Why you can't balance the handstand

My experience in the handstand world

I have been training the handstand for over 8 years. When I first began training the handstand it was quite unusual to do so. In recent years it has become a lot more common to train more circus and gymnastics oriented skills such as the handstand.

Throughout the years I have witnessed and taken notice of different trends and patterns in learning the handstand in various disciplines. I have made several observations that are quite interesting and can actually be the make or break of your handstand. 

The cool looking exercises are not the best!

One thing that I have noticed is that the most popular exercises are often the ones that look cool and give you a feeling of being able to do the skill you are training for. If you log onto Instagram you will get punched in the phase of people training the handstands, everyone is doing it.

But if you actually look through the person's feed you will notice that they are almost always doing the same exercise, and their handstand has not really progressed at all throughout the years.

The number one mistake people make

Why this happens is complicated and one would need to look at each individual person to see exactly what they are doing wrong. But from my 8 years of experience in training and coaching the handstand I have made a few observations of possible reasons for why this might be happening.

I believe that the number one reason why people can’t balance or hold the handstand is because they choose the wrong exercises and/or they do the exercise wrong. It’s as simple as that.

Do the right thing, and do it right

It doesn’t matter that you are doing the right thing, if you are not doing it right. And if you’re doing the wrong thing in the wrong way you are going to get fucked (not literally). One of the most popular exercises on Instagram is the L handstand...

The L-Handstand

This exercise is used often in Yoga as a progression for the full wall handstand and balancing freestanding without the wall. Like the name suggests you perform the exercise with your feet on the wall at roughly the height of your hips so your body shapes like an L. 

The exercise itself can be quite effective and I use a very close variation of it in my own coaching as a progression for the wall handstand. But if it is a good exercise, what is the problem with the L-handstand?

Well, like i mentioned before - partly the execution and also when one chooses to use it. The root of the problem is a lack of understanding of the basic principles of handbalancing. 

Center Of Mass Over Base Of Support

The most basic principle of balancing the handstand is that we need to place our center of mass over our base of support.

If we look at a person from the side standing on their feet and draw a vertical line from the middle of the foot and straight up, we can see that the weight is evenly distributed with 50% of the weight on one side of the line and 50% on the other side of the line.

If we lean too far forward the center of mass moves outside of the base of support (our feet) and then we fall forward (and might need to take a step to avoid falling). When we are practicing a handstand we need to train with our body's center of mass over our base of support, or what we call the balance point or point of balance.

This is where people mess up...

This is where 99% of people mess it up and stagnate in their development. For the L-handstand or any progression to transfer over to the freestanding handstand we need to place our center of mass over our hands. How do we do this?

We start from the bottom, and the first thing we are looking for is that the middle of the shoulder is above the middle of the hand.

Most people tend to lean far in towards the wall in a handstand, and what happens is that the distribution of the weight is wrong (if we want to center our mass over our hand, which we want). It’s common when using the L-Handstand to have almost all of your weight on your legs towards the wall, and none of the weight on your shoulders and upper back. 

The body always finds a way to complete the task

With this position of the shoulders we can’t balance, it’s impossible, and to practice this way only leads to frustration due to the lack of progress. The reason most people do this is a lack of understanding of balance and handbalancing in general.

But also due to a lack of strength in the shoulders and upper back. If we can’t hold ourselves up in a L handstand with the shoulders above the hands, our body will find an easier way to maintain the desired position.

The 'easiest' is not always the most 'effective'

The easiest way to hold a L handstand is to allow the shoulders to sink down, the ribs to flare out and the weight to move in towards the wall, this means that the shoulders need to hold less weight.

If we don’t practice the handstand with our shoulders placed above our hands we will not build the strength in the shoulders and upper back that is needed to balance the handstand freestanding. Instead we get stuck on the wall...

How we move forward from here?

Alright, so if you’re stuck on the wall or with your L handstand, what do you do? 

Well, we begin by learning and getting accustomed to the correct technique in a less loaded position. We stand in the same position but with our knees on the edge of a box. By placing a large majority of the weight on the box and legs, there is less load on the shoulders which allows us to practice the correct position first.

The idea is to teach the body the right position with less load and then successively increase the difficulty level. This way you can always maintain the correct position and in the long term improve your handstand. With the box we have the ability to adjust the difficulty level by either increasing or decreasing the height of the box. 

Choose the appropriate height

The higher your knees are the more difficult it becomes and vice versa. Choose a height that feels a little bit too easy and then begin to slowly increase the height by stacking yoga blocks or flipping the box. I mostly use boxes because that is the most easy for me at my gym, but you can use anything you have lying around at home. Just make sure that it’s stable and won’t slip.

Conclusion

There are many great exercises for learning to balance the handstand, but if you are using the wrong exercise in relation to your level it’s most likely that your progress will stall. The L handstand is a common exercise for creating unnecessary frustration with those who train it.

What’s important about the L handstand is that the center of mass is placed above the hands. We do this step by step from the bottom up, and the first is to make sure the middle of the shoulders are placed directly above the middle of the hand.

If we find it too heavy we can decrease the amount of load by placing our knees on a box or chair and train the handstand in this less demanding position before progressing to the L handstand or wall handstand - in a way that actually transfers over to balancing the handstand freestanding.