A great aspect of handstands is they are a minimalist, accessible, and personal pursuit. With COVID lockdowns keeping many of us away from our usual training spaces and groups, training at home has become the norm. We’ve noticed that for many people, this limitation has served as motivation to pick up handbalancing. On the flip side, we’ve also heard the complaints of more experienced handbalancers struggling to adjust to the constraints of training at home.
To help you make the most of handstands at home, we’ve outlined what you’ll need (it’s not much), the challenges you’ll encounter with some proposed solutions, and the surprising perks of training at home.
What You’ll Need
The main thing you need is free floor space and a free wall. A mistake people often make is only giving themselves enough room to kick up to a straight wall handstand. It’s wise to give yourself some space on either side so you can cartwheel down without kicking something. Having some room in front of the wall helps as well, especially for forward rolling bails with chest-to-wall handstands. Have an entry plan and an exit plan for your handstand space for the kind of handstand you’ll be doing, whether that be chest-to-wall, back-to-wall, or freestanding. Oh and watch for pets and children.
With the wall and spacing squared away, your next consideration should be your floor. Having a solid, flat surface where you can push with your fingertips will be key in both conditioning your fingers as well as correcting your balance. Hardwood and concrete floors generally meet these needs pretty well, but carpet will steal your stability. A simple solution for training on carpet (or concrete if the ground is cold) is a simple handstand plank. Any unfinished piece of wood will work. IKEA shelves, or plywood scraps from home improvement projects will work just fine.
Challenges of Training at Home
The first challenge, what if your home doesn’t have the space or equipment for handstands? Or don’t feel safe doing freestanding balances? Then a period like this is perfect for conditioning. Give yourself one goal. For example: if you can do a 30s chest-to-wall handstand, build up to doing a 60s wall handstand during your time at home. Other skills you can train in limited space are other things on your hands. These include: tuck planche, L-sit, croc, crane, crow, and press walks. All of these skills are transferrable to your main handbalancing practice and will condition our arms in new ways. Another perk of these skills is there is no falling risk, so you don’t have to face the fear of falling nor worry about breaking something in the room.
Mindset is another challenge, as the ritual of going to the gym is a powerful motivator for many. Well as the saying goes: “Motivation is fleeting. Discipline is forever.” So sticking to a training routine can become your new ritual. Importantly with this routine, focus on the start time, not the duration of your training. If you always start at 10am, even if you only train 15 minutes, that is better in aggregate than feeling intimidated and skipping a 60min+ session. Along with sticking to a schedule, having a dedicated training space can help prep you for consistent practice. With the many distractions at home, dedicating a section or a room for your training (which you’ll have needed to do to kick-up for your handstands) will help keep your focus.
Perks of Training at Home
Serving as the antithesis to the gym ritual, a notable perk with training at home is the time you gain and the flexibility in your schedule. Without needing to commute to a gym, that time can be spent training! You can also space your training differently, with “movement snacks” throughout the day, morning and evening sessions, or midday training. Be careful of overtraining with this newfound freedom, as your body will still need recovery time. Especially with handbalancing, which uses both small muscles and puts a lot of load into joints, rest is important to avoid overuse injuries. However, to not dissuade you from multiple sessions, we instead recommend varying your training. Following Emmet’s daily joint mobilizations video as one of your training blocks is a great way to gain some new mobility and get the blood flowing.
Having the opportunity to focus on yourself is another perk of training at home. According to Emmet, ten years ago a meme meme that went around the fitness world called ‘Cocoon mode.’ The idea was social interactions limit you in what you can do, so you cut out all social interactions. In doing so, you eat healthy, because you wouldn’t be eating out or drinking. You could get more rest too, since you’re not staying out late with friends. You cut out social media and games as well. And in lieu of your social life, you’d focus on getting in shape and skill acquisition. Then you’d emerge from your cocoon as a beautiful jacked butterfly. So when you’re in a position where you’re training from home, you can take it as step further and “cocoon”, dedicate all your time specifically to a couple goals, to emerge a better version of yourself later.
On the other hand, if social isolation is the opposite of what you want, you can easily turn group video chats into training sessions. Maybe even reconnect to old friend who live in other cities, and use training as a way to consistently socialize and motivate each other. But this amazing tech isn’t limited to friends. Due to COVID, many handbalancing coaches and professional handbalancers have shifted to online coaching. So if you’ve dreamed of training under someone, now might the opportune time.
Whether you’re in a COVID mandated lockdown, hotel-hopping for work, or just don’t want to spend the money or effort going to a gym, handstands will be there for you! Just free up some space, set a routine, and focus in on skills you can safely train.