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- What's up guys, this is Chris Heria.
Welcome to another video official Thenx.
Today I'm gonna be showing you
how to hold a handstand longer.
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Now whether you can hold a handstand right now or not,
what I'm gonna show you today
will drastically improve your handstand progress.
All the techniques that I'm gonna show you today
can be done against a wall for assistance,
or can be done freestanding, if you're at that level.
And if you're currently struggling
with how to hold a handstand, go ahead and watch my video
"How to Handstand Hold 5 Easy Steps."
That's gonna get you holding your handstands right away
and will prepare you for this video.
Now first off, one of the man things
that people struggle with is to maintain a hold
in a handstand position for time.
And what most people will end up doing
is tensing up and squeezing tighter
causing them to fatigue quicker
and even falling back down faster.
And if you're stranding too hard or fatiguing very fast
to maintain your handstand position,
in most cases, it's most likely your body alignment.
If your body is bent while trying to maintain
a handstand position, it's gonna put a lot more pressure
on your back and your wrist,
requiring a lot more effort, a lot more strength.
And with half of your body leaning over
from a straight line, that's gonna create more resistance
for your body to fight back,
automatically making a handstand hold
way more difficult to maintain
versus having a stacked position.
When your body is in a straight line,
completely stacked onto itself, there's lot less resistance
trying to push you back and forth,
which means less effort to maintain your handstand
and you can focus more on balance.
Now there's a very big difference on how they feel
when you're holding these two different types of handstands.
When you're in a bent handstand position,
your body's gonna feel very heavy.
Versus when you're in a straight stacked position,
your body's gonna feel very light, almost weightless
and it's gonna be very easy to find an equilibrium point,
where you're just using micro movements
to maintains your hold.
Now the first thing you wanna do to make sure
you're holding a stacked position in your handstand
is to envision your body as a stack of books.
Starting from your base, your hands,
then to your shoulders, to your hips,
and finally to your toes.
You wanna make sure that all these limps
are always stacked flat, evenly on top of each other
and you always wanna keep them as tight aligned as possible.
The less aligned these pieces are,
the harder it's gonna be to maintain your handstand,
and the more resistance you're creating
to keep your balance as your body's gonna wanna go
one way or the other.
Record yourself when you're doing your handstand
and visually see dots in these points of your body.
Your alignment is always gonna be as strong as your base,
so you always wanna make sure to start of right
with your hands flat on the ground
and your shoulders forward enough
that aligns up with your fingertips.
That's gonna make sure that you have a strong foundation
for your handstand and you're not gonna have to
fight your balance as soon as you go up.
So today, I created a workout for you guys
that's gonna have you holding your handstand longer.
Using techniques that are gonna help you
with your alignment, balance and strength.
All these exercise are gonna be done facing the wall,
but the goal is to use assistance
from the wall less and less.
Eventually, being able to all the exercises
I'm about to show you without touching the wall at all.
So the first exercise we're gonna get into is gonna be
handstand hold facing the wall.
Let's get it.
When you're doing a handstand facing the wall,
the wall is gonna make the straight line for you.
And the more you hold this against the wall,
eventually this is just gonna become muscle memory,
so that when you're doing it even freestanding,
you're always gonna hold the handstand
in the way that you normally train.
If you're in a perfect stacked position,
pressing your fingers down onto the ground
is gonna keep you from falling forward
and actually gonna push your body's weight against the wall.
If you release the pressure on your fingertips
and you can feel your body slowing start to move forward,
eventually coming off the wall,
being in a freestanding handstand position,
but eventually if you don't press your fingertips,
you will come back down.
All right, so there we have the handstand facing the wall,
and you're gonna need this
for every other exercise we're gonna do today.
So if you got that down, then you're ready for the next one.
We're gonna go handstand facing the wall,
alternating toe taps.
Let's go for it.
Remember, every exercise facing the wall
forces you to train your alignment,
but this exercise specifically
is gonna get you comfortable with moving your lower body
while maintaining a freestanding handstand hold.
