Mad Hatter does handstands

[Mad Hatter]

It seems like two days in a row away from handstands is too much. Though admittedly not eating enough for a whole day and skipping breakfast might also have contributed to a low energy session.  I couldn't seem to get my body to do anything and then my friend made coffee and it smelled really good and I said screw it. I did one set of pushups, a little bit of wall work, and then I messed around with trying to stay up while wildly flailing my legs.

 

 

I really, really want to train properly today but I woke up with a little twinge in my trap. Fingers crossed it will go away in a few hours!

[KB Girl]

On 10/11/2019 at 6:21 AM, Mad Hatter said:

I don't have to do a lot to benefit!

This, truly! 

[Elastigirl]

Looks like a fun handstand play session! 

[Mad Hatter]

15 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Looks like a fun handstand play session! 

Yeah! If proper handstands don't work at least I can still mess around.  

[Mad Hatter]

Finally got back to handstands proper! My trap still doesn't feel 100% but it doesn't seem to affect handstands toooo much. My whole left shoulder felt a little unstable and in general I had a very hard time finding the lock today, which was very noticeable in my tuck jumps which didn't really work. But even if my handstands didn't feel very good, my times were still 20-40s once I managed to kick up properly, which of course I'm very happy with. And I got another near minute handstand! By my count in my head, I need to get one of those on video so I can prove it to myself haha.

[WhiteGhost]

Nice! sometimes it is hard to gauge how things are by feeling alone.  Having the count seconds go up is always nice to give more objective feedback

[Mad Hatter]

14 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Nice! sometimes it is hard to gauge how things are by feeling alone.  Having the count seconds go up is always nice to give more objective feedback

Hmm interesting you say that as I actually find time to not be that interesting a metric.  Well, it's interesting at the moment because one minute somehow feels like a milestone marker. And also because there's a recommendation in seconds for starting the program when it arrives, so most of my focus has been to get to that point. But generally speaking a shorter handstand that feels really good, meaning I'm using better technique and am (relatively) still, excites me more than a longer hold with poorer technique or when I have to fight a lot. At that point time becomes mostly a metric of endurance, when I'm more interested in efficiency. Not just to be able to do more fancy handstand things, but also for shoulder health, which is important to me long term. But of course they go hand in hand, the more endurance I have, the more time I get on my hands for practicing technique.  

[@mu]

Nice flailing! For your trap twinge, have you tried a lacrosse ball on the rhomboid, and then on the trap with arm extensions? These 2 really help me when I get a knot in there (I can it feel up to the neck sometimes).

For HS hold counts, for a while my internal counts were usually over the real ones. I'd say banana 1 banana 2, then oh I need to lock my left arm, banana 3, damn I'm starting to fall over, banana 4, banana 5, not pikiiiing, banana 5 or banana 6? where was I? ok banana 5 to be safe, banana 6  and so on But in recent times, I have been getting a bit more accurate.

[Mad Hatter]

5 hours ago, @mu said:

Nice flailing! For your trap twinge, have you tried a lacrosse ball on the rhomboid, and then on the trap with arm extensions? These 2 really help me when I get a knot in there (I can it feel up to the neck sometimes).

Yeah it's great for regular knots and tightness! This was more of a slight pull and pressure would only aggravate it. But it's ok, it only lasted a day or two.  

 

5 hours ago, @mu said:

 For HS hold counts, for a while my internal counts were usually over the real ones. I'd say banana 1 banana 2, then oh I need to lock my left arm, banana 3, damn I'm starting to fall over, banana 4, banana 5, not pikiiiing, banana 5 or banana 6? where was I? ok banana 5 to be safe, banana 6  and so on  

Hahaha I do that too sometimes.

[Mad Hatter]

Garbage frustrating handstand day. Oh well, such is life.

[WhiteGhost]

On 10/17/2019 at 12:09 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Hmm interesting you say that as I actually find time to not be that interesting a metric.

Ha, it seems we have quite different outlooks on handstanding  For me, time upright and form/control are extremely highly correlated so for me it makes a very useful metric.

 

3 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Garbage frustrating handstand day. Oh well, such is life.

Handstands are easily one of the most arbitrary skills I can think of.  Most stuff either you can do it or you can't

[Mad Hatter]

17 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Ha, it seems we have quite different outlooks on handstanding  For me, time upright and form/control are extremely highly correlated so for me it makes a very useful metric.

No disagreement there, I'm just in a period where my strength and endurance are improving quite a lot, which means I'm even more capable of doing my crazy seaweeding and still stay up, which is a habit I'm trying to get rid of and not encourage. The stronger you are the more inefficient you can get away with.  It's also since I discovered what the locked shoulder position is supposed to feel like, but which I can't hit consistently. So for me it's important to try to find that even for short time periods, in order to build endurance in that locked position too, which will hopefully eventually translate to longer and more efficient handstand overall. But that's my focus right now. Time is still very useful for seeing trends though, at least until I start working more on shapes and transitions, when there will be a new set of metrics.  

