“Dude, I want to learn this thing, other people pull this off, so I should be able to do so, too. Come on, let’s do this.”

“No, if you don’t break your neck you will break your back, perhaps a leg, or two, and no one in the world will ever talk to you again, because you will look stupid.”

“No, no, no, no, You’re gonna die, I’m telling you, you’re gonna die. You will break your neck, you will crash into your neighbor—or worse make a complete fool of yourself!”

“Dude, I want to learn this thing, other people pull this off, so I should be able to do so, too. Come on, let’s do this.”

“No, if you don’t break your neck you will break your back, perhaps a leg, or two, and no one in the world will ever talk to you again, because you will look stupid.”

“Come on, we can do this. Let’s do this. It looks so fun.”

Handstand Mind Games

The mind is a world champion when it comes to coming up with excuses when you venture into unfamiliar territory—also known as doing something you’ve not done before.

It’s the same battle over and over, one side of us so wants to crush our current limits to infinity and beyond, learn new things, and test the edges of our potential.

The other side is terrified of anything it doesn’t know, and this part of our brain hasn’t seen daylight for centuries, so is still convinced we live in the stone age. In stoneage days, unfamiliar territory and new experiences were indeed to be pursued with caution as it was likely to be a lion, tiger, or some other crazy monster you’d not yet come across.

A Little Bit of Useful Science about Fear

Fear is our limbic system, in particular our lovely amygdala, that super old part of our brain, that has now much been left in the shadow in favor for our prefrontal cortex, the clever guy. However the amygdala is driven by emotions, and emotions will always be the main driver for our actions, so disregarding this part of our brain is a bit stupid if you want to set yourself up for success.

You must keep in mind that fear occurs when the following circumstances are present:

• You are about to do something you’ve not done before.
• You are about to venture into the unknown.
• You are about to do something that you don’t have full control over, yet.
• It’s unfamiliar territory, and so it’s interpreted as dangerous.

When something is new, the amygdala goes “there might be lions around here, better run away asap,” which is why you have some crazy emotions getting in the way for your handstand practice.

Now, we won’t be eaten by a lion when trying to balance on our hands, but like with anything new and unexplored the brain’s going to tell you to stop and activate a lot of survival mechanisms to “help you out”—making you go halfway in for what you want to achieve and learn, stops you from going all in, even if you know exactly what to do.

5 Simple Tricks To Conquer Your Handstand Fear

With the knowledge of the above, it’s easy. Since the mind freaks out because something is new and unfamiliar, our job then becomes to make this handstand game an explored playground.

The more familiar it feels, the more it will calm the mind down, preventing it from going into catastrophe mode, leaving you completely paralyzed. Then you will no longer be at the border of a nervous breakdown and you can focus on the task at hand.

1. Visualize it. The mind can’t distinguish between a thought and real experience if you can make this thought vivid enough. You do this by imagining in as much detail as possible how to do your handstand, everything from how you put your hands on the floor to the feeling of being upside down, or how you imagine it to be.
2. Watch other people do it over and over. Real life, YouTube, Instagram—train your mind to see it as “normal.”
3. Start with where you are today. Start small. Start with the smallest possible step. This is probably the most important step.
4. See the small wins along the way. This will help you build confidence in your abilities.
5. Challenge yourself in balance with your current skill level. Make the challenges challenging enough that you can focus on them, yet not too challenging or too easy. This will help your mind stay focused instead of thinking about being scared.

How to Practice and Challenge Fear In Action

The way I started my life upside down was with learning my headstand, then forearm stands, before eventually nailing my handstand. I’ve found this method to be useful for many. As a principle, I would recommend starting with the progression you find the least scary.

Starting with a headstand can be good because it’s easier to balance skill-wise. Then your focus will be on mastering the fear of seeing the world upside down. You must focus on one thing at the time. Then practice that component over and over, until it’s on autopilot.

