Developing a safe Bail-Out of handstand

Bail Out of Handstand Tutorial

Hey all! 

I am back with a quick overview of developing a safe practice for learning to bail out of a handstand. This post is designed as a supplement to assist the YouTube tutorial I made on the subject which is embedded after this paragraph!

For starters, this assumes a basic level of skill in your handstand, and is intended for people who are able to handstand on the wall or with a spot - but are not confident working free-standing due to not being sure how to bail out of a handstand correctly. In all honesty, if you are not able to be stable on the wall you shouldn't be trying to do free handstands, nor should you be getting people (unless they are an experienced coach who knows what they are doing) to spot you in a handstand yet. Once you can control a wall handstand and know the basic technique for a handstand then go for it! If you are not sure where to start with your handstands, have a visit of my older post Handstands for Absolute Beginners and work your way through that.



Why Learn This Technique?
For some folks out there, bailing out of a handstand is quite intuitive. This is how it was for me, there was never a point which I wasn't able to bail out of a handstand, but as I started to see more and more people learning, I found that this was not always the case, and that many people do not have a good "go to move" for when they have lost balance and this can result in a lack of confidence in getting into the handstand, and in worst case scenario, injury.

First thing I will say, is that if you are able to do a cartwheel, you will have a far easier time developing a safe bail out of handstand and so spending some time learning to do this on both sides would be advantageous. If you have been having trouble developing a good bail-out of handstand then I like to start with a "Far Side" cartwheel exit. Basically what this means, is that when bailing, you leave one hand on the ground and land on the opposite side to that. When doing near-side bail out of handstand, you would be landing feet closer to your hand and is a more advanced technique which I am not going through today.


Benefits
One of the reasons I like this single hand variation of Bail-Out, is that it works when handstanding on height. It teaches you how to bring your feet underneath you, so should you be handstanding on an object, or a person, then you will be able to get your feet under you to land safely! The next thing that is useful is that when you become proficient at it, it doesn't take a lot of room. And lastly - it takes very little energy and effort once you are used to it.

A couple key points to the technique.
PUSH! Push strongly through the hand you will be keeping on the ground - this will help the rotation happen and will also encourage your legs to come down first.

Bring one leg down at a time. I don't think I mentioned this in the video, but hopefully it is quite clear what is being done. Basically, the side you are bailing towards, that is the first leg you bring down.

Placing the Targets. When placing the targets on the ground, start with them in-line with your hands and gradually move it forward. The more in-front of your fingers the target is, the more you will need to rotate to reach it. This rotation is the key to bringing your feet underneath you once you've lost balance.
When placing the target don't place it too wide. We want to try to keep the bail out of handstand nice and compact. A good rule to follow is that the further forward (past your hands) the target, the less wide it can be!

Bringing yourself off the Wall. When bringing yourself off the wall, use your top leg to initiate a loss of balance. When doing this, also draw your upperbody slightly away from the wall - if you don't it is normal to instinctively counterbalance your leg with your chest and not actually lose balance!

Time the bail! Make sure you don't get into the habit of bailing too early! Let yourself start to be off balance before you bail out! You don't want to get into the habit of

Keep your shoulder healthy. Possibly the main pit-fall of the Bail out Technique, is that if you are too firm with your hand, it can put a bit of stress on your shoulder in rotation. This shouldn't be a problem for most people, but the best defense for this is to have a nice soft hand which will allow you to rotate, without rotating so much through your shoulder.


And there we have it! I hope you get something out of this, I am looking at doing a couple more beginner focused posts, so leave me a comment or something if you have a request, and if I think I could do a post or something about it then I will get to it!

In the meantime, don't forget I run classes in Melbourne, and I run Online-Coaching too!

Plus I will be teaching at Spin Circus Academy this December and early next year!

Until next time, enjoy doing your thing!

-Dave

Technique for repeatability, safety and efficiency - or "why we learn techniques"

Picking Up where we left off
So if you read my previous post about technical aspects of the handstand, then you may have been left with a few unanswered questions. I deliberately left it very open and non-specific, to allow you to have a chance to think about your handstand and what makes it work without over stressing about form. What I want to have a look at in this post, is a few of the 'whys' behind why we focus so much on certain techniques and form. Again, I'm not going into the details of form itself, as I want to get you thinking about the things you are doing, rather than just copying what you saw in a tutorial.

