How I Learned to Handstand
Handstand, one of the most famous callisthenics techniques. It is also the base or you can say the foundation of several other techniques like handstand pushups.
I am writing this blog to share my experience on how I started and how I was able to learn to handstand. I am going to assure you that after reading this blog you are going to get that handstand if put in a little bit of effort😁.
How It all started
It was in my 8th grade if I remember, that I came across this technique. When I saw that I thought to myself “Wow, that is so cool.” Not only that, I remember my cousin and my brother walking on their hands and performing acrobatics way before my 8th grade. I too wanted to do that. That is when I started.
Sadly, that passion did not last that long. Just 3 days later I gave up — just like that, thinking to myself “Maybe I cannot do this🤷♀️”.
Fast forward to the June of 2021, It’s been like more than 4 years since I gave up. My college was about to reopen after the pandemic started slowly becoming passive. I had 7 days till the reopening. I was most productive when it came to learning in terms of coding and all. I spent my time learning and watching anime and exercising to stay in shape.
It was fine but I wanted to learn a new skill. Since I have been coding since 11th grade and I was exercising for more than a year. I wanted to do something so that I could be satisfied that I learned something new this time.
Not only that I was not active on my Youtube channel. I wanted to post something. That was when I got the idea that I could post about my progression. I immediately remembered my plan on learning to handstand.
So, in the time span of 7 days, I had to learn, to handstand. I did a lot of mistakes and I want you guys to avoid those mistakes. I am going to tell you how you can learn to handstand effectively.
P.S: It took me more than a month to handstand properly.
My college postponed the time to reopen. And It took more than 2 months for them to reopen.
I have to say I was super happy that I did not give up this time😁😊with all the time that I had, I sure did put it into use.
So, there are some steps that you should follow in order to achieve the handstand.
DEVELOP SHOULDER STRENGTH
It should be quite intuitive, that we need shoulder strength in order to handstand. But the question is, What can you do to increase your shoulder strength?
There are a lot of ways through which you can enhance your strength. You can do the pike hold, pike pushups, elevated pike pushups or just your regular pushup.
I will say that you keep doing these until you are able to hold your pike hold for at least 30 sec. (This is not set in stone, I am just sharing what I did)
Once you are able to hold for 30 sec, then it’s time to move on to the next step.
HANDSTAND KICK-UPS
Now that we have the strength, we will get into the handstand position.
Before that, you need to know how to get into that position. What we will do is that we will do an exercise called handstand kickups. In this, you kick yourself up onto the wall. Then come back immediately. The goal here is for you to learn to get to the wall in a controlled fashion.
So start out with your hands placed shoulder-width wide. I want you to see in the top middle of both your hands forming a triangle.
Then when you kick, first let your hips go, followed by the legs. This should let you have a proper balance and control of the movement.
As you can see in the above gif the hips are moving first followed by my legs. Do this until you have a controlled motion. Because in the next step you have to do it without the wall.
So, if you cannot control the motion you will fall on your back hurting yourself😅
MAINTAINING BALANCE
The main factor of a handstand is to maintain balance. If we look at our feet. It has a bulge i.e is the heel in the back which helps in maintaining the balance. But we do the handstand with our wrists and they definitely don’t have any heels in the back. So, it is impossible to balance as we do with our feet.
As our wrists don’t have any heels we need to depend on our fingers. When we squeeze the ground with our fingers our legs will move from the wall and when we release we will fall on the wall.
This is the one that will take most of the time. Your fingers need to get used to that pressure. Take it easy and don’t rush it. The above gif is just for reference please don’t make fun of me😅
GETTING DOWN FROM THE HANDSTAND
This is one of the most important things when learning a handstand. When we do something like dissembling a gadget or any other thing we do it with ease, when it comes to reassembling them we don’t know how to do it.
You know how to get into the handstand position but cannot come back to normal position then you are in the same situation. So, that is why it is important to learn this.
First I want you to come away from the floor and get into the base position (form a triangle with the wrists and eye) then just give a little jump(you don’t need to go all the way) and see which side is comfortable for you the right or left when you fall.
Now that you decided on a side, the next thing to note is the technique.
As you can see when I am about to fall, I am twisting my lower body to the right and get down. This will be intimidating at first, so feel free to use somebody’s help until you are confident that you can do it on your own.
Now that we know all the basics, you just need to combine them. I recommend you do this with the help of a wall. Until you are confident. I don’t want you guys to hurt yourself while doing it.
Here is a video of my handstand for getting you motivated😋😎 and for your reference as well
I hope that you found this useful and were able to learn at least a little bit. If you liked my work then don’t forget to follow me on Medium and YouTube, for more content on productivity, self-improvement, Coding, and Tech.
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