Climbing and handstands don’t seem to have much in common, but if the likes or Shauna Coxsey and Alex Megos do them, it’s a clear sign you should do them too. Arm balances are indeed a great Instagram pleaser and a stellar party trick in one and there’s even more to them than that.
Why do handstands?
Some 16 months ago I visited my physiotherapist with yet another shoulder niggle. I got an hour of very expensive torture followed by tips on rehab and prehab. That was when my physio asked me, “do you even handstand”? Well, I didn’t, and I was told that as a climber I most definitely should.
The crude explanation goes something like this: as climbers, we constantly exercise our shoulders by hanging and pulling on them. The easiest way to balance this out is by loading the joins in the opposite direction. It’s like a very complex antagonist exercise that targets not one muscle but the whole shoulder girdle and forearms. [continued below image]
Being able to perform a technically correct gymnastic handstand is also a good way to measure the general condition of the body. Here are the prerequisites for a decent handstand:
- Upper body and core strength
- Body awareness, from hands to the tips of your toes
- Strong, healthy wrists
- Shoulder and thoracic spine mobility
If you then play with some variations, like straddle to handstand, or pike to handstand, you will also have to get very flexible, and develop traps of steel.
Setting off on the weird and wonderful path to arm balances you will have to acquire all the above along the way. Can’t imagine it would hurt your climbing, right?
Learning handstands
There’s a huge difference between just banancing on your arms in a banana-like position and performing an technically correct handstand. Both might be equally fun but only the latter offers scope for progression, as well as all the benefits that we’re really after. The banana stand might be a good place to start as it teaches you how it feels to be upside down, and also strengthens the wrists, but it’s probably better to skip it all together and learn the proper way. YouTube has a million tutorials on how to do it and I strongly recommend browsing through these to know what you’re aiming for.
A very good recourse is this article and video from Erin Ayla.
The beginnings
At first, it is entirely possible that your wrists won’t be able to take the weight of your body. To learn handstands you must do them a lot, ideally every day, and to do them a lot, you must have strong wrists.
Start by spending some time in a table top position and doing some cat-cow stretches. Lift your knees off the ground to work the core and increase the load on your wrists. Then progress to plank pose and remember to move through it, back, sideways and forward (the latter also strengthens your shoulders.) You might want to do side-planks on only one wrist, or tap your hand to the opposing shoulder while in a regular plank position.
Extra tip: on your hands and knees, spread your fingers wide with your index finger pointing forward. Keep your fingers on the floor but raise your palm up slowly, and slowly lower. Keep your weight spread evenly between your hands and knees. Repeat this palm-raiser multiple times. (My strong mates can do it in a plank pose but it’s pretty futuristic, if you ask me.)
Increase your hands’ mobility and stretch your fingers out, and apply pressure on the upper part of your hands, bearing a bit of weight in that position.
If you feel like your wrists are not able to withstand a full handstand, do the above exercises for a couple of weeks, then increase the intensity, slowly building your strength. The last thing you want is to get injured from your handstands! [continued below image]
Finding your balance
There is shed loads of advice out there on how to progress to a proper handstand, with quite a few good videos.
This is a great video on handstands from ClimbFlow creator, Tiffany Soi.
You can find more useful tips from Tiffany here, here and here.
After more than a year of learning how to handstand, my conclusion is simple: do whatever works, get to know your body and you will progress. I’m not sure if that’s the fastest way (possibly following a Gymnastic Bodies programme is faster), but it is a way. So, here are a few drills for balance:
- Use a wall, facing away from it or towards it, to get up. Then press gently away from the wall and try finding balance, then return with your feet to the wall when you lose it
- Use a bouldering mat for safety and try without a wall. It’s super scary at first, so learn how to do a roll on your back once you fall
- Learn how to put a foot down when you lose balance, so that you don’t have to roll. You might need to move one of your hands on the ground for that (I usually don’t.) Securing yourself with a bouldering mat at first is a great way to build confidence. Although I am still bad at balancing, I am now confident trying it in a cramped flat, without anything behind my back. It just takes time to build that awareness and you will get there. It took me a few months. Keep trying with the wall and with the mat.