If you recall in the previous post, I wrote that the benefits of technique training are to promote safety, efficiency, repeatability. Aesthetics of the handstand are a nice bonus, but it's important to focus on the other 3 points first.


Repeatability

Sarah M. of Portland displaying a
nice and repeatable handstand.

When learning a handstand, or any precise skill for that matter, repeatability is one of the most important factors. When trying to execute a handstand, we want every attempt to be similar, so that we can be able to control certain aspects of the technique and change what needs changing. When it comes to a handstand, just kicking up to a handstand over and over again doesn't usually provide great results, and one of the main reasons for this is that there are many many little changes to technique that go on every time. If your body position is changing again and again and again, (even in ways you may not notice) then it is very hard to develop balance and consistency. This is where learning a strict form comes in handy. By working towards a handstand position which is easily repeatable, we give ourselves the ability to make deliberate changes to what we are doing. An example of this, would be hand control in the handstand. If we are able to execute the same entry to handstand, and position every time, we can then shift our focus into what our hands are doing, i.e. balancing us. As soon as there are body changes or things that are taking our focus away from the balance, we are making it harder to allow improvements to happen in these areas we are focusing on. This applies to all aspects of the handstand, we want to create a nice repeatable base position, where we can make deliberate changes to as necessary to make it more efficient.


Safety
Now lets have a look at safety. Safety is a big deal, and beyond simply saying "don't just jump into position if you can't hold your bodyweight" (even so, I have heard of many people getting injured from instructors telling people to just kick up to handstand, and these stories make me cringe). It is another aspect of handstands which is too often overlooked.

Jess F.

When it comes to safety, we don't want to just look at immediate problems, such as a fall or impact, we also want to look at long term problems that can arise. This includes things such as wrist soreness, elbow soreness, shoulder injuries, back injuries, posture problems and such. While many of these are addressed in auxiliary work, such as wrist prep, cooling down, stretching and such; safety should be a focus of the handstand itself. When learning a handstand, certain body structural problems need to be taken into account, and this includes things like joint hyper-extensions, hypermobility through the back, wrist issues etc. The one I am going to briefly elaborate on is shoulder hypermobility. Now who has ever heard the cue, "open your shoulders" before? Chances are, you have heard it before and more than once. Opening shoulders is a fine cue for when it is relevant, however it is a bit of a 'double edged sword'. Someone who has hypermobility in their shoulders likely won't find this generic cue useful, and if anything it takes away from the safety of the handstand. By just opening the shoulders too much, it allows the shoulder to sit too deep in the joint, disengaging certain supporting musculature around the shoulder joint. This may feel fine at the time, and may even feel easier for some, but overtime, it risks causing injury. Instead, we want to use our supporting musculature, in a way which promotes long term safety, while still promoting....

While it may seem like a lot is going on here,
this is nice and repeatable, efficient and safe

Efficiency. 
The third point I want to talk about. With handstands, and any skill really, efficiency is a big deal. Maximum
output from minimal effort. When holding something like a handstand, and wanting to hold it for 1 minute, 2 minutes etc, or be able to train it for a long time, efficiency is a must. And by efficiency, I am not just talking about staving off fatigue, but also how hard you are having to work to maintain balance. A good way of thinking about your handstand is to think of it like standing on your feet. It shouldn't take a lot of effort as your weight sits nicely over your feet. In a nice handstand, your weight sits nicely over top of your hands in a nice and in a stable way, where you don't have to work hard to maintain balance. When you are able to do this - you are basically spreading the work load more evenly through your body, and allowing your structure to do a lot of the work for you. Often in a handstand, your shoulders or wrists that take the load, which means that parts of the body are working harder than is optimal. This is normal, as that is what is holding you up, but it is common to just assume that the area of fatigue is just the weak-link to be made stronger. This may be the case, but also likely, the handstand is not as efficient as it could be. By allowing your body's structure to do a lot of the work, and being precise with your balance the actual muscular effort is quite minimal, allowing more time to be spent in the handstand with less effort.

Conclusion
So what does all this mean? So when it comes to training technique to make things as repeatable, safe and efficient as possible nothing beats having a coach. There is an abundance of information out there with many techniques. Some are more popular than others, however it's important in my opinion to not just blindly follow generic cues. If you are trying to train yourself, ask yourself questions about the technique and whether it is the most repeatable, safe and efficient way for yourself. Cover all bases and your skill-level will climb.

