The Famous Banana Handstand
The banana handstand is the most common mistake of all handstands. If you sink into your shoulders or in other words if they close they create an angle. In order for your weight to stay on top of your hands your back is going to arch automatically to make up for said angle. Your body arches backwards and basically turns into a banana.
The easy answer here is simply to stretch the shoulders more to open them up and to get rid of the angle. Whilst this method will theoretically work it is slow and not exactly fun. I definitely recommend stretching the shoulders to slowly open them up over time but these passive stretches should be paired with active shoulder openers to develop specific coordination and strength.
Make these kinds of drills part of your daily warm up routine. They do not have to take more than 10 min to show results within the first few weeks to months.
You forget about
your legs
Your legs make up about half of your body when standing upside down on your hands. We constantly talk about the shoulders and even the core but we rarely address the legs when it comes to handstands.
This makes no sense. You have to learn to engage your legs and to tighten them up as you train. Point your feet (or fully flex them if you must. Just make sure they are not loose). If your feet are loose and relaxed so will your calves be. If they wobble so will the hamstrings and ultimately the glutes. This won’t help stability and pull you down!
Handstands are not easy. There is a lot to think about and a lot to coordinate. You have to control your shoulders, your hip position, your balance and even your thoughts. If on top of that you also have to think about your legs we can be almost sure that things will not work out in the end.
Isolate your legs from your inversion training. Work coordination and conditioning drills on your back and later in a headstand or forearm stand before repeating the same drills on your hands. Squeeze your legs as hard as possible. It should feel as if you were trying to push the water out of your legs. Your legs have to be in complete auto pilot every time you get upside down. Make it part of your ritual. As soon as your hands hit the floor your legs have to get super tight.
You pike at
the hips
As mentioned multiple times, Handstands are hard. Our body naturally constantly attempts to make things easier. The more we lean into the fingertips the more control we have. At the same time the more we lean into the fingers the heavier the handstand feels.
The body’s way of reducing pressure on the hands is to simply pike at the hips. You pike little enough to keep the weight on top of the hands and to remain in a handstand yet you pike enough to unload the hands and make everything feel significantly lighter and easier.
The problem is that you are trading pain for control. Yes, your handstand will be less exhausting but at the same time you lose all control.
In a handstand we only have fingertips in 1 direction meaning we only can maneuver our handstand in 1 direction. Picture yourself standing upright on your feet with a weight overhead. Our toes point in 1 direction. As long as we lean into the toes we feel safe with lots of control. As soon as our overhead weight travels towards the back and the weight swaps into the heels we are in trouble. Leaning into the toes is exhausting. Leaning too far back is dangerous as you will fall over. If someone asked you to stand with the weight overhead for as long as possible you would probably work on finding this sweet spot where you have enough control whilst saving as much energy as possible.
On your hands it will be the same. If you want to make sure you don’t fall, if you want to swap between positions or if you want to move onto one hand you will put all weight into the fingertips. If you want to stand as long as possible in just a straight handstand you might pike just a tiny little bit to bring the weight out of the fingertips and ease pressure. Yet, keep in mind that you are staring down a cliff and you are always just a tiny moment away from falling.
Bonus: You are doing
the wrong progressions
All good explanations and excuses aside there is one main reason why many can’t get stable on their hands: It is because you are simply not ready to hold a freestanding handstand.
The problem is lack of training, technical understanding and progressions. You’ve spent your entire life on your feet walking upright. Now all of a sudden you want to turn around and do the same thing on your hands. This will take time. You need to build very specific muscles and new nerve endings. Your brain needs to get used to the new stimulus. This does not happen overnight and should not be rushed. Remember learning to ride a bike, to swim or to drive? This all took time before it became second nature. Your handstands are the same. They will get easier over time. You will build awareness, coordination and strength but you need to give your body said time!
Here is some tough love: If 4 out of 5 handstands in your workout are failing you are not training handstands. You are falling. You have to make changes to your routine. Head back to the wall or grab a tall box and work on chest to wall progressions and take offs. As long as you are not stable close to the wall you can not expect to be successful without the wall when you have to add the mount into the equation.
Handstands are interesting. Handstands are fun. Filming and truly analyzing your own practice can help a lot. It is quite incredible for me how much one can improve stability and ultimately handstand success with just a few technical tweaks and adjustments.
It is vital to keep in mind that these tweaks and adjustments are only possible if the technical level of the athlete is already quite high. There is no shame if you are not there yet. Train progressions that are appropriate for your current level to make sure you get the most out of each practice and do not waste any precious time.
