's there he doesn't hit it he can kick up and hold a handstand free standing but then when he goes into free space he's not got the confidence that he can then stick it because does that make sense yeah completely so he'd want to learn the twist out drills is always cartwheel and the cartwheel doesn't want to be a move that you I would recommend if anyone wants to learn to handstand they want to be putting in ten minutes every day five days a week just working on cartwheels so it's such a familiar move that it's their default of getting out so yeah my muscle memory now is that if I'm twisting out I'm just like I just cartwheel out and when I was learning to handstand because I did a lot of free running and tumbling and gymnastics handstand was never scary for me because I knew how to cartwheel so cartwheel is like the foundation and then learning to twist out like the drills I did using the wall so feet on the wall one leg up and then twisting out but it doesn't always have to be like straight over like the one I did earlier you don't even have to go all the way over your head you can just start by going sideways and what what would you say to someone if they're trying to they've done quite a lot of work against the wall they're confident in turning out but they're kicking up but they just can't find that balance point so they're going to kick up in free space and just it can't stick it is there anything that you would advise for that harder floor you're going to have more chance of catching a handstand because it relies on the reaction that your fingers connect with the floor and then you can start to go into that kind of proprioceptive neuromuscular control with the hands on the floor right all those super fast fiddly corrections if you're doing handstands on soft grass by the time your fingers get to the end point like the firmer surface of the grass your legs have already started going over so there's more of a delay in the correction counteracting the balance if that makes sense so hard floor super important there would be a reason why you're not why you're either going over or coming down the most common reason I see people who don't hold their handstand is lack of elevation through the scalp they're down here and it's coming in they're just like BAM! push up push up just push up you kick up into your handstand lift up now there's two ways of how you use your hands if you're completely new to handstands you need to understand that your fingers play a huge part in it and you have to save with your fingers but as you grow more experience with it you want to put less weight in the fingers or more in the heel of the hand so if I'm standing up resting I'm not leaning into my toes I'm resting in my and my toes are engaging in the floor as opposed to like showing learning how to correct with the hands on a hard surface and lack of no elevation in the scapula are the main reasons I see people not and body tension their voice like this yeah I think that's a great point about getting that long should I try and demo one are you going to do it with elevated or like I'll try and be like first and depressed first and then try and push out a little bit one dog play the game hasn't he got a nice garden so if I was like in here it's hard to then get over that's partly because you know to push out if you've got the wall there you've got the confidence that you're not going to go like body slam WWE yeah yeah look up up so much there we go do you know what because it act like it engages all the supportive muscles that you need to hold yourself in a handstand it's engaging everything the staff a bit of a peck shoulders traps everything is like when you elevate just like your body's like I'm working and a lot of people can save their handstands by elevating like it sometimes if I feel like I'm losing balance and I push up it brings me back into that balance point yeah yeah I know you mean I've got another one from WWE quick one tips for handstand walking guys 30 to 30 second handstand hold would like to start working on walking okay great if you've got someone that can spot you a really good drill is if someone kicks up into a handstand and their legs are like this right so just imagine these are these are the feet these are the car these legs like that what you do is you get your spotter to put your arm like this and then you connect you squeeze your legs around their hands and what they do is they hold you up and they walk back and you just and they the spotter always goes to the pace of the person doing the handstand so when the person moves the hands then you move back a little bit yeah yeah so this is a really good one and someone just went over on the bike but also sorry I've got like undiagnosed ADHD so also learning to do one step just practice on handstand walking I think you can I'm a bundle of contradictions but I think you could learn handstand walk on grass because it gets rid of the fear factor and it's not an endurance game you're just moving I think you just learn to do the first step because walking on our feet is essentially going off balance and catching balance so if you can hold a 20 second handstand I assume you know how to fall out of a handstand so as you feel that motion of falling out of a handstand you just move your dominant arm forwards and try and catch that position I don't really do handstand one but I'll try that motion and then it's going and then catching and then as you build the confidence in it you just make sure that the steps are more definite and like prominent backwards I think it's one of the big things I find with it is it's like you press the handstand in that elevation you need to have enough strength to push one side down to alleviate the pressure so you can move the other one I think if you're not strong in those positions it's really difficult and if you're not strong in there how are you going to be confident in those positions then how are you going to be confident to take weight off one arm and catch on the other the other thing is like small steps as well baby steps is such a good expression yeah yeah just move the hand a little bit yeah it's just something cool how about gaze looking at the floor or straight back so where's your eyes focus point being so a famous hand balance coach called Claude Victoria who sadly died last year taught like he's taught probably most of the best people in the world he was like mid 70s when he died and you'd go and live in his house in France and he'd train you in the morning the afternoon and this world famous gymnast