 

17 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Handstands are easily one of the most arbitrary skills I can think of.  Most stuff either you can do it or you can't

It's so weird. Handstanding is a great teacher in patience and letting go.  

[Tobbe]

On 9/24/2019 at 6:42 AM, Mad Hatter said:

I made a note to watch it in 4 weeks.  

I've seen some interesting performances by her before though, is that the Alice in wonderland one? If so it's amazing! Such a cool way of interacting with both the video and the apparatus. I often find video rather distracting, when they movement is not really related to the screen.

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

18 hours ago, Tobbe said:

 

 

Ah thanks for the reminder, that was amazing! I love how effective really simple pole tricks become in this context and just the creativity overall.  

[Mad Hatter]

I had a great handstand moment today! I was working on my straddle handstands in the office gym as per unusual, with so so results. Suddenly my boss peeks in together with a guy who's about to be interviewed, just as I was getting into my straddle, and my internal dialog goes something like

 

- Oh shit, oh shit, someone's watching, don't fuck up.

- I should say something, ok let's try hello

- Score! I didn't fall down while talking, ok, ok, make the straddle nice

- Don't fall, don't fall, let's impress him etc etc

 

And it totally worked, I was very pleased with myself. 

 

Overall it was a very short session today, as I didn't want to fry out my shoulders. 

BUT I managed to get into a handstand both via tuck and straddle entries! It's very shaky, but my nemeses are going down!

[Mad Hatter]

Ok this is a bit out of order now, but on Monday I also did handstands, though I don't think it was a very productive session.

 

Tuesday was class.

 

Warm up

• Ball on a string exercise 1: Standing, following with the hand
• Ball on a string exercise 2: Kneeling, following with the hand
• Medicine ball exercise 1: Holding the ball with straight arms we'd make big circles. I was surprised how quickly it got heavy!
• Medicine ball tosses
• Medicine ball tosses catching with one hand
• Medicine ball tosses catching with one hand, but catching it with hands as when carrying a tray rather than underhand, so you had to catch it then balance it.

Drills

•  Straight HS to tuck HS repeats against the wall
• Tuck jump entries against the wall - I was very pleased with that I've managed to unlock them just in time for this class! 
• Straddle handstands bringing the hands close together. First against the wall, then I tried freestanding, but I struggled getting into the straddle, so I think I only got one attempt at the hand switch. 

So for this class I was partnered up with this guy, and whenever we work together (fairly often) I always feel like he's constantly trying to justify why he's not as strong as me, and it's kinda annoying, though I don't think he's doing it on purpose. Either way, what it did make me realise is that I need to start practicing these drills without the wall. It's a little awkward though, because I'm in this weird middle ground where I can do all the wall drills well, I rarely get corrections, my form's good and all that, but they are still too hard to do freestanding. Especially when it's "multistep" drills, like getting into a straight HS, then straddle, then bringing the hands together. The likelihood that I'll reach step 3 is rather low. But I'm going to try to take at least some drills off the wall.

 

 

As an aside, one of the women in the group were used to demo the HS line in straddle and she pressed into it and MY GOSH was it pretty. So clean. It helps a lot that her no warm up straddle is pretty much 180 degrees and her active HS straddle not far from. No I'm not jealous.  

 

[@mu]

13 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

And it totally worked, I was very pleased with myself. 

 

YES

 

 

The bit with hands together sounds pretty hard. Great progress on tuck and straddle jumps! Not sure why you had this block, I recall you were doing cartwheel entries at some point, and to me that looks harder! Actually I cannot do one leg after the other on parallettes at all, I just can't get enough power from that entry. I know it's possible I have seen @Raptron do it

 

13 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

As an aside, one of the women in the group were used to demo the HS line in straddle and she pressed into it and MY GOSH was it pretty. So clean.

it's such a pretty move

[Mad Hatter]

16 minutes ago, @mu said:

The bit with hands together sounds pretty hard. Great progress on tuck and straddle jumps! Not sure why you had this block, I recall you were doing cartwheel entries at some point, and to me that looks harder! Actually I cannot do one leg after the other on parallettes at all, I just can't get enough power from that entry. I know it's possible I have seen @Raptron do it

I really don't know. When I asked about it last year I think, the teacher suspected it was because of fear. But I couldn't do it even with mats or with a wall. Now I've been doing a few sets each session against the wall just in case it was fear, but I don't think it is was that, because yesterday when I tried in the middle of the floor it felt exactly the same. Had it been fear I'd expect going back a step or two when trying it freestanding.