- It’s easier to balance with legs wide apart, both sideways and back and front. Very commonly your lower back will arch and it will also make it easier. Just roll with it, find your balance, even for a second, get down, stretch your wrists the opposite way, try again
- Stretch your hamstrings and increase general hip mobility for entering and exiting the handstand more gently, as well as for balancing with legs wide apart
Seeking the straight line
A technically correct handstand involves putting your body in a straight line. When we stand on our feet, our spines are naturally curved. The curves go back and to the front and cancel each other out, so that all in our our bodies are stacked perfectly vertical. They curves were designed to work that way only when we’re on our feet, but not when we’re on our hands. So to stand vertically on our hands, we have to almost obliterate the curves of the spine and put it all straight – this is called stacking. It requires great core strength, as well as thoracic spine and shoulder mobility.
Here are a few tips on how to get there:
- Push away from the floor and try to “grow” as tall as possible
- Engage your shoulders, don’t let them sink, keep them close to your ears and pushing out
- Think of “shining your armpits forward”, opening them (yoga teachers always say “shine your heart foreword” for opening the chest, so I thought i’d borrow it for the pits. Clever, huh?)
- Tuck your pelvis in. Bring it toward your belly button
- Tense your bum and your legs, keeping the legs tightly together
- Experiment with both flexed and pointed feet
In my experience, it’s usually only possible to focus on one of the above at a time. My most recent thing is opening the armpits and having flexed feet. I also still struggle with the posterior pelvic tilt. I try to repair one fault at a time because there’s only this much our small brains can process when upside down. (Unless you’re a gymnast or a genius.)
Exercises that will help your handstands
While a lot of non-climbing folk struggles mostly with upper body strength to hold a handstand (think shaking arms), most climbers already have the strength required but lack in mobility. That’s certainly my problem – basically my shoulders and upper spine are not mobile enough to achieve a straight line and I keep standing tilted.
If you’re a typical climber, my best guess is that you will struggle with mobility as well. Note that mobility and flexibility are not the same: I am now able to extend my arms vertically above my head when on my feet (while keeping the posterior tilt in my pelvis), but once upside down, I lack the mobility (strength/control and flexibility in one) to get into that position.
Increasing your flexibility can be achieved by opening your chest and upper spine on a foam roller or a soft pilates ball.
You might also want to try thoracic bridge (backbend), but be careful – the stretch is pretty severe. You have to make sure you’re not bending only in your lower back but throughout the spine. Start with your feet elevated (bed, stable chair, stall bars) and aim to put your straight arms perpendicularly to the floor. “Shine your heart forward” – which means opening the chest and shoulders – while reducing the bend in your lower back. Keep your legs straight.
After every backbend, make sure to bend forward to balance it out (just stand up and bend down, relaxing and stretching your back and hammies.) Perform similar wrists prehab as after a handstand – stretch the wrists out the other way.
If you want to go the yoga way, learn how to balance on your head and your forearms before learning the handstand. A sloppy headstand is pretty easy to do, but a proper one takes a lot of weight of your neck by engaging your shoulders, therefore preparing them for a hand balance.
A forearm balance is much harder and to achieve a straight line in a forearm balance, you must already have all the mobility needed for a handstand (and that’s why I *really* can’t do a forearm stand…)
Here’s a great video from Mike Taylor, the co-founder of Strala Yoga, explaining how to do a forearm stand:
His handstand video is also pretty neat and challenges all the talk about alignment and strength, and, well, it also works in a wonderfully chill way. Watch it here.
While we’re talking yoga, a few good old downward dogs won’t hurt you. They increase mobility and build strength exactly in the areas that you need to tackle for handstands.
Another helpful move is to lie flat in your belly with arms stretched in front of your body. Tilt your pelvis toward your stomach (imagine you’re a dog trying to get your tail between your legs. For real.) Then, without releasing the pelvis, lift your arms an inch or two off the ground and hover. It’s also good to do this while holding a theraband or a stick.
I’d love to tell you a little about progressing with straddle press (I can straddle press but can’t find my balance after because my shoulders are too far forward – again, a mobility fault.) Yet this post is already ridiculously long and I still want to share a few useful links for you to check out. They’ll appear right below this in a few days time, so check back.
Please bear in mind that I’m not qualified as a PT, or in fact anything apart from an anthropologist, which is pretty useless for handstands. So, stay safe and consult a physiotherapist if you’re unsure about things.
Most importantly, keep practising. Every now and then do a video check of your progress. It’s extremely helpful to realise the huge gap between what we think our bodies do and what they actually do. There’s no better way to gain that awareness than by taking a video.
After a while, arm balance practice becomes very addictive! It’s great fun and a great anxiety calmer at the same time. Enjoy and let me know how it goes! 🙂
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaBXWM-jhM3/?taken-by=leahcraneclimbing