12 Days of Handstands

The original challenge involves holding cumulative minutes. You will start a timer as soon as your feet leave the ground and stop the timer as soon as your feet return to the ground. During your next handstand you will continue the timer until you accumulate your desire time for the day.

Cumulative handstand holds are about ‘time on your hands’. Form and entrance style are not as important as holding your handstand.

There are two main ways to do this:
 1) Practice one cumulative minute handstand per day of the month until day 12th.
         Example:
         Day 1, 1 cumulative minute.
         Day 2, 2 minutes… all the way to 
         Day 12, 12 minutes.

 2) Or spread the 12 days throughout the month. Keeping track of what day you are on.

If you choose to practice the original challenge, attempt all your handstands off the wall. You may use a spotter to avoid catastrophic falls, but if you touch the spotter or the wall, come down immediately and try again. Please not to use the spotter to hold the handstand longer than you can hold on your own.

This challenge is all about learning to enter a handstand and how to balance a handstand off the wall by practicing small movements. If you use a wall or a spotter to go up without control or if you touch the wall and continue holding the handstands then this challenge will be less effective.

If you feel like you need a spotter or a wall to enter the handstand, then we recommend you do not attempt this level yet, and instead attempt Level 1. 

Level 1 drills are designed to help you become comfortable entering and exiting a handstand on the wall. The primary focus on this level is to learn:

1. External rotation of the upper arm.
2. Maintaining your arms straight during entrance, exits and handstand holds.
3. Learning the hollow body position (ribs in, shoulders and hips opened).
4. Learning the mechanics of entrances and exits.
5. And becoming comfortable holding a handstand on the wall.

Stay on this level until you can hold 6x plank for 1 min in less than 12 minutes or until you can handstand off the wall for 5 seconds.

Level 2 Drills are about learning to be comfortable off the wall. While form is always important, perfectly straight off the wall handstands in this level are not the main goal. 

However, on the wall, your goals is to have perfect form. Do not sacrifice your form for longer wall handstands. That defies the purpose of most wall drills. These drills are to improve your form, not the length of your wall handstands.

Stay in this level until you can hold a handstand off the wall for 15 to 30 seconds.

Level 3 drills are meant to help you have a longer, quieter and straighter handstand. Your goal at this level is to focus on quality of movement on and off the wall. Yes, we do want longer handstands, but stability and alignment comes first.

Focus on form and effective movement on wall handstands, entrances, exits and holds… in that order.

Stay on this level until you can hold a straight and quiet 1 minute handstand. 
What after the 1 minute mark?

Then you will be able to work on leg isolations, asymmetric holds and increase your handstand hold to 2 minutes and one arm handstands (OAHS). However, will only take you to a 1 min, maybe a 1:30 goal. 

If you would like more, contact Raquel for personalized training plans. 

End each practice with meditation.

Explore how your core engagement helps you stay centered. Observe how the breath can create a shift in your center of gravity. See how you can modify your breath to take full breaths without rocking your body forwards and back. Then apply that change in your breathing pattern to your next handstand practice.

Just like in your handstand, it may be useful to video yourself from the side. This will allow you to see if you are leaning, curling or loosing your line in any way.