Get Ready for Handstands Series Archives - Breaking Muscle

Get Ready for Handstands: The Kick Up

Justin Lind — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 01:39:37 +0000

This is the ninth and final part of a comprehensive handstand video series designed to bring you toward a strong and stable freestanding handstand. While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out all of the preceding parts:

Find Freestanding Balance

In this video, we combine all the previous mobility, stability, position, and balance work to achieve a freestanding handstand.

We begin with a technique for coming out of a handstand safely when you kick up too hard or lose balance while standing. Once you can step out of your free-standing handstand safely, you are ready to begin kicking up and honing your balance.

The techniques in this video will show you how to use your legs and position to find your handstand balance. While these are quite effective tools, finding balance takes time to develop. Humans do not naturally balance upside down, but we can learn to find stability while inverted. Be patient and persistent, and soon you will find comfort and control upside down.

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Get Ready for Handstands: Thoracic Mobility

Justin Lind — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 22:43:01 +0000

This is part three of a comprehensive handstand video series that will help you achieve a strong and stable free-standing handstand. While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out Get Ready for Handstands: Wrist Prep, where I discuss preparing your wrists, and Get Ready for Handstands: Shoulder Prep, where I discuss how to get your shoulders ready.

Thoracic mobility, particularly thoracic extension, is a forgotten aspect for many prospective handstanders. Your thoracic spine is your middle and upper back; essentially all the vertebrae that have a rib attached. Thoracic extension eludes many people, as their spine stiffens in the unfortunate position in which they spend hours driving, typing, and sitting.

An open and strong overhead position is essential for a handstand, but even perfect shoulder mobility will never get you there if your thoracic spine cannot extend all the way. If you feel your ribcage lift as you reach into an overhead position, your lower back (lumbar spine) is making up for the lack of movement in your t-spine. This leads to the common complaint of lower back pain from handstand training.

Check out the video below for tools to increase your thoracic mobility, and ways to strengthen this position that will directly improve your handstand.

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Get Ready for Handstands: Find Freestanding Balance

Justin Lind — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 06:26:09 +0000

This is the eighth part of a comprehensive handstand video series designed to bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand. While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out all of the preceding parts:

Find Freestanding Balance

In the video below, we begin to bring together all the previous pieces of our work toward a freestanding handstand. The first few articles addressed the mobility requirement to achieve an optimal position in the wrists, shoulders, and thoracic spine. In the weeks that followed, we drilled in proper alignment and added strength and stability to this position.

All of these elements combine to bring the awareness and strength to begin honing your balance. This week’s video offers drills to progressively load your freestanding handstand. Each subsequent drill brings you closer and closer to a full handstand. I recommend using a partner to spot as you slowly leave the safety of the wall.

Always remember the two key points to strong and stable handstands:

Length: Actively make your body as long as possible. Focusing on length improves several points of handstand virtuosity all together. Reach your toes as far from your hands on the ground as possible, and you will find yourself in hollow body, with active shoulders and strong engagement through the rest of your body.
Grip the Ground: Keep your hands and wrists active as you attempt to find balance. Review the previous video on hand balancing and engagement for a full discussion of this concept.

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Get Ready for Handstands: Hand Position and Balance

Justin Lind — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 02:00:20 +0000

This is the seventh part of a comprehensive handstand video series designed to bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand. While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out all of the preceding parts:

Hand Balancing and Engagement

I was recently discussing this series with a fellow coach who cheekily said, “What do you need multiple videos on handstands for? Just put your hands on the ground and your feet in the air.” He’s not wrong.

All joking aside, handstands are simple, but not easy. If you simply practiced all the time, you would eventually find balance. But this series aims to help you pattern in the best possible alignment and arm you with the tools to develop your balance quickly and effectively.

Over the last six weeks, we have opened up the proper alignment and developed the core strength and overhead stability to hold a solid handstand. This week’s video focuses on a few “secret weapons” of amazing handstanders.

The video below offers a few simple, yet profound engagement tools to hone in your balance, and several progressively more difficult positions in which to practice them.

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Get Ready for Handstands: Intro to Inversion

Justin Lind — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 12:35:43 +0000

This is the sixth part of a comprehensive video series designed to bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand. While this video (see below) will benefit your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of a larger series.