For people in Melbourne, I currently run classes 3 times a week, and also teach the handstand classes at CrossFit 3039. I also teach Private Sessions at The Richmond Gym

For people not in Melbourne or unable to come to classes, consider looking into my Online Coaching packages.

In the meantime, swing past my website, follow me on Instagram, and enjoy what you are doing!

Until next time!

Dave

Technical Aspects of the Handstand - or "Most important pieces"

Foreword
So, I haven't updated this blog in a while. I guess I have been a bit overwhelmed by the amount of
information that is out there on the Internet already, and I have been hesitant to just repeat what many others are saying. Plus, I'm very much an "in-person" kind of coach, and much prefer to share information to my students person to person, not least, so that I can make sure that they understand it but also so I can convey it in an individual manner. But with the popularity of handstands continuing to climb, among Yoga, Crossfit, Movement Cultures, Fitness and so on and so on, there is getting more and more information out there and there seems to be every man and his downward dog writing a blog post on the Handstand. Everyone knows words like 'alignment' and 'tension' and 're-balancing' and if you don't, a quick search for a Handstand Tutorial will give you hundreds of blogs/videos/articles with this information to various degrees of competency (and I will discuss it from time to time in this blog.) But with so much information out there, it's easy to get carried away with over-complicating things. So in response to that, I'm going to bring the handstand down to its most basic level and hopefully clear a few things up for you, and possibly re-align (pun intended) some conceptions you may have.

Okay let's get to it!

So lets have a simplistic look at the handstand. At the most basic level, a handstand is done by keeping your body's centre of mass over top of your hands. From a physics perspective this is what needs to happen. Anything else you do in a handstand, is a matter of safety, efficiency, repeatability and aesthetics. In this post I'm going to go through a very broad outlook on the key Technical Aspects of the handstand which make it safe, efficient and repeatable.

First up, I want to have a quick word about technique. There is more than 1 way to handstand but good techniques all contain a few different Technical Aspects. It's these Technical Aspects that I want to go through. Please note, these are all for the standard straight handstand. I'm not going to go into fine points of technique, as that would defeat the purpose of this post.

Centre of mass sits over my hands

Technical Aspect #1:
Balance stays situated over the hands. Quite simply, your centre of mass needs to stay over your base of support. Anytime this centre of mass starts to move away, you need to bring it back. This can be done in a few ways, the more precise you feel your balance, and control your balance, the smaller your little corrections will be. This can be done through your wrist, your shoulders and body, and in some cases the elbows. If you find you are constantly falling the same way, then likely you need to shift some weight the other direction.


Technical Aspect #2:

Maintaining a tension through the body. Note, I don't mean this as a max tension, but just tension. Every joint in your body, is something which is a potential loss of control. Your back is one of the main culprits of this, a loss of tension  through your midsection when trying to balance on your hands can allow your back to bend without realising it which results in a loss of control and then a loss of balance. There are a few ways of creating tension through the body - my personal favourite way of generating tension is by creating opposite tensions in parts of the body. An example of this, is tucking your pelvis (like you are trying to hide your bum) while opening your hips (pulling legs in the direction of your heels). 

Technical Aspect #3:

This is a technique which is prevalent in all quality handstands. Pushing shoulders into the ground. This is one of those technical points which are important for safety and control in the handstand. No matter what technique you are using, you should be pressing your arms into the ground. This is something which will help your shoulders stay healthy and strong in your practice, and will support stability in your shoulder. One thing I'd like to mention though, is I don't particularly like pushing upwards to 100% of my max. Rather, I like to push to 90% then rest into an 80% max push.

So why do we learn certain forms and techniques?

Quite simply, Form promotes Technique. When following cues such as "point your toes" or "tuck your hips", you are putting your body into positions which encourage application of these Technical Aspects. These will also create clearly visible (if you know what you are looking for) cues which will be able to be seen via video/by a coach. Where limitations in your structure are encountered, adjustments to the form will need to be made, as long as the Technical Aspects are still met. For example - someone with tight shoulders will be unable to keep their centre of mass over their hands while having their ribs in. However, said Tight-Shouldered person can open up their thoracic to allow their mass to sit over their hands to meet Technical Aspect #1, so long as they are still creating the same tension through the front of their body (Technical Aspect #2). Sure, increasing their range to open their shoulders more may increase efficiency, but none of the 3 Technical Aspects should be taken away from to achieve this.

