Handstand Progression
Handstand progression is a popular topic. There’s a lot of misinformation around, especially useless drills that don’t actually promote progression, so it’s hard to know which route is best to take to get you the results you want. This is the main reason why it’s difficult for people to make proper progress. We created How To Handstand to combat this, to put the handstand world to rights and to help you make ACTUAL progress!
A common mistake people make is thinking that doing a few drills over and over again will get them to their goal of doing this move. Pure repetition of something is ONE route to achieve that thing but it is NOT the most optimal route as it will take you a LOT of time to get good results.
The other issue with this route is not knowing whether the few drills you keep repeating are ACTUALLY helping you get closer to your goal. You might find out months into your journey that those drills you have been doing have not been helping you to progress much then you’ve wasted time. Many people don’t find out that what they’re doing is unhelpful and end up giving up, disheartened by a lack of progress
We’re here to tell you that a better way to make progress is to train the ‘platinum links’, the things that will get you the most ‘bang for your buck’. THIS route will get you twice as good in half the time. By training this way, you’ll get less frustrated, you will need less motivation, you will need less willpower and you will continue to have fun because you’re seeing progress and results!
If you’re thinking, ‘That makes sense and sounds great but HOW do I know what those platinum links are?’
Well, that’s a good point!
If you don’t have EXPERT knowledge and understanding about a skill, it’s really hard to know what the platinum links are for that skill.
Who’s more likely to have the answers, someone who’s studied, researched, tested and perfected for YEARS or someone who’s completely new to the skill and doesn’t really know where to start?
So if you want to make PROPER PROGRESS then it’s CRITICAL to find EXPERTS (that you trust) who DO have that knowledge and understanding. They’ve done all that work for you, so you don’t have to spend every training session trying to work out whether the things you are doing are really the things that will help you progress the fastest.
Dedicated Practice vs Blind Repetition
Dedicated practice is one of the most effective ways to improve. Many people just blindly repeat drills but, when learning a skill, Dedicated Practice beats Blind Repetition every time and it’s important to understand this.
Even though the person who just kicks up and tries to hold a handstand, again and again, will eventually get it, the person that trains intelligently (with dedicated practice) can achieve it in less than half the time.
There was a study, involving chess, to determine why some players were better than other players, despite practising for the same amount of time. It was found that the better players were spending 50% of their time studying chess theory (dedicated practice), whilst the less good players were only spending 10% of their time studying the game with 90% of their time spent playing the game (blind repetition).
The difference in skill level was due to HOW they practised not how MUCH they practised (quality not quantity).
This is also the case when doing specific drills. The person who does the drill with focus (actively trying to do the correct movement every second of each repetition) will achieve much greater results than the person who just ‘completes’ the drill without focus.
If this all sounds a bit overwhelming, don’t worry! We’ve done a lot of the work for you by designing a step by step course that will take you straight towards your goals. (we know you’re busy, we’ve got your back ;) ) It’s very easy to follow, all you need to do is decide to do it!