The domino cue vs The Ripple cue
When it comes to handstand skills that are at the edge of your mastery zone, we haven’t automated EVERYTHING we need to perform and think of.
Our head is full of motor patterns and cues we need to follow to get to the desired goal.
Whether it is reaching the wall for the first time, catching your first 5 seconds FS, pressing, standing on one hand… the same applies.
In that context, we want to be looking for domino cues, and identify potential ripple cues.
- Domino cues: Some of the things you are performing whilst in your handstand are somehow jointed. When we perform A, B naturally follows, partially or totally.
Let’s take an example: If I want to open my shoulders, thinking about retraction of the shoulder blades can cascade into shoulder elevation and flexion.If I try to pike, thinking of the APT can force me to open my shoulders, arch just enough in my lower back, stack the pelvis where need be and keep my legs low enough.
This is great - instead of thinking of 5 different individual items, I just think of the one that governs them all.
In order to minimise our mental load, we have to find which cue(s) sit(s) at the beginning of the domino line of straight cues - once we nail it, everything else naturally follows.
Careful: there is probably a high level of individuality in here.
- Ripple cues: Some of the cues you are performing whilst working on your handstands are somehow contradicting each other. When we perform one, the opposite of what we want to happen elsewhere starts flaring up. We could see that as a ripple effect that percolates through the body, unless we have enough body awareness to stop it.
Examples: You’re trying to flex your shoulders but you end up hollowbacking as well. You’re trying to bent one leg and the other bends as well. You’re opening the shoulders but the neck starts flexing.
We therefore have to be very conscious of this, and know where those opposing forces will collide in our bodies.
Rome wasn't built in one day.
Your handstand won't be fully built in one year.
Even when you know what to look for, what to work on given your specific needs, goals and strengths... it still takes time.
Working towards your handstand is like prepping for a marathon at the end of the year. Every week, you take small steps in the direction of your goal, in order to be ready on the D Day.
I often see students fidgeting with impatience once they understand, at last, what they need to work on and why (instead of mindlessly kicking up against the wall).
You have planted the seeds, watered the soil - you need to keep showing up for your body to digest this information and automate the relevant patterns. This takes time.
The key element that is disregarded here is the need for drills that only focus on Body Awareness.
You need to spend time being in specific positions, moving very careful such and such body parts, exploring one cue at a time, to separate the wheat from the chaff and start figuring out the key to your handstand.
Let's take an example:
You just discovered that landing both feet on the wall was more likely to make your landing less soft than a staggered leg position.
You understand why this is a problem: the heavier we are on the wall, the more we need it to stop our momentum, the less we learn to be self-sufficient.
But after a few sessions focusing on landing one foot on the wall, you are still not ALWAYS soft.
That's not how it works.
If you can not shoot a ball in a basketball net, you won't turn up tomorrow able to hit a 100% success rate, even if you now understand EXACTLY what needs to happen.
You need some mindful practice, where each rep is an attempt at replicating a formula - your handstand formula - that's gets honed and more specific day by day.
Gradually, you will see the success rate improve. The ball will get in the net more often and, when it doesn't, it will be close to it.
With patience, you will work your way to perfect accuracy, but you will have fought to deserve each increment of progress you made.
#How to use body awareness in your handstand training
To make sure your nervous system gets enough time to figure out what is happening, both at a conscious and subconscious level, you want to add the following tools to your training sessions:
- Alignment Anchoring. When you practice your alignment, you want to make sure that you stay in the position you have assumed with complete stillness for a few seconds.
In the process, assess if, indeed, that position is perfect, or if it can be further tweaked. If so, do so and anchor one more time. Rince and repeat.
💡Pro tip: if your position doesn't feel like it needs perfecting, you're probably not paying attention to the right things.
- Kick-up evaluation: An easy way to make our practice mindless is to kick-up again and again and again with no pause until some success happens.
This is a great idea if you never want to figure out why those initial kick-ups don't work and how to systematise those that did work.
- Staying in the storm: practicing perfect technique in the coated environment of the wall hardly mimics the turbulences you will face once freestanding.
You have two choices: pretend that everything will eventually be fine freestanding, or voluntarily add some targeted chaos into your wall practice to build up your resiliency and scale up your balancing skills beyond the comfort of the wall.