 Welcome back to the school of castings. We are here with a legend that is Ross Edgley. Today we're going to start to look at some handstand progressions. Work up to handstand but we're going to swing by a little bit of strength work along the way and see if we can get these babies. So the basics of our hand balancing work is going to start from the frog stand and everything's going to build around that. So the first exercise we're going to get you into, frog stand, things on the floor gripping the ground. You're going to go into a nice white finger tip to create a tension in your hands. Bend the elbows, knees go up on top and then it's a balancing point. Can you then find the tipping over the top and then just hold yourself in that position. It's simple. It's going to feel a little higher through these. Nice. All right. From there, the job is to try and take one knee off the elbow. Bring it into the middle, keep the hips up high and then back onto the elbow. Perfect. Rest there. Just turn the side down a little bit so you can see. Side on, guys. Go, go, go. Is that the case that pops up again? This angle is great for your triceps as well. Yes. We're trying to start to put the elbow on top of the wrist, which is nice. The knee on top of that and the hip on top of each of those. Start to stack things on top of each other. So that's what we're going to find to see. To make it a little bit harder or a little progression slightly, to trample those knees a little bit higher on those triceps so your bones are going to be higher up in the air. I see what you mean. Wow. Then when you take that leg off, just try and find a little bit higher position. Bring it into the floor. Good. It's going to be much harder, yeah. There, there, there. Nice. So if you can see now, that bones in a much higher position. Yeah, yeah. Come on, continue to push the floor down. To keep the power down to the shoulders, to keep the hips high. You let the shoulders go, you turn the sink in it. So it's really good. So I think my basis of shoulder training, which is actually creating tension with the shoulders, is that vertical pushing movement. Dry on the floor down hard, keeping the hips up nice and high. Because that's super stable. Yeah, rest there, rest there. That's Tim. Just show one where the reason. So if Tim goes into his, look how high his hip position is. When he then wants to take both knees off, he keeps them high and if he wants to turn them to a handstand, he's able to then press out from there, keeping that hip high stacked on top of the shoulders. So you imagine if you start that bum way down here. Yeah, much harder to get back up towards that position. Yeah, yeah. But let's do that now. Again, start a bit more slack and start standing. I can put those knees much higher and just lean it so going to make yourself get into a higher start position. It's just going to make it nice. So if you're going to take it higher, then when you try and take one knee off, he goes, keep that hip. That's it. Good. Don't let it drop down. Nice. But let's shoulder work harder when that knee comes off. I think I've got this. Right, so that's starting from the four in our frog stands. Now we're going to take it to the wall. We're going to use the wall to help practice our alignment, but it's also going to get an awful lot of shoulder stability and well as strength as we start to rep these. There's one of the really nice things about handstand work using your body weight, but the stability that you have to create through the shoulder joint, when you start to ramp up that stability, you can start to then put down more force as you build up your strength to get stronger. We're also getting an awful lot of trunk alignment and call work in there. So Tim's working his hands all the way back to the wall, so his nose can touch the wall, his hips can touch the wall and his legs all the way up, so he's actually making himself straight because he's using the wall. From there, he's then going to walk back and as he walks into each stride, that shoulder as he places it down the floor is having to stabilize, keeping working alongside with his trunk is called to hold that position, not rocking and rolling side to side to much trying to stay nice and tight. So every step he takes, hand goes down to stabilize, can you stay strong as you work down, strength building, stability, as well as that control point. So you go on, press it position but your feet are going to go on the wall. Press it with your feet on the wall. Then as you walk your feet on the wall, you walk your hands in trying to keep this nice and tight in the middle. When you get to the wall, feet together, point your toes a little bit, one thing we did measure with Tim is try and push your feet towards the ceiling so you almost feel like a shrub for each other. And then walk your hands forward and turn your feet in here and then walk your feet, keep your feet a bit close together. As you walk your hands a bit further, walk your feet down the wall back to your press-up position. Feel that strength there. Oh my God! And then walk back up. But your shoulder mobility of your head is looking deep. Can you get your nose to touch the wall? Nice. Pushing feet towards the ceiling, putting that length there, you go good. And then you walk. I got a leg off me too. Wow! So, two reps. Two reps. He's got to share that with the pump. Share it with the pump. It's good, do you need dumbbells? That is such a good point. That, I always say this, it's just completely too many people there again just trying to put more weight on the dumbbells, more weight on the barbell. You do two of those. Oh my God! And it's working over a range of motion. I have some instability in the core that's staying tight here. Having times we see people very impressed at the losing midsection control. Actually, in that you can't. You've got to lock it where you can, but you have to do it properly to lock it tight. So all of a sudden, we know that the shoulder and the core have got a really close relationship when one relies on the other to function properly. So if we're stable in the midsection, that can produce force. If we just compromise midsection and cause all that work, shoulder and destabiliser, you're not going to lift as much overhead. So again, get some of this stuff in your program. I reckon you'll be carried over towards your head pressing work. Something you've already said before, there's nowhere to hide in that. No, it literally is. That's so true. And again, it is that barbell and body weight fusion. People see the two as separate. It's like, oh, do you calisthenics? Oh no, power lifter. What bits can we all learn to make sure that it's there? Because people go body weights basics, you start with body weight. Well, that's only if you don't know how to use your body weight properly. Yes, that is such a good point. OK, so we can take in some handstand wall push ups and these are one of the best exercises for shoulder strength providing you've got some decent midsection strength going on. So make sure that that is looking in good nick before we start loaning the body upside down. Punch it, I'm ready. So, Jackie's got some distance for the wall. We're