this world famous hand balancer when they're called Yovale I don't know if you follow Yovale on hands amazing hand balancer and he was an ex international gymnast and the first feedback that Claude gave him was stick your head out all right gymnasts have very like neutral head but in hand balancing stick your head out like I think in capoeira ok so it depends what you want if you train capoeira you have to keep your head in because you get kicked in the face if you don't keep your head in if you just want to be able to do a handstand it doesn't really matter that much but I think looking at your fingers as opposed to head through is always going to be easier because you've got a point of reference that doesn't change when you bring your head through and there's people walking past your subconscious your visions going like this so I think looking at the floor is really helpful which is why I don't really like performing because the lights change and you see your shadow and it moves and the lights go on and off on the floor and that to me I'm not down with that right let's wrap it up then you've got something a little bit of a play time that you can teach for people to have a little go at and a thing which is a little achievable skill not too specific like you know that handstand is like put a lot of time in gives a quick win we're going to do a no handed handstand right we're going to do a handstand which you need to show before you go by the way I want to see that before you go I haven't trained in three days and this is going to be my cold one arm I'll just do it now mate you just made me do a planche just go look at that naughty that was alright people were impressed with my planche until you just did that so you've now like completely stolen the show well done I'm jealous of your planche mate why don't we why don't we um we should talk we should talk business mate maybe we need to bring out the professional guy to planche and one arm what do you think do you want to see the planche okay my planche program is just getting really strong it's literally brute force is it um okay so if you put in like ratios how much balance do you put into that into a planche how much are you thinking about because obviously you have to lean forward right yeah not a lot of balance to try and hold a strong shape it's connective tension like I'm trying to catch shape that's the biggest focus man that is so nuts I can't I remember you learning that and I was like nah and now he's got it rubbish so there's two there's I'm going to show you the easy version because you can do this one handed but this no handed this both two handed way is super cheap it's quite similar to like a one-legged crow in yoga what you're going to do is you're going to balance this part of your knee like where it bends onto like the base of the elbow so it's not like this it's on top of each other yeah I'm going to keep my chest up as opposed to letting the arm bend it's round too much you're still there? so like this so facing outwards front facing forward and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to rest in this position and I'm going to lean forward and I'm going to drop my shoulder so I'm keeping my shoulder high like this so I'm going to go this leg up down this leg up okay that's like the first drill just understanding how to pick up the legs I'm going to now pinch this knee into my arm so I'm going to push it in and you want to make sure the arm's got a nice bend here I'm pushing in I'm leaning and then I'm taking that leg my foot's still on the floor but I'm just leaning forward a bit more next step okay and then the final step as you lean forward you stick your head up a little bit more and you try and pick up the back leg what's it called? it's like a two-handed air baby air baby okay come here so pick up the inside leg and now lean there yes yes okay good how long have we got? we done? like two minutes anyone if you want to work on the one arm one you've got to be able to hold that I'd say for about 15 seconds just one drill was it you or Jaco who was asking me this? Jaco was key on this one okay so this is the best intro to the one arm for learning the trick I lean over my hand's facing out I lean and I suck by these sideways as opposed to like this so I'm sideways and I just rest here and then back and it's the inside leg which starts to lean further forward and take the weight off the back leg a bit more and then back and you start like that but actually surprisingly easy the one arm one straight arm or bend slight bend and I'd always recommend learning if I could jump on because it's really hard skin on skin it's really slidey but try it we'll try and bring this into a crescendo okay so don't have your back leg too far away either like that and just pick up the inside inside pick up the inside leg not the back leg and then just there we go try and take off your back take off one arm take off the arm that doesn't need to be on the floor and bring it up a bit more and back behind you bring your arm up yeah you've got your fingers facing forward have them outwards because it's a lot easier to set in that position yeah you have to work on that one do you know what my hips cramp huh I said I just also a bit more bend in the arm because you don't want to fall through on a straight arm yeah good there we go but then the last drill for this is just quickly before we go it's holding on to a wall yeah okay I reckon if I get that one and it's basically burning so that that movement of doing it for keeping one leg on the floor and then that movement with the thing I think most anyone who's got like in kind of background like you guys I think like six weeks max yeah training it twice a week that's a great photo that one I'm going to put a bit of work on that one you're going to see my progress do you know what I promise Jacko ages ago I'm going to stay here now for a few minutes and from some stuff to send over to you lot for it that'd be wicked I'd better wrap it up because Jacko's going to be only five minutes to give me a compliment but I think he's secretly trying to nudge me off to make sure that we don't run behind schedule oh there he is get off mate thanks so much for that it was great to see you thank you for your handstand wisdom hope it was useful for everybody looking forward to like hopefully we still need to get that catch up don't we when we're allowed to back out of our houses travel a bit it's meant to be today handstands and cider we'll get on it loads of love guys sign off take care mate thanks a lot bye