I will leave it there, after all I want to keep things nice and uncomplicated. When developing your handstands, focus on these technical points and it should assist you. It's easy to get over-focused on the form of a handstand when the purpose of the techniques aren't clear.

Until next time!

Dave

If you are interested in what I'm doing don't forget to swing past my website! www.davyhandstands.com

Handstand Training for Absolute Beginners- "Getting Strong Enough to Start"

Welcome to  "Handstand Training for Absolute Beginners".

Basically - when it comes to starting to learn how to handstand for the very first time, there are three things to address first. 1. A basic level of strength, relative to your body. 2. Feeling comfortable being upside down and 3. Feeling and controlling your body. In this article I am going to address the first one of these, building up a basic level of strength.

Now first things first - any good strength training regiment has an appropriate mix of pushing and pulling - so keep in mind that these are purely handstand specific and it's not intended as a full workout routine.

That being said - lets get to it!

Developing a basic level of strength

Now holding a handstand takes less muscular strength than you may think. And in truth - the better and more efficient your technique, the easier your handstand will feel and the less effort it will take, but that's a topic for another blog post. But to start, you will need a basic level of strength, without which - learning the techniques can be frustrating. So in this post, I'm going to go through a few exercises to do, which, when you can do them all - you should be more than strong enough to do a handstand. Some of these drills are actually 'heavier' than a normal handstand - but I like to begin with them and treat them as strength exercises before worrying too much about the handstand technique.

While these exercises have, to a certain degree specific technical aspects, I'm going to try to keep it pretty simple - and just break it down to the essentials. Another thing to keep in mind, is that the recommended times/reps I give are not an end point - a good handstand practice will continue to develop your strength - this is purely a way to get started.


So first exercise - the 'Front Support'.
This is often seen as the top of a pushup, and spending time here with nice straight elbows will help you develop the strength in your arms needed to handstand. In this position, push strongly into the ground and keep your arms locked (in-fact for all of these drills, when your hands are on the floor your arm needs to be completely straight). It is key to keep your shoulders over-top of your knuckles - this will also give you a chance to let your wrists get stronger so don't lean backwards to avoid the load. When doing this - don't overdo it on your wrists - you want your wrists to adapt slowly. Aim to be able to hold this for 1 minute.



Next up is the 'Downard Angry Cat'. So called because I can't think of a better name for it. Note - it's not the Downward Dog. To do this - start in a Front Support and walk your feet towards your hands, lifting your hips up high. Like in the front support position - it's key to not hide from the load in the shoulders. While this position can be refined and can be a more technically developing element of the handstand - and I use it often, for building the sake of building a base level of strength the key points are to keep the shoulders over your hands, elbows stay completely straight and press strongly into the ground. Aim for 10-20 seconds for this position

Now the notorious 'Dish'. Building strength in your midsection, or your core should also be a part of your training. For this, the basics of the exercise are to lift your shoulders from the ground, and your feet - while keeping your lower back on the ground. This is made easier by bringing your arms more to your sides - and/or bringing your knees towards your chest. Do NOT let your lower back come off the ground - this will a) not strengthen the parts of your core that we want to, and b) will put unwanted and potentially damaging stress on your low back. Holding the dish position is a great general exercise for building a bit of stability - when you are strong enough to hold the full dish position for 15-20 seconds, you have MORE than enough core strength to start some handstands.

Next up are Shoulder/Elbow taps, in both Front Support and Downward Angry Cat. Doing these involves taking one hand off the ground, touching your opposite shoulder and placing back on the ground. Keep the arm that is connected to the ground straight. Do these with feet apart and aim to minimise rotation through the body. Thinking about keeping you shoulders parallel to the ground should help you keep the loading right. Being able to do 10 each side in one set is a fine goal.






Next up is the 'Pike Handstand'. Begin by placing your hands on the ground and placing your feet up on a box, or a shelf or anything you have that is stable and sturdy. In the picture I have a little chair construction which I tested to be nice and stable before using it.  Walk your hands in while lifting your hips up to the ceiling and try to get to a nice 90 degree position. Again - try to not avoid the load in the shoulders keeping them over your knuckles (this is especially important if you have hyper-mobile shoulders). This exercise may be impossible to get to 90 degrees for you at your current flexibility level and that's fine - go in as far as you can control. As a rather general rule - the more tight your hamstrings, the higher you need your feet (but the heavier it will be on your arms) and the less flexible your shoulders are the less you'll be able to walk in. Holding the position and walking hands in and out for reps are both good ways to work this. Aim to be able to hold this for 15s.

