Day 5

“If you’re afraid to fall, you fall because you’re afraid.”

– Daniel Ilabaca

This quote by the legendary parkour athlete Daniel Ilabaca can also impart some wisdom to handbalancing.

Falling can be scary.  But within handbalancing it can be a particularly worrisome prospect because your feet, which usually catch you, are far away while your head is much closer to the ground.  We’re upside-down, discombobulated, and struggling against our very nature in some important respects.

But we’ll let you in on a secret, EVERYONE who handstands falls, literally every time. As far as we know there’s no one who went into a handstand and permanently gave up using their feet, staying perpetually on their hands. Experienced handbalancers merely transition their fall into a graceful shift to their feet.

The shortcoming of many handbalancing teachers and methods is they don’t graduate the skill of falling in the same way they gradually progress other elements of handbalancing.  You don’t have to start with a freestanding handstand to roll or a plie out. Yet these tamer progressions seem to be underutilized.

In today’s session we’ll introduce some of these more approachable, overlooked bailing drills.

Training Routine

Here we first revisit the back-to-wall handstand and grip work from Day 1. From this day onwards, we’ll begin to focus more heavily on learning how to fall safely from handstand. As such, the second drill is a coordinative exercise which might require some training to do well. First off focus on shifting the weight from side to side between your hands. Once that is stable and safe you want to take a step forwards while allowing the body to rotate a little.

We finish up with “heel pulls”. Heel pulls is an exercise where we do not think about balance at all, but simply strengthen grip by pushing so hard with the fingers so that we fall down from handstand. This should be pretty tough on the forearms.

Back-to-Wall Handstand

Key Details:

  • Strong engaged traps and shoulders during the kick-up⁠
  • Kick-up is controlled to lightly touch the wall (this will come with practice)⁠
  • Hands, shoulders, and hips stacked in a line⁠
  • Legs in a “Y” to balance each other out and minimize arching⁠
  • Steady press with the fingers to separate from the wall and balance⁠

Description:
This exercise tends to get a bit of a bad rep, as people can easily arch their back and fall into less efficient form.⁠
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If done with the correct intent and setup though – with shoulders and hips placed properly – it is incredibly useful to teach us how to use our fingers in the handstand.⁠
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The end goal of this drill is to kick-up with so much control that your heel doesn’t actually touch the wall at all, but just hovers right next to it.⁠
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As one gets stronger and more comfortable with that, as well as more comfortable with bailing out of a handstand, then moving on to more freestanding work becomes much easier!⁠

Wall Turns

Description:
Big deal for a lot of beginners and a huge hurdle to pass for many. This fear is also something that can be hard to relate to as a coach who has had an intuitive falling method for years. ⁠
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This is a practical setup for learning the fall from a rather safe setup. You get comfortable with each part before moving to the next. Find out first what hand you would want to move. In general this will be the 2nd hand you place on the floor when doing a cartwheel.⁠
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First you just shift weight and walk your hand out from the wall so its at a diagonal or in front of your supporting hand. Legs can keep a lot of weight on wall.⁠
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Next you bring 1 leg from the wall and step with the hand. When you get comfortable, try to pull the leg off first and respond to the shift in weight with the hand after.⁠
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Once this is doable, cartwheel down from the wall with the same setup. The cartwheel doesn’t need to be pretty, in a line, with straight legs or anything like that. Before anything it needs to be safe. Over time this will become an intuitive movement you will be able to exit your handstand from, resulting in the fear simply disappearing.⁠

Heel Pull Corrections

Key Details:

  • No pushing off the wall with the feet; if you feel you have to push, set up closer to the wall.
  • Push the fingers into the ground to move the body.
  • Pay attention to the three different stages and master each one in turn.

Description:
We have two main corrections for the freestanding handstand, one for over and one for underbalance. This correction applies to overbalance, (i.e. leaning backwards). It is easier than correcting underbalance.

This drill trains your finger and forearm strength for handbalancing; it is also essential for developing a strong sense of balance on your hands.

We coach this exercise in three stages. First, we teach you to apply sustained pressure with your fingers; this sustained fingertip pressure pulls your heels off the wall and down to the floor.

Second, when you feel you can balance, squeeze your fingers with just enough pressure to come off the wall, hold the balance, and then squeeze the fingers again to come back down to standing. Third, try to find your balance and then, instead of coming down to the floor, go back to the wall into your initial setup position.

In this setup, it is likely that you might start finding a good balance and alignment. When this happens, we suggest just going for it and trying to hold as long as you can. It will begin to happen as you get past the complete beginner stage, but it is important not to chase them. Sometimes it just happens, enjoy it, but then on your next set get back to what you were doing and avoid ditching the training for chasing balances that may or may not happen.