Check out all the other videos in this series for the complete picture:

Introduction to Inversion

We have spent the first five weeks developing the mobility and awareness for a proper handstand while using drills to strengthen and stabilize the position. This video will take you upside down. We begin with progressions for building comfort being inverted for the first time, and build with drills that reinforce the position.

Whether you are just beginning your handstand journey or have been working toward it for some time, this week will help you hone your position while growing more accustomed to being upside down.

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Get Ready for Handstands: Strength and Stability

Justin Lind — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 21:28:57 +0000

This is part 5 of a comprehensive handstand video series to bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand.

While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out all of the preceding parts:

This is part 5 of a comprehensive handstand video series to bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand.

Strengthening and Stabilizing the Position

In this video, we will focus on the final vital pieces to balance in a handstand. We have already opened up and strengthened the position. These drills and exercises add a stability challenge to the handstand position making you more equipped to balance freestanding. We will also further strengthen our overhead shoulder position and practice the type of engagement that reinforces a proper handstand.

Add all of these to your handstand regimen and stay tuned next week when we begin to turn upside down!

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Get Ready for Handstands: Positional Core Strength

Justin Lind — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:22:51 +0000

This is the fourth part of a comprehensive handstand video series that will bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand.

While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of the larger series. I encourage you to check out all of the preceding parts:

Building the Handstand Position and Strength

This week’s video begins the second prong of a three-facet approach to building a strong and stable handstand. The first three parts focused on developing the requisite mobility of the wrist, shoulders, and thoracic spine. Now begins the work to build a strong and proper handstand alignment.

This video not only offers core strengthening exercises that directly contribute to handstands, but includes drills to learn and groove in awareness of proper handstand position.

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Get Ready for Handstands: Shoulder Prep

Justin Lind — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 23:12:15 +0000

This is the second part of a comprehensive handstand video series that will bring you toward a strong and stable free-standing handstand. Get Ready for Handstands: Wrist Prep dove into readying the wrists. We aimed to get the joint moving freely while preparing it for loading. Part 2 will bring a huge benefit as a stand-alone, but also continues the larger series.

As we continue our full-body preparation from the ground up, we come next to the shoulders. Opening up the shoulder overhead position and strengthening your ability to accept and stabilize an overhead load rounds out the foundation of a solid handstand.

There is no positional issue in a handstand that does not originate at the wrists or shoulders. While these first two weeks might not seem as vital as the fun inverted work to come, they are invaluable for developing a strong handstand. They are the same as form and position work in some of your lifts. No one expects to snatch heavy without working to hone the requisite positions. Handstands are no different.

Check out the video below to learn exercises and drills to:

Increase your scapular (shoulder blade) mobility and control
Strengthen your ability to load your shoulders overhead
Increase your ability to stabilize an overhead load

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Get Ready for Handstands: Wrist Prep

Justin Lind — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 13:52:39 +0000

Beautiful handstands sit on a foundation of strong and stable hands and wrists. When working to progress in our handstands, we can easily fall into the temptation to simply start going upside down. Of course, this work is invaluable, but we need to first prepare the foundation to support our inversions.

Follow along with this short video for a circuit to prepare your wrists for handstand work. Use these movements in longer sessions to build the strength and mobility for a proper handstand position. You can also quickly run through the series as a warm up before any wrist-intensive training session.

This circuit is designed to give you the tools for a solid handstand foundation. You will build the strength and stability to support a free-standing handstand, the wrist mobility to allow for a beautifully aligned position, and habits and awareness to hone your balance.

Remember a few key points as you follow along:

What You Get is What You Give: Do not rush through this or simply go through the motions. Press into your end ranges of motion. Pay attention to how each movement feels, and explore with slightly different hand positions, finger spacing, etc.
Active Hands and Fingers: Handstand control and balance hinge on very active hands and fingers. Keep your contact with the ground as firm as possible. “Grip” the ground, as though it is a huge basketball that you are trying to palm.

This is the first in an in-depth series on all of the pertinent parts and pieces of perfect handstands. Stay tuned each week as we progress toward a beautiful, free-standing handstand. Each subsequent week will refer back to this video as a warm-up before continuing on.

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