Handstands: how they can teach us to learn.

How this practice can guide your fitness goals and why its lessons are so important to learn.

The idea of completely reversing years of practice standing up just to end up looking like a deer fawn on ice, can seem a little intimidating and pointless.

However, the idea of learning such a complicated skill at a more mature age can show the fundamentals of learning most people are not aware of.

A movement like a handstand, where one completely reverses the way they stay up right, requires a lot of learning and adjusting, so much so that our conscious brain may not be able to handle it. Meaning, we wouldn’t be able to manually adjust each point from the tips of our fingers, through our hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, shoulder girdle, trunk, hips, knees and finally our feet, including the tips of our toes. There are too many variables.

We try, we fail, we try, we fail, each time getting a little bit better, every so often it feels more natural and easy. In between those frustrating misses, occurs a beautiful explosion of calculations in our subconscious, trying to make adjustments at every point so we can finally achieve the goal of standing upside down. We let our beautiful brain do the work.

Where this practice can teach us so much is in the lifestyle it encourages but also in the details of its practice: It’s encouraging to eat healthy to stay lean and light, to have a clear mind and a healthy gut, get good sleep to help with recovery and learning, all of these contributing to a good handstand. All the same, knowing we must put in the reps, direct our attention and try hard but when it comes to rest, we’re assured that the work continues and the pause is not in vain.