The Hand that Balances

Though it’s right there in the name, handbalancing, many do not know how important the actions in the hand are for balancing on them.

If you look at the hand of anyone who balances on their hands you will see that there are constant movements happening in the hand, wrist and forearm to adjust to the ever moving balance point.

This is a pretty complex process. So many times I’ve come across people who say they simply “cannot” balance with their hands. But obviously, it’s a skill so not everyone can pull it off immediately, but some can rough out some balance with very little training. Why is this and what can we learn from it?

Very often it comes down to either previous acrobatic experience, or just plain and simple strength in the arms. Having some adjacent skill related to being upside down affects your ability to coordinate in a handstand. Similarly, if you can produce a lot of power with your upper body, and specifically your forearms, you can often use it to force some seconds of balance.

While it’s easy to oversimplify balancing on your feet as a seemingly static point, there are constant movements happening in the feet, legs and hips to keep our balance there. We don’t notice it because we’ve spent most of our lives building up the strength and coordination of our foot muscles every time we stand and walk – it’s become second nature. But if you’ve ever walked on an unstable surface like sand or a slackline, you’ll rediscover the muscular sensations of those little movements again.

The same holds true for when we balance our hands. While anatomically our hands and arms share enough similarities to make standing on our hands possible, there are also some glaring differences that make it more difficult. Our hands are smaller than our feet and our shoulders rely much more on muscles for stability vs skeletal structure like our hips. But the most obvious difference is we do not use our hands to constantly control our balance, so the muscles don’t develop the same way our legs muscles do.

So for many who try to “use the hands” to control overbalance find no success, it’s because they can’t produce enough power with the forearms to be able to move the body! Think about how much weight you can calf raise. For many people they can move their entire bodyweight up and down on a single leg for multiple reps! Your forearm is your arm’s “calf”, think you can move the same amount of weight pushing your palm off the ground?

Now, this does not mean that a handstand is all about forearm power, but we need a certain amount of strength to to efficiently stop the body from falling forwards, especially from a legs together handstand. So for beginners, you are well off purely developing some strength here.

One of the best ways to build this strength is with heel pulls. In this exercise you are not even trying to balance, you are simply producing force through your forearms. This won’t magically give you a handstand by itself, but it will make sure that IF grip strength is part of your issue, it will be taken care of.

A small but quite effective finisher to your handstand sessions, or upper body lifting days, is included below. You want to be a bit pumped in the forearms when this is done! Give it a go for a few weeks and you will likely find you can correct overbalance more effectively.

-Mikael