Some Truths on Handstands

The main Truth — I’ve never successfully gotten myself into an unsupported handstand. As in: kicked in, held it in the middle of the room, and approached a moment of zen while I was posted to Instagram. On that accord, I’m 0/3. I’ve never successfully kicked into a handstand against a wall without serious help. I have used the Casale Wall Walk method to get into an inverted position to run a few drills while on my hands.

A photo posted by David Pennington (@bendnbrew) on Jan 1, 2016 at 5:14pm PST

As for a true-blue handstand — I still don’t have it. Even though I’ve had over two years of attempts, instructions and frustrations surrounding it. And to must of us, that’s just dandy.

I’ve taken instruction on how to approach and perfect handstand technique from gymnasts, yogis, and cross-fitters. The only thing I’ve concluded is that they all need to get into a room together and compare notes because they’ve all got a lot of conflicting ideas.

The idea of a handstand is to take something entirely safe and familiar — like keeping 100% of your body weight between the most important part of you (your head/face) and the floor — and doing something crazy and probably unnatural: like inverting it so the most important part of you is between the floor and like 90% of your body weight. Standing upright, I’m 6 foot 3 inches tall. If my hands are over my head, I’m over 7 feet. This means I am dealing with a very unforgiving center of gravity while I’m on my hands.

When I took my very first gymnastic workshop years ago — back before the knee injury, back when I was a totally different person — Coach Orench said, casually, “ok, kick into a handstand.” I had no idea where to start. Years later, on the mend from the mentioned injury and back with Coach’s crew at his new facility, I still couldn’t kick into a handstand — but we approached things from the ground up. The only physical elements that really matter to a handstand are, apparently, shoulder mobility and core strength. The rest is all about getting out of your head.

So, really, none of this is impossible. Yet I’ve been chasing this idea of a handstand for a long time now. Why?

• As I read more into this idea of Human Optimization I come across a TON of “tried and true measures for fitness” and this concept of “primal movement.” All of them can be distilled down to a handful of core movements and strength centers that are, inherently, children of the handstand.
• There’s the deal with confidence. I’ve already said farewell to the “Why Bother?” and am approaching things with a “Why Not?” A mastery of handstands falls right in line with that. Every time I approach a handstand I do something that breaks down another mental barrier, including falling on my: face, back, side, a pile of yoga blocks, into a mirror, onto a dog.
• Perspectives are different. In fact, the world looks totally different when upside down and I feel like it’s a position a lot of us fail to take.
• A handstand is this strange physical benchmark that means nothing, but I feel like I have to hit. Handstands are not a thing that any of us really need to know how to do. Most of us will live happy, healthy and complete lives without ever thinking about doing a handstand. Yet, here I am. Some stupid internal desire to do something just because I couldn’t do it for so long.

Onward and up(sidedown)ward.

A video posted by David Pennington (@bendnbrew) on Jan 12, 2015 at 7:03pm PST