 Welcome back to the school of calisthenics, it is Tim and Lani and this one is all about handstand practice. So when we're learning to handstand we can take an approach where we learn from the bottom up and the top down to piece the movement together in sections because it's a really complicated thing to just try and nail all in one go. So with that in mind we're going to focus on doing the frog stand from the bottom and some wall handstands from the top. So let's have a look at the frog stand and go through the basic exercise technique and this is where all of our hand balancing from the floor working upwards is going to start from. We want to work in a handstand, we're not really into kicking up, we want to be able to go from a nice strong stable position and then press out in a complete show of strength and control. So I'm going to get Lani to jump in, she's going to give us a quick demo. So hands go on the floor, she's going to grip the floor with a fingertips so she can actually use those like her toes would help her to balance. She gets a nice bend in the elbow and the knees balancing on top of the triceps and she's just going to tip forwards until she can hold that position. So she has a really nice shape there so it can really stable. She's showing off now because she could have come back down but it's looking good. So Lani tell them a little bit about how you've gone through that process of learning the frog stand and the things that you've, the obstacles and the difficult things you've come across along the way. At first I found it really difficult to keep my bum up high and if you don't keep your bum up high you're just going to fall back down so it's that seesaw effect and finding that midpoint where you can balance so your head in front of you but your your bum's quite high. Yeah perfect. So that position there to get the bum higher some of it is a bit of a commitment about tipping more forward right so when you we're going to touch on this in a minute about feeling like you're going to smash your face on the ground and there's a couple of things that we can do but having the confidence to tip the head down and keep the hips high because it's much safer to kind of stay the head away from the floor but with that position you see how low the hips are without going into that shape. So that's one thing of just getting some confidence and and you've probably found that you've had to build a bit of finger strength so you can actually control that grip. Yeah definitely it's all about like gripping on and using those fingertips as well. Perfect and the other one to have a look at is just a position you see Lani jump back into your frog stand you see how high she gets her knees up she's really mobile so she's got a good amount of range of movements of play around in there but her knees up nice and high helps to keep that hip stacked on the shoulder stacked on the tricep and we're looking good for the frog stand. Everyone falls. Yeah we all fall and that is actually that's a really good point like you're going to have points in this where you topple over you hit the ground people might laugh at you but they won't laugh at you when you've been able to perfect handstand. So now we're going to use the wolf for some assistance to see what it's like to be upside down and get that feeling. The wolf gives us a great opportunity to see where that handstand is going to link together so we can start to practice what the grip is like where the shoulder needs to be and where the tummy needs to activate to create that tension and help us to get nice and long so we can ultimately hold that shape. One of the ways we can get into the wall handstand is using a walk up so I'm going to get Lani to jump up against the wall on this one so she starts in a press up position and she's going to put feet up so because we're starting to get upside down and how we feel about that we might tend to want to start in a slightly lower position and we can walk in and out wherever we feel comfortable. Ultimately as we get more confident we want to start to walk those feet a little bit higher and she progresses up now into her handstand position. The closer she gets the more she's going to be into that alignment position but you can still do some really good work in this slightly less angled position. The real key thing to take over from this and we need the midsection on super tight when the glute's working hard to hold that tension and we're going to be pushing down with the shoulders to try and make herself as long as possible and for extra bonus points and a little bit of flare Lani we're going to point those toes nice and long getting super tall and holding that position so you can spend a bit of time getting comfortable there and just building the strength and you can walk back in so as you come back down and we've got the opportunity then even if you put a few of these reps together it's a great exercise in itself just to build some capacity strength around the shoulders. The other option we have to get up into the handstand position is the wall kick up so Lani's going to again show us so hands go on the floor you want to be about a hands distance away from the wall if you go too far you end up with this big banana backing it's not great for a start into a practice alignment now for some people you're just going to need to progressively practice kicking from the front leg and using this back leg as a bit of a pendulum and if you start to kick a bit higher you'll find the wall the feet go on and then we're back into a similar position tummy tight particularly because in this shape you might want to feel like the back is going to arch we lock in midsection glute's working hard she's making herself as long as possible by pushing the hands into the ground and trying to slide her toes as high up the wall she can keeping the tension in there okay brilliant Lani the other one that you can do with this one if you're feeling a little bit apprehensive about kicking up to the wall have a bit of confidence this guy's not going anywhere so you know it's going to be there but sometimes you can get a little bit of help from your training buddy just to help you feel where you need to get to so we're just going to show you that again hands go on the floor Lani's guy's going to kick up but she probably doesn't know quite where she is so I can just grab the leg and I can take it to the wall that's a real bit of skill and some learning for where you are in space develops what we call kinesthetic awareness all of a sudden you've got a much better idea of where your feet are in relation to your hands when you're upside down and you can just spend some more time practicing that get confident with it and you're going to be kicking up against the wall in no time we're going to look at how to bail out of a wall handstand now I know it can be quite scary when you're up there to begin with so yeah these are really useful techniques so making sure that you can get your feet back on the ground when you're upside down right so there's a couple of different ways they will kick up handstand is actually a little bit easier because if we're going to come down we're typically just going to end up in the same position that we started in so let's have a quick look at that one so if hands on the floor Lani's going to kick up into a position now if she's if she anything's going a little bit wrong or she's losing a balance and all she needs to do is she just bring her feet back down the way that she came up dead simple if we try the other way and this is where people get a little bit more scared because all of a sudden you're worried that you might come over the top and just do a massive body slam which is not cool we've got an option here and you're actually way more flexible in this shape than you think and all we're going to try and do is bring the feet down to the side so let's have a look at that one so we start in our present position as we would do for our wall walk up we're going to walk up to the wall if you thought that at this stage like if things are going a little bit wrong rather than worrying about coming all the way over the top or having to raise your hands back forwards again all you need to do is just allow your feet to come down to the side it's a bit like a cartwheel and we just drop into a position there much safer than worrying about kind of coming over the top or having to surround yourself by crash mats every time you want to try and do a handstand whilst being upside down on a wall stand is quite scary we can also practice the frog stand because even though you're closer to the ground that can still be quite daunting and no one wants a broken nose I like this little variation so we're going to get lying to go for the frog stand all the boxes are doing here is just a soft yoga block and if she feels like she's going to tip too far it's not as far to fall and actually feel like you're going to come down onto the ground with any force so it just provides a little bit of security bringing the ground a little bit closer but she's still able to maintain that great hip height position but with a little bit more confidence that she's not going to go and break that beautiful face so there are a few tips on how you can get started on your handstand building from the bottom up and the top down and taking away the fear of falling perfect until next time class dismissed