Here’s a real-world example:

• I’m going to put my hands down on the floor 10 times and my focus is hand placement. That’s my one goal for that session—how I put my hands on the floor while notice how that feels.
• The next 10 tries, I will focus on looking in between my hands and think hips on top of head. And that’s my only two points of focus, for those 10 times I try to go up.
• Then the next 10 times I try to connect these dots: hands, hips, and where I look.

And so the journey continues.

Repetition, repetition, repetition, day in day out. Not tons, just 5 minutes of practice with an occasional day or two off.

Trust the Process

Trust the process, be patient, know that you will get frustrated, and remember that’s a good thing. Keep going anyway. The moments you feel most stuck, those are the moments you work the hardest, and you grow the most although you can’t see it.

At one point you might get so pissed off and go “I’ve had enough,“ and then you suddenly, finally break through. Perhaps you fall to the other side and you realize it wasn’t as dangerous as you thought.

Perhaps you get a little bruise, a small price for realizing that you can take a lot more than you thought, on top of a stronger sense of confidence from breaking new limits. Plus, you’ve also just learned how to fall out of a handstand.

Thoughts On The Wall

You might start with the wall if you are completely new. Simply to train your body to turn the right muscles on when you go upside down, but from there get away from the wall as soon as you can. Only use it once in a while as a check-in.

The mind likes to rely on the wall too much and ultimately it’s not going to help you in the long run. It’s fake safety, you start depending on something outside of yourself. The goal here is to start trusting yourself that you can figure this out.

The Fear of Crashing Into the Floor

You won’t learn anything until you practice it, so you need to fall to learn how to fall. Trust me on this—here’s where your survival instincts will make very good use of themselves. We have a survival mechanism installed in our brains that is capable of the craziest things to keep us safe. It will keep you safe. Plus you’re almost on the floor already.

When you get scared, that’s a good sign. It means you are going beyond your status quo, and that growth is waiting for you when you lean into it and go beyond.

• Trust the process.
• Above all, play with it.
• Feel the fear and move with it.
• Be curious about it.
• Explore it.
• Give yourself some solid credit along the way.
• Put your fear in a different light.

What’s the smallest step you can take to close the gap between where you are today and where you want to be?

You might also like:

• Get Ready For Handstands: Hand Position And Balance
• Develop Your Handstand: The Importance Of Progression
• My 4-Week Program For Achieving Handstand Happiness

The post Overcome Your Fear and Master Handstands appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But there is one umbrella principle that covers all of these things and more. It is underrated on many levels. It is the principle of balance.

“The most underrated principle of strength training is…” I asked this question on my Strength Education Facebook page recently, and received some excellent replies: Consistency. Sleep. Recovery. Patience. Simplicity. And so on. I agree with them all.

But there is one umbrella principle that covers all of these things and more. It is underrated on many levels. It is the principle of balance.

Balance Is Fundamental

The principle of balancing our training with everything else is fundamental to optimizing performance.

If you are able to tweak your training balance through life’s ups and downs, you will always be able to keep yourself in check, and more importantly, keep yourself in training.

To achieve this balance, you need to be able to take a step back and see your training in context of everything else you are doing. And that is the purpose of this article.

To provide context for your training, along with my tips for finding and maintaining balance. Here are five contexts to consider when it comes to balancing your training:

Context #1: Training and Life

I often joke about life getting in the way of training, but it’s true. There are going be times when life prevents you from training as you would like.

This may be because of good things or bad things, but either way, the effect on your training is a shift in the wrong direction.

Creating a Balance: Schedule your training in your diary, just like you would a meeting, or an important dinner. This way there is less chance of you putting something else in its place. Unexpected events are still going to blindside you once in while, but when this happens, don’t sweat it. Minimize any “damage,” and draw a line under it. If you can catch up on your training, then do so.

I’ve also found it’s helpful to follow a specific base program. I’ve written about finding your base movement before. Even if you end up just hitting this movement three times a week in a structured format, it gives you a specific amount of work to accomplish and keeps you ticking over. This can help make sure you don’t skip the gym when you don’t actually need to.

