The Handstand Kick Up
The way you kick to handstand really affects how difficult it is to find your balance at the top.
You’ve probably realised by now how specifically technical, learning to handstand really is!
Well, it’s the same for kicking to handstand. It’s not a case of, I’ll just try it, not really think about it, repeat it again and again and eventually I’ll get it. (You can do this but it will take you years, so not the best option in our opinion!)
Learning to handstand is a process, a journey, it’s not just the end goal that’s important. However, we feel that a large part of enjoying that journey comes from making progress. This is why we teach handstands in the most effective way possible so that you can enjoy your journey AND reach your destination.
Many people who DO take the route of just kick up, try to hold and repeat, will NOT succeed.
And the ones that ARE obsessed enough to push past wanting to give up multiple times (or even giving up multiple times and picking it up again)… When they DO finally find the right information and implement it, they often wish they’d done it YEARS ago.
That’s why we’re giving you this information. We don’t want you to get frustrated by wasting years trying and failing.
We’ve spent over a decade collecting and creating correct information about handstands and we’re SO METICULOUS in the way we share this information with you because we really want you to SUCCEED!
Kicking to handstand is something we get asked about A LOT and it’s also something most other coaches don’t address properly and/or place enough importance on. It’s actually extremely technical and the mechanics of it are essential to understand in order to be able to execute it consistently.
One of the most common questions we get is… ‘What’s the best way to learn to kick to handstand, starting with your hands on the floor OR starting with your arms above your head and lunging in?’
We coach people with a very specific technique for many reasons and it’s been a GAME CHANGER for our students! (You can check out their results on our Instagram Highlights!)
There IS a technique to it, a method that looks super clean AND will give you the best chance of finding your balance at the top.
That technique is the long lunge kick rather than the short lunge kick. And the reason we think starting with your hands on the floor is worse than starting with your hands in the air to LEARN this move is because it forces you to do a short lunge when a long lunge is better.
Reasons why having your arms above your head and doing a long lunge kick to handstand is better:
- You have a straighter body shape throughout the kick.
- Your muscles are more engaged so there is less movement that is unhelpful during your kick.
- With less movement, you are more like one object pivoting like a seesaw, which makes it MUCH easier in good alignment at the top.
- It’s easier to judge if you’ve got too much momentum or not enough.
- You also have more time to be aware of if you’ve got too much momentum or not enough. This allows you to smaller adjustments earlier instead of bigger adjustments later.
- The momentum of your body is going along and up rather than down, which means there is less impact in your shoulders and it’s easier to maintain/achieve good alignment.
Reasons why the short lunge kick to handstand is worse:
- You have a more bent body shape during the kick up.
- This causes more movement in the body, so it’s harder to arrive in good alignment.
- It’s harder to judge if you’ve got too much or not enough momentum.
- You have less time to be aware of if you’ve got too much or not enough momentum, so you end up making bigger adjustments later.
- The momentum of your body is going down into the floor so there is an impact in your shoulders, which makes it harder to maintain/achieve good alignment. (If you’re starting with your hands on the floor, this one doesn’t happen.)
So for all of those reasons, we think learning to kick to handstand starting with your arms above your head and using a long lunge is the most efficient technique!
Obviously, when you’ve mastered it, you can do it however you like because you know exactly where you need to end up and how to ensure you get there.