Handstand Challenge 🙌

Handstands are fun and help me get out of my head and connect with my body.

This was originaly a part of my #Playful Movement focus area for 2020, and then #Acrobody focus area for 2021. It turned out to be quite a short-lived experiment. It lasted from 25th of April until mid July. I restarted the process in January 2021, but only kept it until March.

I started the experiment on the 25th of April 2020, with playing around with handstands without any knowledge on how to structure my training–just to get a feel if that’s something I enjoy.

Turns out that I do, so I dived deeper.

I found this amazing Handstand Tutorial on the 6th of May and it inspired me to take practicing handstands seriously. I’m implementing the five step strategy from there:

Prep - Practice - Play - Push - Ponder

This idea seems to fit well with the “Learning Edge”

For now I’m not committing to a specific chunk of time to ease the resistance of starting another practice (my daily routine is quite packed already). I’m hoping that a combination of play-first approach with a proper training structure will create a self-reinforcing loop of improving my skills while having a total blast.

Let’s see what happens.

Log

You can see our Handstand Challenge 🙌 Video Playlist on Youtube.

3 June: It’s a bit sad but I haven’t been practicing in quite a long time. But that’s okay. I’ve just rebooted my routine and I’m excited to start playing with handstands again. (I’m switching to dates, because day numbers are confusing).

Day 17: This time we took advantage of the sunny weather, went outside and did some play with no wall

Day 15 and 16: Taking a break. Until now, we’ve been doing handstands every single day and we can feel that our bodies needs a bit of rest. The tutorial we’re following suggests practicing handstands 4 days a week. That definitelly makes sense.

Day 14: Practice with a wall

Day 13: Playing with a free-standing handstand and Reflection

Day 12: Embarking on a ”serious” handstand challenge, after finding this tutorial.

Day 3: Testing the Waters

Day 1: 25th of April*

*To be fair, I’m not exactly sure how to decide on which day was really the first, so I picked one that kinda made sense. I intuitively feel it’ll be advantageous to keep a log of days–perhaps that’s the sailor in me speaking ⛵️.

Tasks

• Reach out to a friend of mine who happens to be a badass handstand coach and ask if he’d like to give some feedback on this strategy. See if there’s anything I could offer to in exchange to make his life more amazing.