Previously I learned handstands on the ground in 156 days. I thought I was done with handstands
but BaseBlocks baited me with a sponsorship to make a video of learning the handstand on their
parallettes, which is called the StrongBlocks. After a quick research, it seems that YouTube
experts unanimously agree that handstand on parallettes is easier than handstand on the
ground. For beginners especially, it will be easier to balance the handstand on parallettes than it
will be on the floor. It is much easier to balance on the parallettes than it is to balance on the
ground. Therefore, I took the bait and decided to learn the handstand on parallettes until I could
hold it for 10 seconds. When I first tried it out on day 1, I immediately discovered that YouTube
experts lied to me. Handstands on parallettes are significantly harder than handstands on the ground
for two reasons. First, balancing is significantly harder. When doing a handstand on the ground,
I can balance between my fingertips and my palms, but when doing a handstand on parallettes,
the room for balance suddenly shrinks more than half because I can only balance between the
leftmost side and the rightmost side of my palms. Second, kicking up is significantly harder due to
the elevation. It might not appear so, but it actually makes it a lot harder. Unlike pressing
to handstand, which is all about strength, kicking up to handstand requires precision,
which means the increased difficulty of the kick-up makes the already low-percentage kick-up
even more low percentage. On top of these two reasons, my palms felt painful while I gripped
the bars pushing. I pull with all kinds of grip all the time while rock climbing, but pushing
while gripping the bars was completely new to me. My palms couldn't help feeling painful when the
bars sank into my flesh. I tried to push through the palm pain, but I quickly realized that my body
automatically redirected my grip to the radial deviation to minimize pain. I knew I would never
be able to balance if I couldn't be pain free in the neutral grip position. I decided to set
an intermediate goal, which was to L-sit on the parallettes for 20 seconds pain free. At first,
I couldn't even lift my legs up due to the pain, but after working on it for 40 days,
eventually I was able to L-sit on the parallettes for 20 seconds. I started practicing kicking up to
handstand. I applied all the techniques I knew for holding a handstand on the ground, but for
some reason, I just couldn't balance myself for even 2 seconds. The room for balance is just too
small. I practiced, practiced, and practiced. I practiced so much to the point that the wall
broke because of my kickups, and I had to cover it up and switch to a different location to practice.
A few months flew by, and I just couldn't balance despite all the hard work I put in. One day,
I was scrolling through Facebook randomly, and I saw my brother showcasing himself doing a
press handstand. I know my brother opened up the first ever acroyoga studio in my home country a
few years ago, and he is extremely good at it and has been teaching classes since then, but I had no
idea that he also works on handstands. I decided to reach out to him for advice. -[Geek Climber] What are the keys
to handstand on parallettes? Can you give us a few tips? -[Kevin]If you are people who come from the ground
handstand, trying false grip will be more natural for you. If you are going like this,
you will be totally on your wrist, but we use this kind of grip, false grip. If this is a bar,
the bar will counter from the corner of the palm and towards the lower part of the finger,
so by grabbing like this, you can actually push like this. It's more similar like pushing on
the ground doing a handstand. When you are doing handstand on the ground, try not to
grip with your fingers. When we are doing like flat ground handstand, we grip with the fingers quite a lot.
When you are doing it, try to relax your fingers, not using any force on the fingers and then just
place your hands there, so you have to use your shoulders and elbows to balance. And then when
you come back to parallel bars, it will be more similar because you are not using your fingers
that much, so you will be able to use more of your shoulders and elbows to balance in parallel bars.
-[Geek Climber] When you said use our elbows and shoulders to help balance, can you elaborate a little
bit more on what that means? -[Kevin] So I will talk about the elbow first. If you want to do elbow balance,
make sure you are comfortable in bending the elbow. If you bend the elbow and you will hit
the ground, then don't do this kind of balance. So when you bend your elbow, actually it will change
the central weight. And usually when you jump not enough, you can use bending the elbow to catch your
central weight and then get yourself back. For the shoulder part, it's like how much planche
you do. If your shoulder is leaning forward, we call it planche. When doing planche, you will
create more pressure on the wrist because you are bending your wrist even more. When you are
doing more planche, the more planche you do, the more balancing zone you got. Jumping in handstand
is actually very important, so you want to measure every jump, and you want to eventually know like
how much jump you need to do, so it's not like jumping 100 percent every time super randomly
and then see if I will hit the point. You want to jump step by step and then measure every jump and
trying to close up how much jump you need in doing a parallettes jump. I think that's a few like the
tips or the key I would give to people who started from ground handstand and eventually want to
transit to parallels bar handstand. -[Geek Climber] After the call with my brother, I immediately started gripping
the bar with a false grip. I couldn't balance successfully right away, but it felt a lot more
possible. I also started to practice handstands on the ground without using the fingers.
This little change makes balancing on the ground a lot harder, and it's very counterintuitive to
unlearn balancing with the fingers and instead learn to balance with the elbows and shoulders.
However, this felt like a good intermediate progression to aim for since the difficulty
is between a handstand on parallettes itself and a handstand on the ground using fingers. On day 152,
I was able to balance for 5 seconds for the first time ever using the wall as a crutch.
For the next few sessions, I was able to consistently balance myself with the help
of the wall. At this point, I decided to rush it, and started attempting to do it without
the wall despite not having a successful attempt in front of the wall. In my mind,
I was thinking "all I need is to get lucky once, and I will be done with this video."
This turned out to be a gigantic mistake. I trained without the wall for multiple sessions
and I did not have enough strength and skills to get lucky even once. Most of
the time I failed to balance myself, and my best attempt from all these was only a 4-second hold.
Oh! Additionally, my body reacted differently because I had to be mentally prepared for a fall.
When I finally admitted the defeat and went back to practice in front of the wall,
my body forgot how to balance itself, and it took me 15 days to finally find my balance again.
I decided to get real and tell myself to have at least one successful attempt with the wall
before any practicing without the wall. I continued to practice, practice and practice.
The more I practiced, the more I got used to balancing with my elbows and shoulders.
On day 265, I finally successfully balanced myself for 10 seconds in front of the wall
but without using the wall. As you can see, how I corrected my balance with my elbows and shoulders.
It wouldn't have been possible if I had just relied on my fingers and wrists.
I decided to take it really slow and practice in front of the wall for a few more sessions to make
sure that a successful 10-second balance without using the wall wasn't a fluke. After that, I
started to practice without the wall. Even though I still had to be mentally prepared for a fall,
I felt so much more controlled this time. After a few more sessions, on day 308, this happened.
Yes! Ha, I got it! That has to be it. Hoo! Let me check how many seconds that is, guys.
Thanks for watching, and guys, if you happen to understand Mandarin, definitely check out
my brother's channel. His channel has a lot of theory and breakdown on body weight exercises
and flexibility work, so definitely check it out. I also want to thank Baseblocks for sponsoring
this video. If you are interested in starting your handstand on the parallettes journey,
make sure to click the link in the video description below and use the coupon code
"GEEK" to purchase StrongBlocks with 10% off. StrongBlocks is multifunctional. It can be used
as parallettes, and it can also be used as a yoga block. I highly recommend you get one. Again,
make sure to click the link in the video description below. See you in the next video.