Handstands - the secret

Your wrists are warm, your shoulders stretched. Hands down, squeeze your abs, pushing into the ground, with a gentle kick your legs are up, a few quick corrections and you feel your balance settle through the palms of your hands. You push tall, the shoulders elevate and you begin to feel light.

Sound familiar? For a competent beginner handstand practitioner, this is an everyday event. For a person learning the balance, it is but a dream.

I practice and teach basic hand-balancing, over the years of teaching, kicking up, falling over and failing presses, I've learned a thing or two about what it takes to stick a handstand.

Here's the secret to why you are not there yet:

You are weak and you don’t work hard enough.

That’s it.

For some people that can be hard to take. But its true. In order to learn balance, you first have to be comfortable spending sustained amounts of time on your hands. If being upside down is hard, you have work to do.

The good news. It is not hard. It takes consistency and discipline. This means doing the work when the initial enthusiasm to achieve the goal has left you.

If a free-standing handstand is on your to-do list, this should be a daily workout.

The Workout

1 min chest to wall handstand hold

1min rest

Repeat for 5 sets.

How long will it take?

10 minutes work a day, for as many days, weeks and months as it takes to feel easy.

If you can have a conversation with someone while you work, you are probably strong enough to move on and really benefit from balance work.

So there you have it, that’s the number one secret to learning to handstand.  Work hard. Consistently.

Credit to my original handstand coach - Harry, thanks man!

Mat