It’s not about failing. It’s about failing safely.
I’ve been teaching hand balancing to beginners for several years now. Without instruction, people always go through the same process:
- Practice kicking up with your back to the wall (encourages over kicking)
- Spend months getting comfortable in this position (develops bad position habits)
- Start arching your back to shift more weight to your hands (reinforces bad position habits)
- Start flirting with balance as your feet get lighter and lighter (further reinforces bad position habits)
- Build enough confidence to attempt a handstand away from the wall (establishes a habit of fear)
- Get scared and head back to the wall and repeat step 5 and 6 forever
I have noted several problems with this method and they all revolve around the same thing: falling is terrifying.
Failing in a handstand is not like most exercises. Instead of simply not lifting the weight or moving incorrectly as you learn, you fall on your head or back with significant force. These impacts can result in really serious injury. People are smart in being scared of them.
But by never learning to fail safely, they start and reinforce many bad habits that are incredibly difficult to undo later. Not learning how to fall will also prevent anymore more forward progress after a certain stage.
When I teach beginners handstands, the first thing we work on is falling safely. We practice cartwheels, controlled descents, hand placement, and practice countless times. Before we ever attempt a handstand on the wall, I want people to know how to fall and be confident they can get their feet to the ground before their head.
Learning how to fail safely makes the process look like this:
- Learn to fall (builds confidence to practice more)
- Practice handstand with your chest facing the wall (builds good position habits)
- Develop balance in the hands by leaning away from the wall (teaches balance in the hands rather than the back)
- Practice kick ups away from the wall to learn how much force is required (builds entry sensitivity)
- Repeat steps 2–4 until you start balancing
Using this method, you develop good habits from the beginning and progress much faster.
The key is knowing how to fail safely.
Personal development and business books are constantly encouraging trying new things, failing, and figuring out how to improve. They quote motivational posters about Thomas Edison knowing 1,000 ways how not to make a light bulb and many other cute sayings.
What they neglect is to ensure the failures are safe.
Pouring your life savings into an untested idea that you believe in while having no experience will likely result in failure. That wouldn’t be a bad thing except you poured your entire life savings into it and now you are back at zero. This is like landing on your head while falling out of a handstand. You only get to do it once and that’s not enough to learn a difficult skill like running a business.
You can learn just as many lessons by investing an amount you don’t care about losing. This is a much safer approach that will let you develop good business habits and operate with confidence rather than fear of losing everything.
Even once you become proficient with a skill, you need to continue to fail safely. Just because I can hold a handstand doesn’t mean I’m going to attempt one on the edge of my 23-story building.
In a video a couple of years ago, Gary Vaynerchuk said that he signed the lease on his new office space only after he could afford to pay for the entire term with money he already had. He wasn’t willing to risk having to pay a debt for the rest of his life if his business didn’t develop the way he wanted it to. This is failing safely even at expert levels.
The number one thing that develops a handstand faster than anything else is practice. Practicing often is the only way to really get good at being upside down. You will only practice if you aren’t scared of dying every time you do.
Fail. Fail often and in constantly new ways. Just make sure your failures never leave you as pile on the floor with a broken neck. Learn how to fail safely before you fail at all.
Brian is on a mission to bring reasonableness to the health and fitness. In an industry consumed with extremes and insanity, Brian offers practical and sensible strategies that create lasting long-term results developed over years as a coach and through personal necessity. He offers online personal training through his website.