Every time you switch the foot
that's assisting to hold your body weight against the wall,
you're actually holding a freestanding handstand
all by yourself for a moment.
Eventually you're gonna get very comfortable with this,
develop more strength and balance
and make those moments last even longer.
After this exercise,
you can be a little bit more away from the wall.
You wanna maintain a straight line in your entire body,
except for the leg that's helping with the assistance
against the wall.
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All right, so there we have a handstand hold
facing the wall alternating toe tap.
Moving right into the next exercise,
we have handstands open and close.
Let's go for it.
Now this exercise is gonna help you to move
your lower body while maintaining
your handstand hold position.
And because of these different hand positions,
this is gonna tremendously strengthen your shoulders,
and just always training your handstand
with the normal width shoulder width apart.
And for a moment,
as you're transitioning through the different widths,
you're actually putting all your body weight on one limp.
Getting each arm significantly stronger
and getting used to holding your entire body weight
with one arm alone,
making holding a handstand with two arms effortless,
and eventually, transitioning
into one arm handstand training.
(intense electronic music)
All right, moving on to the next exercise.
Handstand shoulder taps.
Now this exercise took my handstands to the next level.
And it's also a great exercise to introduce
one arm handstand training.
We're gonna be putting all our body weight
on one arm again, so before you let go to tap your shoulder,
make sure that all your body has leaned to want side,
so when you let go with your opposing arm,
you're not just gonna fall straight down to the ground.
As you transfer all your body weight onto the one side
you're gonna hold your body up with,
the opposing arm should feel a lot looser
and be able to come up and tap your shoulder.
And make sure the hand that you're using to hold your body
is very straight, in a locked up position
and constantly pushing the ground down.
All right, let's go for it.
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So at the beginning,
you wanna move all your body weight to one side.
Tap, come back down.
If you're tapping quickly, don't worry about it,
eventually you'll be able to control this movement
and go a lot slower.
The main key is just to put all the body weight
and lean onto one side before you let go.
(intense electronic music)
All right, now the last exercise
that I have to show you guys for this routine
is gonna be staggered handstand hold.
As I've told you before,
all these exercises can be done facing the wall
and as you practice them,
you can use less and less assistance from the wall.
Eventually you'll be able to them freestanding.
And that's how I'll be doing it for the final exercise.
Now to elevate and stagger my handstand hold,
I'm gonna be using parallettes.
If you wanna get a pair of parallettes for yourself as well
to take your training to the next level,
you can always pick one up at thenx.com/shop.
And, of course, if you don't have any,
you can always use a stack of books
or whatever you have laying around the house.
So with that said, let's get into the final exercise.
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Now that is real challenge for your balance.
And I highly recommend to first start of
just holding a handstand in a staggered position
definitely against a wall first
before switching your grip from the elevated surface.
But eventually, you wanna master all these exercises,
take them off the wall and try them
in a freestanding position, but don't forget,
doing a handstand facing the wall
is always gonna put your body in a perfect alignment.
This is why you should always be doing handstands
facing the wall.
Whether you're touching the wall for assistance or not,
you wanna always develop that muscle memory
to always naturally stay in that stacked position.
And that's gonna wrap it up for today's video.
That was actually round one of the workout routine.
You guys wanna do this at least three more times
to complete this workout,
and to get this workout on your phone,
of course, download the Thenx app in the App Store
or Google Play Store.
And for more workouts just like this,
getting in the best shape of your life,
make sure you sign up to thenx.com.
Become a member and get full access
to all our workout programs,
technique guides and daily workouts
so we're gonna have you shredded.
And join the millions of others Thenx athletes
around the world, changing their lives today.
If you guys learned something or enjoyed today's video,
then definitely smash that like button.
Comment down below,
let me know what you guys are working on,
what I should make the next video about.
Share this video with a friend
that's trying to make progress in their handstand
and, of course, subscribe if you haven't already.
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Mad love, peace out.
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