This brings us to the staple handstand exercise the 'Chest to Wall Handstand'. To do this, walk your feet up a wall, and walk your hands towards the wall. Try to keep a nice strong body - not letting your body or shoulder sag and go as close as you feel comfortable that you won't fall out - you don't have to go as close to the wall as in the picture to the left straight away - that will be very challenging when you haven't learned the technical aspects of the handstand so stay where you are comfortable and safe. Once you can hold a nice stable chest to wall handstand - you are plenty strong enough for handstands! When you do this exercise - make sure you can walk your hands back out to come down off the wall safely.



Practice the exercise(s) that are appropriate for you 2-4 days a week, at a challenging but not excruciating intensity. 3-5 sets of each will be good to get you started but you can of course increase/decrease that as necessary. Push yourself but not to the point of serious pain - and let your body develop. If you get wrist pain - it's a good sign that you may need to ease up a bit, but don't get stuck just doing the same thing over and over - if you feel ready - jump to the next exercise.

And so that concludes Part 1 of "Handstand Training for Absolute Beginners" Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to ask about this in the comments, and share with anyone who may be interested!
To make sure you don't miss my next posts, 'like' Handstands with Dave Davy :-)

Until next time!

Paralysis by Analysis - or "Stop Overthinking!"

Hey there!

So here is my first not-introductory post, and with it, I want to talk about one of the common obstacles that I see in the practice of developing a handstand; an eloquently phrased phenomenon called "Paralysis by Analysis."

So what is Paralysis by Analysis? In a nutshell - it is when you overthink something to the point that it interferes with being able to do it. To describe it I'm going to use a pretty ridiculous example..

Why can't I do this??

Imagine you are trying to pick a tennis ball up off the ground. You have a look and decide that you should squat down and pick it up. You bend at the knees and begin to reach down but then realise that you are bending your back too much! You stand back up, and think about what you did. Ok, no bending of the back. This time you unlock the knees, and reach down, but when you reach with your arm - your back curves again! So you start again. This time, you try to keep your shoulder blade back so that you can reach down and get the ball without curving your back. But now you can't reach it! Perhaps you need to push your knees forward? So you do that, and Argh! your back curved again! Better restart. Meanwhile the ball is still just sitting on the ground, and you've been unable to pick it up.


Okay so that's a pretty ridiculous example right? But hopefully you get the point. This is what I regularly see in handstand practice. In the information age - there is an overwhelming amount of information about technique out there. And that's great! But sometimes it is too much and it can lead to Paralysis by Analysis.

So before I go any further, let's have a real quick word about the purpose of drills. The purpose of drills are to teach you, and your Nervous System (or the common way of describing it is muscle memory) aspects of the technique of the skill in question. This is why they say things like 'Drills get the Skills' when you do the drills you are learning the motor patterns of the skill. When doing these drills - it is important to do these drills correctly and look to execute them well. This will ingrain into your Muscle Memory the key aspects of the thing your working on. So drilling is important.

Drills Get the Skills

But when I see Paralysis by Analysis (I am hoping you remember that term by the end of this post), it's not usually when performing drills (although sometimes it is), it's when trying to do the actual handstand. Have a think - has this ever happened to you? Have you ever tried to do a handstand and corrected something, then something else, then something else and just gotten nowhere? This brings me to the point of this post.

I remember talking to an excellent juggler who once said to me "It's the fine line between doing the drills and just kinda chucking it". What this means is when it comes to doing the skill (in this case handstands) then just relax and do the handstand. DON'T correct every little thing. Instead a better ideas is to focus on 1 (or max 2) key area to focus on - and put that to the front of your mind before and AFTER your attempt. During an attempt - your focus should be on doing the handstand - with a little bit of your attention spent correcting the issue. If you have done the drills then you should have a good idea of what you're looking for.

When one area fixes up (don't get me wrong, some things are harder to fix than others and take longer) and you can do it comfortably then move onto the next thing. Now does this mean that if you just drill and then relax you'll magically do a handstand? No - but if you take the opportunity to focus on specific key areas in this way then you won't encounter such Paralysis by Analysis and will actually give yourself a chance to improve.