using his hands, he's got the feet on the wall for some support. Sox on, look at these beauties. So we can actually slide up and down. It gives us a little bit more freedom. And all we're looking to do is try and go as low as we can. You can see Jackie is working hard to keep those elbows pointed as close behind him as he can. What we don't want to do is see these guys splaying out to the side to just throw his shoulder head into a not a very nice position. And we can lean up there for as long as we think he's got reps in the tank. But he's looking pretty good. So that's if we want to start on the floor. But we're limited by how low we can go. We can get by the floor itself. And even if we were going to go to some barbell work like we'd be thinking here was somewhere like half rep which is probably where we're going to be. So if you want to get super strong with the shoulders we can take it up a level and we can go on a box. I'm going to pass over to Jacko because I've got some work to do. So, as you see, as I was going down I get my nose touched to the floor and I'm limited by how deep I can go by where the floor is. If you raise your hands up on a box you'll be able to say bye bye and disappear and now he's getting into some silly deep range. I'm not strong enough to do that. He's going through a greater range of motion load, no different but he's increasing his adaptation and getting stronger not by adding a weighted vest on it. He's just going through a bigger range. Which is a great way to get strong. So rather than adding weight or changing some other sort of barbell work he's actually just increasing range of motion to keep himself progressive with his child nose. So we're going to get lost up against the wall as that hand stands. So all he's going to do is put his hands up on the floor kick himself up to find the wall. If you're kind of a bit nervous around this just progressively kick up a little bit higher until you find the wall just trust that it's going to be there and then his job is there to see how he feels and how low he can go and start to wrap some of these up head pretty much to the floor looking good. It's really important as you push out that bottom position so that you feel like you're back to arching. So as you get into that bottom position just lock that bad boy in tight make sure it's staying strong ribcage back down top of the hips and that's going to keep this nice alignment and it doesn't put too much pressure on the low back. Try to take yourself down a little bit further go forward a bit more so that you can always screw backwards a little bit better. Good so your head makes a trial with your hands rather than going if you take your head straight down your elbows have to flatter out to the side and you start to compromise a bit more. Let's talk about that kinesthetic awareness it's like when you've got dumbbells and you see a lot of guys who are good at calisthenics and body weight stuff they're much stronger when they go over to use a barbell. It's not real all over the place they're used to holding that stable position. The massive thing about that is if we're going to do a bit of work on the floor building the shoulders to build to then what happens when we go and get some dumbbells because the shoulders are much more stable from some of these exercises to put some hypertrophy or some max strength or power lift a little bit of this to upgrade the shoulders to build some robustness to the shoulder I reckon that's going to give you a decent kick back when you come to throw it some way overhead. I know what your body is to say but I do want to see what you can overhead press. If he's doing that from there from like a debt that's ridiculous. So we're going to take what we did on the floor and then we're going to take what we did with the ball with your life and try to piece that together. I think he did that nice demo when he took his legs off and he rotated and we said you drop down a bit I'm going to help you on your hips stop you from dropping down so you're going to rotate take legs off and rotate then straighten up I'm going to spot you and I'm going to see if I can spot you to a point where you're going to balance on your own. I look back to him. I look back to him. Face me, face me. Group of fingertips you go into your frog stand I'm going to come under I'm going to come under I'm going to come in here we're going to take legs off and rotate and straighten now make yourself nice and long bring feet together the job is now to start working down the body so as he starts to work feet together with your shoulders make some small corrections and helping with that's it eyes for us fingertips there there that is we've kissed down there that's just that fine motor control so the interesting thing about that movement is you can actually start to get some small corrections but the hands down so many people struggle with nailing it down because of that kinesthetic awareness when they're upside down they don't know where the feet are in relation to the head so having someone give you that feedback is giving you that input the brain's going ok this is where I need to be and then you can start to work out your movement strategy of how you're going to hold that I think for everything you can read and you can study you can watch it's all kinesthetic it's all biofeedback the only way to do it is to get upside down to actually start to feel it that's the only way hands on to begin with it was it but then it was let and then a little bit and then it was yeah that was like I'm doing everything and then I'm gradually doing less you'll do more and then we take over and you're doing everything it was a weird sensation but like I don't know I wanted to go this is good it was good I thought it was most interesting was the veins on the shoulders and the punctures getting out it just shows you like can body be used to build up strength and stability through your shoulders we believe it's one of the best ways to do it that doesn't mean you only have to have to do it but for us that's what gets us there that's what we like and we enjoy we like the challenge of it when you balance then you're on your own that feels cool but you do some work on that and you go back to your shoulder press I think strength and conditioning it's about having all these tools in your arsenal because Sundays you might want to go down grip some iron and just lift heavy but other days central nervous system immune system might just be there you might not just for whatever reason neurotransmitters you might not be motivated all of those factors you might not have the equipment answer to have this in your arsenal and go ah that's right body weight it can be invaluable and I think people don't really understand that it's not one or the other so there's some beautiful stuff to play with there we've got some we can build a handstand from the ground up with your foxtand progressions we can get strong up against the wall and then we can link it together with the help of a pro bro and that's all you need to get into a handstand with just a bit of sprinkler time some consistency and a load of patience roster's a fast learner until next time class is missed