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The beginner foundation classes are geared towards anyone who is still working towards being able to consistently balance their handstand away from the wall. If you’ve never done a handstand before but are now compelled to learn, then this is the perfect place to start. It will make sure that you develop good habits from the beginning. If you’ve been working on your handstand for a while and are getting frustrated that you’re stuck at the wall, then this will start to give you the path towards having a confident handstand away from the wall. Once you achieve your 10 second handstand consistently then you will be ready to check out the intermediate courses.
In my opinion, patterning is the most important skill to be able to achieve a great handstand. I always start here with every new skill that is being taught in handstands. It doesn’t matter what level. If you can understand and program the pattern of the skill you are trying to learn in a manner that doesn’t require you to be balancing on your hands then you will achieve that skill much faster and maintain the programming in your brain and body. I have written an entire e-book for this topic with some exercises for you to try. Just click on the link and fill out your name and email and you will receive and email with a collection of free ebooks.
Finding the balance point can be scary. If you stay on the side where you never get up then you will never do a handstand. Learning to fall and going to the other side of balance is really scary if you’re learning how to do a handstand as an adult. For online classes my number one priority is safety and everyone has a different set up where they’re training. With that in mind, in these classes we will work on finding that balance point in the safest way possible, making sure that any falling happens in a safe and controlled manner.
There are many exercises that you can do away from the wall to gain confidence. There are two things that need to happen in order to get your handstand away from the wall. The first is overcoming your fear of falling. That means you need to know how to fall properly and safely and it needs to be instinctual so that you don’t have to think about it when you need to execute. The second is confidence. Building up the foundation so that when you’re in a handstand it’s no longer just a happy accident, but you can do it on purpose.
Once you’re able to balance away from the wall, the next step in your handstand journey will be learning how to get a straight line. Part of this training is learning where everything is supposed to be, the tension required in the correct direction, and then how to fix it when something isn’t in the correct place. We will be workshopping all of the pieces of the line in different ways so that you can understand it from different perspectives.
There are so many different ways to get into a handstand. In this course we cover the basic entrances to be able to get into your handstand. From walking your feet up the wall to get into a wall handstand, to kicking up, and finally jumping up via tuck and straddle.
Endurance is always going to be the gate keeper for progressing to the next level. Your body will always understand the technique and have the strength to do each part of a handstand but without endurance you will be stuck. It’s not the funnest part of handstand training but it is the most valuable. If you can increase your endurance then you will be able to do the technique required for a longer amount of time before failing eccentrically. I have written an entire e-book for this topic with some exercises for you to try. Just click on the link and fill out your name and email and you will receive and email with a collection of free ebooks.
To qualify for the intermediate classes you must be able to consistently hold a 10 second handstand away from the wall. You also have to be experienced and comfortable with falling out of your handstand. We will be doing exercises that require you to be able to do a handstand away from the wall. We will work on entrances, exits, and movement in the handstand separately. This means that there will be focus brought to the specific part of the handstand that we are working on. If we try to do everything at once then all parts will suffer. That said, it is encouraged to play with putting pieces together during your own training outside of class.
Every time you learn a new shape in handstands you’re learning a brand new skill. Each shape requires a different counter balance or direction of tension. It’s also very easy to learn a shape that will plateau at that shape. If you learn what is required of each shape to benefit you for more advanced skills you can work with a better intension from the beginning. We will cover all of the basics including; tuck, straddle, pike, L-shape, front split, and double steg.
Transitions are moving from shape A to shape B. Once your body knows where the start position and end position is, you then have to learn the pathway to get from one to the other in the most efficient way possible so that you don’t mess with the rest of your handstand. It’s much easier to learn the correct path than it is to constantly having to fix your shape once you make it to shape B, or C, or D, etc. We will work on patterning and executing transitions between all of the basic shapes covered in the shapes course.
This is the most popular intermediate skill that people want to achieve. Once you can consistently jump into your handstand you want to learn how to press. In some ways a press to handstand makes the actual handstand easier to balance. You’re actually placing yourself in your handstand like stacking blocks from the floor up to the sky. When you jump you also have to fight against momentum if it takes you in the wrong direction, or if you don’t maintain the connections in your body to arrive at the perfect shape. It requires a lot of core strength and if you thought you had to push a lot before, you’re in for a surprise when you start training your press. Just remember that anytime you’re learning a next level handstand from where you are, it’s going to require more push.
In order to move up from intermediate to advanced you need to be able to hold a 30 second handstand away from the wall. The exercises we do require more control in your handstand and you will need to be up there for a while to work on the exercises. The intermediate classes will prepare you to be able to do the advanced classes.
This course is perfect for anyone that’s in their first year of their journey to a one arm handstand. It covers all the basics and foundations that you will need to be able to train your one arm handstand. If everyone in the class has handstand blocks then we cover exercises with blocks to better understand the one arm handstand. If not everyone has blocks then we do variations that can be done both with and without blocks. You will learn how to spot yourself with the wall, a chair, and (only if available to you) stall bars or a pole.
Once you can do your press to handstand from your feet, this is the next progression. You need to learn how to get from sitting to the start position that you’re familiar with. You also need to gain more endurance and more push strength. I know that’s what I say about every progression but that’s because it’s true. You need to learn how to press with your hands elevated higher than your feet. One of the best drills for training this is to do the movement eccentrically. That said, if you do it with the wrong intentions then you’re not going to get there very fast. Always make sure that even if you can’t perform a drill with perfect technique, that you at least know what perfect technique would look like if you’re doing it right and train with the intension that you’re doing that.
This is my absolute favourite thing to both train and teach. Flags are a bit of a body puzzle when you’re first learning them. They require flexibility that is really only trained when you’re training flags. It doesn’t really transfer information from anything else that you would be training. A side press is the first step towards a one arm press. It also passes through a flag. This is why I love to pair them together. There are progressions that you can do with two arms so don’t worry, you don’t need to have a one arm handstand to start learning how to flag.
*for help on handstands beyond what is offered in the advanced classes you will need to book one on one training with specific goals in mind