There is one last tricky thing about Paralysis by Analysis I want to write about - sometimes just one thing is enough to give you Paralysis by Analysis and you get stuck thinking about one issue and it doesn't go away. So what do you do there? Well the easy answer is to go back to drills that work on it - but I'm going to give you one more thing that can help. Over-fix the hell out of it. What do I mean by that? Let's say for example your problem is that you just don't get all the way up to handstand. Something you can do to help that is to deliberately go way way too far. Of course - make sure it is in your abilities to safely do this - make sure you can bail out of your handstand safely (I'm working on a Tutorial for this) but go for it! Over-fix your problem drastically. Get used to going too far - knowing full well that it won't work. Help your body realise that it can do much more than you actually need from it. Then it's just a matter of finding your way to the middle.

If you find it hard to avoid Paralysis by Analysis then at the start of training, grab a pen and paper and write down the key area to work on. And don't try to be tricky by using double things "Pointing my toes and bringing my hips higher" -No! Bad! Naughty! Focus on one thing and when it is fixed up and settled - put a tick next to it and write the next one.

This technique helps with Blog writing too!

So in summary: 

Don't overthink things.
Pick one key area to focus on
When doing the skill, relax and think about the skill.
Focus on the key area before and after your attempt.
If you get stuck - Over-Fix it!

I hope this helps your practice! Until next time!

Dave

Who is Dave Davy and what is this blog about?

Hello and welcome to my new blog!

Living in a handstand

I've been wanting to start something like a blog for a while now - to help get quality information out there to everyone interested in handstands. My purpose for this blog is basically two-fold. To share a bit of my journey and to get information out there in regards to handstands, the principles behind them, how to train them, what makes them work and such - plus get a bit of information on other skills and tricks I am passionate about, but the vast majority of this blog will be directed towards handstands.

So who is Dave Davy then? Well the short answer is, me! I'm Dave Davy!

Okay so a bit more detail on the matter. Brace yourself for a brief overview of the story which brought me to handstands...

Handstanding by the Yarra - looking across at Melbourne

I was born in Adelaide, South Australia and from a young age, I was a pretty passionate sports fan, in particular for Australian Rules Football and Cricket. I played those two through my youth - and a bit of social basketball, and started to really get into cricket. I was always the smallest kid in school, short and extremely skinny so playing football was a challenge and I sustained many injuries. After school however (when I was much taller) I played at my older brother's cricket club, where I played to a pretty decent level as a fast bowler. Over time though, I started to become disenchanted with the club and found my enjoyment was fading and I began to look to other things. Other things being Muay Thai, or Thai Boxing.

I really loved training Muay Thai, the gym and the people I trained with were amazing, and I found myself practicing at home, shadow boxing and practicing everyday. Through kick boxing I started to meet some really strongand amazing people, and I started to really develop an interest in strength training and skill training - in particular, gymnastics. This led me to starting to look at body-weight training specifically, and then I saw Ido Portal doing his thing.

Looking back now - it is obvious that it was the handstands that got me interested in his stuff, but at the time, I was really blown away by his style and the things he could do. So in 2012, I packed up and went to Movement Camp in Berlin - which was a life changing experience for me. I couldn't handstand very well yet, but I was determined to try them 50 -10000 times a day, and even after movement camp finished - I traveled around Germany handstanding everywhere I could.

What one of my successful handstands looked like when traveling Germany - taken in Nuremberg

Returning from Germany I started getting right into rock-climbing and handstands even more. I was starting to get consistent and was starting to look at things like press to handstand. 2013, I sought out Yuval Ayalon and did online coaching with him for a few months to improve my handstands, and I saw my way to a NICA workshop in Melbourne, where I met some amazing circus people From witnessing the amazing things people were doing, I started wanting to join the circus. I went to 2013 Movement Camp in Singapore. By the end of 2013, I was starting to realise that it was handstands that I was passionate about, not movement as a whole, and so I quit my job and left Adelaide, moving to Melbourne with a single minded goal of becoming a handbalancer. While I still liked climbing, kick-boxing and everyone I had begun to notice that that was all a complete back seat to handstands.

In 2014 I began to get really serious about handstands - getting as regular private lessons as I could, training at a short term Circus Course (Spin Circus Acadamy) and training every day, by half way through the year, I was training handstands 4 hours a day and I haven't looked back (except when doing head in handstands.). I've been training hard to become a performer, with goals to be an excellent handstand performer and an excellent teacher.

My first show - thanks Ben McNamara for the lovely shot.

So that hopefully answers the question of "how did I get into handstands" and I hope that gives you a nice little intro on what to expect from this blog!

Until next time!
Peace!

Dave
My Website