 Welcome back to the School of Calisthenics with Tim and Jaco. Today for you we have got a beginner's handstand follow-along workout. And we're not going to be using any equipment at all today, so you can do this one at home. So the exercises we're going to cover, we've got break into two sections, movement patterning and movement and capacity strength. Our movement patterning exercise is going to be a frog stand, a wall handstand practice with some balance. And also I've put in some shrug and alignment work in there as well. And our capacity strength exercises are going to be a walk out to get some more core strength and some pike push ups. So to give you a heads up on how the video is going to work, it's broken down into two parts. In this first part we're going to give you, go through all those exercises, give the demonstrations and the key coaching points for those. And if you're comfortable with all those exercises already you can jump ahead to part two where we're going to go through the actual workout. Together get through some reps and sets and start to have some fun getting strong. So let's look at the frog stand, our first introduction to hand balancing and getting started, taking the feet off the floor and getting our hands taking our body weight so we can start to progress into our handstand. It's a real simple movement with a few key coaching points. So Jacko's going to go shoulder width apart with his hands. You can see here he's just going to keep the palms slightly off the floor so he can grip with his fingertips. This is a really important part of our hand balancing that we can use that gripping strength to control our body position. He's then going to bend his elbows and the knees are going to come up just above the elbow and they're going to sit just on the back of the triceps. He then starts to rotate forward, screwing the hands out to create some stability in his shoulders. And you can see he stacks his hips up on top of the shoulders. As he feels confident he can then put one foot off the floor, he can then bring the second one to join him. And the job then is just to practice that balance position. You're going to have to feel that you need to tip a little bit further forward than maybe what you want to. That's just you're going to find that seesaw balance position. Otherwise you're going to find you're constantly just falling backwards and your feet end up on the ground. So lift yourself up, play with it a little bit. This one takes a little bit of practice but you'll build the confidence of before long you're going to be holding it in such a great position exhibited by Dave. So the second movement patterning exercise we're going to look at is taking us from that low down position and get working all the way from the top. So into a full handstand, but we're going to be using the wall. So we're going to look at the kick up and then the alignment you've got to create whilst you're up there. So hands go on the floor, shoulder width apart just like they were in the frog stand. All those things exactly the same fingers grip in the floor. Tim's then going to go into like a track start position where he's got a strong leg at the front and the other leg out stretch to the back. It's this front leg that he's going to drive with and the back leg acts like a pendulum because it's nice and long and straight until he finds the wall. You might want to be a little bit selective about what wall you use when you're at home that you're not going to go straight through it. Make sure it's a nice one, one you don't mind having your feet on against. So then when he sees in that position what he's got to make sure is he creates this grud alignment. So he's got to push down into the floor to lift his feet up the whole time. So you see that movement there, the hips drive up, the feet drive up against the wall. And then he's got his tummy tight and his bum squeezed all nice and tight to make sure that this stays in a nice straight line all the way down from the hips to the shoulders. Rather than if he goes into an arched position where he's looking forward and we see this shape in the back here, it can put a little bit of pressure on the lower spine which we don't want. So we need that lift up, bum on, core on, pushing down to raise your feet as high as possible so you're feeling about making yourself long and strong. So now we're comfortable against the wall and we can create a good alignment. We can actually start to practice this balanced skill acquisition phase which is going to help us to learn that freestanding handstand. So Jacko's going to go up into the kick up just as we did before. The first thing he does in this position is creates nice strong stable shape like we talked about before, emphasizing that shrug, locking the midsection down. So now he's in a strong position, he's got to start to teach his brain how to balance on his hands. And you can see he brings the one foot off, leaving one on the wall which is just shifting more weight over his base of support so he can start to practice what it's like with less support against the wall and relying less on the wall for balance. As he gets good at that, he gets his nice long straight line, quads working hard, he's creating some good tension. Now the next job is to see can you just bring this other leg slightly off the wall, still using the wall for some support but just gently touching it for the correction when you need it. This is all about time and attention, there's no specific reps in the set, it's just some practice until you've got both feet off the wall. The second part of the workout focuses on the strength to be able to maintain this handstand. So those first exercises