Rather I think it's more about figuring out the mechanics of it. Since I don't have the strength to hold a super tight, shins vertical tuck, or a very piked straddle, I have to compensate by arching my back a little. Now I can feel first my shoulders pushing hard, but once I tip my pelvis, my upper back kicks in, and before that didn't use to happen. I'd only get to a position just shy of balance, and then fall back to my feet.

Getting stronger and more stable stable shoulders and spending more time in tuck and straddle even against the wall didn't hurt either.

Then again that last little extra bit doesn't feel heavier than not doing it, and it doesn't require extra power in the kick. Dunno. Bodies are weird. Skill building is weird.

 

Interesting that you struggle with the single leg kick up on parallettes. In this case I think it's a case of kicking harder. At least that's what I found when I was doing a handspring drill where we had to kick up into a handstand with the hands elevated. I also found that lunging more helped, to get more power from the bottom leg as opposed to only swinging the top leg. And that it requires a hella more power than you think.

[Mad Hatter]

Wednesday

 

Two weeks without acro is too long. My baby seed of aerial awareness was nowhere to be found and I spent most of the class confused. I worked mostly on front tucks and a few minutes on penny drops. I feel like there's the take off, then the landing, with a huge blank in the middle. Which means that jump, then tuck is one instruction too many for my brain to process. It's one or the other. But it was a lot of fun.

 

We did a great warm up exercise in the parkour section of the gym. We didn't know what would happen, we only got told to find ourselves an obstacle to start from, so I stepped onto a small box, maybe 20 cm heigh, standing room only. Then the teacher started calling out body parts and our job was to touch said body part on the floor, without using any other body part, and then get back up. I tend to do rather well at these weird human puzzles, but I struggled at getting back up with my butt touching the floor, and belly button was impossible. It was great.

[raptron]

On 10/23/2019 at 12:00 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Especially when it's "multistep" drills, like getting into a straight HS, then straddle, then bringing the hands together. The likelihood that I'll reach step 3 is rather low. But I'm going to try to take at least some drills off the wall.

Yeah, there is a definitely a point where the wall drills aren't really transferrable anymoreeee. With partner spotting, you'll definitely see more gains free-standing (or free-standing assisted). That does sound like a complex combination though! 

 

11 hours ago, @mu said:

The bit with hands together sounds pretty hard. Great progress on tuck and straddle jumps! Not sure why you had this block, I recall you were doing cartwheel entries at some point, and to me that looks harder! Actually I cannot do one leg after the other on parallettes at all, I just can't get enough power from that entry. I know it's possible I have seen @Raptron do it

11 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Interesting that you struggle with the single leg kick up on parallettes. In this case I think it's a case of kicking harder. At least that's what I found when I was doing a handspring drill where we had to kick up into a handstand with the hands elevated. I also found that lunging more helped, to get more power from the bottom leg as opposed to only swinging the top leg. And that it requires a hella more power than you think.

I find it less tiring and easier to control than jumping with two feet, weirdly enough, haha. I definitely approach it a lot like a handspring kick though, which is something I do a lot, so that's probably why it's comfortable to me! 

 

10 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

We did a great warm up exercise in the parkour section of the gym. We didn't know what would happen, we only got told to find ourselves an obstacle to start from, so I stepped onto a small box, maybe 20 cm heigh, standing room only. Then the teacher started calling out body parts and our job was to touch said body part on the floor, without using any other body part, and then get back up. I tend to do rather well at these weird human puzzles, but I struggled at getting back up with my butt touching the floor, and belly button was impossible. It was great.

Ahhh, that sounds so fun.

[WhiteGhost]

I have noticed that single leg kick ups are much easier to get up, but I often go too far and have to correct.  Double leg kick ups are much more of a struggle, but I am more likely to get into a balanced position from the beginning

[Mad Hatter]

On 10/24/2019 at 8:24 PM, raptron said:

Yeah, there is a definitely a point where the wall drills aren't really transferrable anymoreeee. With partner spotting, you'll definitely see more gains free-standing (or free-standing assisted). That does sound like a complex combination though! 

They're not immediately transferrable, but I still find them very useful. They make sure I build strength in the right places and that I don't cheat by shifting my body position the wrong way.  But I do need to take things off the wall a bit more, and add more transitions in my own practice.

 

On 10/24/2019 at 8:24 PM, raptron said:

I find it less tiring and easier to control than jumping with two feet, weirdly enough, haha. I definitely approach it a lot like a handspring kick though, which is something I do a lot, so that's probably why it's comfortable to me! 

Make sense!

 

On 10/24/2019 at 8:24 PM, raptron said:

Ahhh, that sounds so fun.

These kinds of exercises/puzzles are my favourite!  

 

17 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I have noticed that single leg kick ups are much easier to get up, but I often go too far and have to correct.  Double leg kick ups are much more of a struggle, but I am more likely to get into a balanced position from the beginning

Oh interesting observation! It does make sense though as the centre of gravity is lowered when you jump into a tuck or straddle.