Context #2: Training and Competition

Competition is important. Among other things, it allows you to test everything you’ve been training under stringent standards.

It gives you a platform, sometimes literally, to showcase your hard work. It provides you with focus and a timeframe. And last but not least, this is all hopefully in front of supporters who will do their best to spur you on to greater things.

However, for many of the same reasons just described, competition is a draining process.

It takes its toll on the body and mind before, during, and after the event. More so than many people realize (if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard “But it’s only six lifts,” or, “I do more work than that in a typical training session.”). The time and energy spent to prepare, rest up adequately, compete, and recover can be debilitating to long-term progress.

Creating a Balance: Be selective about your competitions. Yes, they are fun, but assess which will be your main competitions of the year, how important they are to you, and work back from that. If these competitions are important to you, then are all the others on your schedule helping you prepare for this, or are they detracting from it? Make balanced decisions accordingly.

Context #3: Training and Social

I know some of you reading this will scoff at this one. Surely when you are in the gym, you are there to train, first and foremost. Not to chat or see friends. I agree, but not everyone has that same mentality. And that’s okay, too.

Many CrossFit boxes and other functional fitness gyms are built on and powered by a strong community spirit. So to tell those people that their time at the gym is strictly for training, with little or no social interaction, is a bit contradictory.

Creating a Balance: If you are in a group class and sharing equipment, be firm but friendly in terms of making sure everyone is keeping up pace. Also, learn to “switch on” your lifting head. Perhaps due to being a coach and training in the same gym I coach at (more on that in a second), I have learned how to go from friendly to focused in a matter of seconds. You could anchor this mind-set through a physical cue such as putting your hood up or stomping, which also alerts others you are ready to lift now. Double winner.

Context #4: Training and Coaching

For you fellow coaches, I am sure you have experienced times when you have foregone your own training for the sake of your coaching commitments.

Or if you were lucky, you had a choice presented to you. Mostly when that choice appears for me, I tend to fall on the side of coaching. It’s not that my training is not important to me, it’s just that I see coaching as even more important.

For those with loftier training goals than I, they might fall on the other side of the fence. I don’t judge either way. Ideally, we would all be in a position where we have to make less of a choice between coaching others and training ourselves.

Creating a Balance: Again, block out times in your diary for your own training. It’s important that this is not during an existing class – this is your time and you need to make the most of it. If possible, train when the gym is not open to others. You could train with a fellow coach to add safety and accountability. I also believe that training somewhere other than where you work can be beneficial. Sure, there is value to training with your clients and setting a good example, but if your training is suffering, making that separation may be more valuable (as well as get you some coaching of your own in the process).

Context #5: Training and Not Training

Whether we are talking about rest days, deloading, training when ill, or anything else, this is perhaps the one topic that people struggle to come to terms with most. I put that down to three things.

First, this stuff is addictive. Second, to train how we train, you have to be of a certain mentality. This mentality lends itself to pushing hard, rather than backing off.

Last, and not unrelated to the second point, gains and results from training can lead to a “more is more” mentality.

Creating a Balance: The wiser folk realize, sooner or later, that optimizing performance through training is all about balance. The only person who can truly know when to push on and when to hold back is you. However, learning where your balance point is takes time and learning can be a complex process. But I believe it doesn’t have to be that complex. There is one question you can ask yourself to guide any decision on whether you should rest or not, and it is this: am I going to get more out of the workout than I put in? If the answer is yes, then please continue with your workout. If it’s going to take more out of you than you are getting back, then take a seat on the bench until the answer is in your favor.

The reason I can write about all of this stuff is that I’ve been on both sides of the scale.

Hell, I’ve even fallen off the scale at times. But now, with the advantage of hindsight and experience, I mostly find that I am able to claw my way back to the center of the scale, and find balance when it counts.

I hope this article helps to you do the same.

Photos couresty of CrossFit LA.

The post The Most Underrated Principle of Strength Training Is… Balance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.