are about the patterning, the learning to balance on your hands, the skill required for that. Now we're going to look at getting strong. So we've got two capacity strength exercises for that. The first one is the pike pushup where Tim goes from his normal pushup position and then what he's going to do is walk his feet forward and stick his bum nice and high up in the air. He's trying to get his hips as high as possible so he starts to get more inverted compared to the shoulder. From that position what he's going to do is going to screw the elbows so they point backwards and then as he drives himself down he's going to be taking his head forward rather than directly between his hands so they make a triangle with the hands. So when they go out and his head goes forward, his elbows point back, if his head goes straight down the elbows end up sticking out to the sides to put the shoulder in a bad position. It's really important we see the movement forward and then drive back up to that same position because what sometimes happens is you go forward on the way down and you're not strong enough the hips drop down and you turn it more into a pushup rather than a pike pushup. We're trying to get that vertical pushy that Tim is showing you beautifully there. The last exercise we're going to have a look at is the walkout. This is a great core exercise which is going to help us to transfer force through the chain of handstand and create nice strong stable shapes. Super easy to start off with. Jacko's going to drop into his pushup position. This is just a real key point here is how we set this movement up. If we're in a bad shape in our pushup we're going to transfer that when we move into the core into a more difficult core position. So we don't want to see this slumping. We want to see the ribcage locked down on top of the hips. Imagine you've got a bowl of water on each. You don't want to allow the water to spill by lifting the ribcage. Bum's on. Keeping this whole movement section super tight. Jacko's just going to walk his hands out now and he goes as far as he feels comfortable. You'll get to a point where you feel like if you go any further you're going to see that back arch and banana. Dave's pretty good at these so he can actually go out into a real long shape. What we want you to do in this position is just hold out, hang out there for some time and that's just going to help us to rebuild that strength. Just showing my bad one Jacko with the back arch. If you take your hands out you'll feel like your back is going to bend and your bum is going to stick up in the air. Don't train this position because you're just reinforcing bad technique that isn't going to transfer into your handstands. So let's get into the workout now. Just so you know it's going to be into two parts. We've got the movement patterning part which we're going to do first and then we're going to have the capacity strength part. We'll do the movement patterning part first because that's the bit where you're trying to balance. That's the bit that's a bit sort of cognitively demanding in terms of the brain having to think and having to work quite hard. So we want to do it when we're fresh. So we're starting first with the frog stand and then we're going to go through each exercise in a little mini circuit together. So key thing on this frog stand where Tim is going to try and hold it for 10 seconds. He's going to be pushing down hard into the floor the whole time. So 10, 9, 8, 7 is not resting. 6, 5 is pushing down hard. 4, 3, you can see him working. 2, 1. That's a great 10 second hold. So from there we then go over to the wall and we're looking at this kick up and working our alignment. So into the kick up where we're going to be pausing at the top. We're going to do a five second pause and we're doing three times. So tummy tight, bum tight, reaching up and so on. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Then he's going to come back down. We're going to do that three times. We're going to do three reps of those. So about time and attention there. Tummy tight, bum up. 5, 4, pushing feet high. 3, 2, 1. Good. That long and strong last rep. Kick to the wall. Feet as high. Always pushing to the sky. 4, 3, 2, 1. Down we come. Then the third exercise is then actually working on the balance. So you're going to take that nice alignment that you've created and we're going to take one leg off the wall. We're going to look to hold for maybe like 5 to 15 seconds of actual balance work. We're going to take that one leg off and he tries to just tap the other leg and then at some point he's going to find that balance point. Hopefully, depending on how much experience we've got, we can offer 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Beautiful. There we go. So that is one round of our movement patterning exercises. You're going to have 60 seconds rest now or about a minute and then it's going to be my turn. So 60 seconds rest in the bank. Time to check out Jaco's technique and go through set number two. Frog stand please, Mr Jackson. So he sets himself up, hips nice and high, pushing down. The key thing for this is trying to get yourself as high as possible. So I'm going to give him 10 seconds. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. Keep pushing Dave. 3, 2, and 1. Good. End of the frog stand. So the key point there is keep pushing down all the time which you should really feel like you're trying to lift your hands or your knees off your elbows. Right, kick up with a shrug. So your hands go on the floor. We're going to drive that foot up into the wall. Locks down that midsection, pushes himself up nice and tall. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And back down. Remember trying to get those feet as high at the wall as strong and as long as you can make yourself. Pushing tall. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Last rep. Breathe in between. Try not to hold your breath on these either which you keep breathing as you go through. Locking midsection, nice and tall. 5, 4, breathe. 3, 2, 1. So that's that nice long technique of alignment in the locket. It's working, aren't it? It's working. Got some capacity strength to come here. Okay, the last bit of this movement pattern is circling. It's giving me the balance practice so you can kick yourself up. Just play around in this position. Guys like Jaco and I can both pull our feet off the wall and balance. But if you're just starting out, it really doesn't matter. Just work at a point where you feel comfortable and you're giving yourself the opportunity to feel that stability, move to instability, and then you can correct it until you find out. There's no shame in using that wall for support. Your brain needs the opportunity to practice and learn that position. Is that about 10 seconds, Dave? I don't know. We'll give that one a rest. So there you go. That is set number two. We've got a capacity strength to come. If you want to throw a little set of those exercises together, pause the video now. Take yourself through one more set and then join us for the capacity strength section right now. Remember, you should have had a minute's rest now whether you've done your two sets or you did that extra one. And then now we're into the final part of the session, where we're looking at the capacity strength. It's really important we spend some time getting strong for these handstands and not just do all the fancy stuff up against the wall, practicing that balance. Because it is fun, but we need to get strong as well. We're going pike push-ups is our first one. We're going to go for 10 reps. He's got his feet up. He's got the bum nice and high. Remember, that head is making a triangle with hands. There's one. And as he drives, he drives the whole chain up to control on the way down, up three, four, five, focusing on trying to make that push as vertical as possible. Eight. He's right up on his tiptoes. Nine and 10. Lovely. So always making sure we have the control. Then we're straight into that walk-out, and we're going to try and hold as far out as you can for 10 seconds. So, cause tight, bum sight. Eight, seven, six, five, four. Look at that shape. Three, two, one, and rest. Oh, coming down to the floor. So you can see how is when we start to be strong enough to get really nice and long, it's exactly the same overhead position as in the handstand, and that cause really link those upper and low extremities together. So, minutes rest. There's my goal. So it's time for Jaco to have a go. Set number two, pipe push-ups. On these ones, guys, if you feel like it tends too many for you to do, there's no problem with dropping those numbers down. You can go through whatever you can feel is achievable as you start to get more confident with ease of build those numbers up. And also you can work through a shorter range of movement if you need to. So Jaco is going full range head to the floor. If you go down and find you can only go halfway. That's fine. Just work through the range of movement that you've got. And you're still going to find you really start to build some strength in this position. Is that about three, Jaco? All right. Sorry. I was talking. Okay. So keeping the bum nice and high. Great technique. Keeping the elbows as nice and tight as the body. Reps out the 10. Now for the walkouts. So again, you don't have to go all the way out. We kind of just wanted to show you we kind of pushing ourselves as well through the workout. So we've gone full range, but it might be that you literally move your hands three or four centimeters or five or six inches forwards just to get enough strain on that position where it feels like your back's going to bend but you're locking in super tight, front and back to hold for as long as you can. Aim for something you can do for 10 seconds. It's a meaningful amount of time which is going to help to build up some strength. Once again, you can pause now, hit another set if you want to. Or if you don't, if you've done enough and you feel like you've put some work in a tank, well, you can have a rest and sit down. So that's the end of the workout, guys. You've got some skill-based work in the movement pattern. You've done some work to get strong. Hopefully you'll probably find that your heart's up a little bit and you feel like you've done a decent amount of work and all of that is going to build towards your handstand perfection. So you might have followed along just those two sets if you're just starting out or maybe you've done that extra third or even possibly a fourth but that's probably about where we want to sit. Two to four sets of those, looking to get some of the reps around eight to ten to twelve reps in the strength section and making sure that in the patterning stuff when you're working on the skill, you're taking your time to make sure there's real quality in the movement in terms of your alignment and the chance to give your brain the opportunity to learn how to balance on those hands rather than on your feet. Calisthenics means beauty and strength. We want to move with control and elegance. So make sure when you're doing these you're always training with good technique. It's not about bossing out the reps in the shortest amount of time. Just take your time, move with grace, beauty, get strong. What else do you need? Well, at least we try. Yeah, we do our best. So until next time, class dismissed.