So, You Wanna Do A handstand…

What are the parts of a handstand?

Doesn’t everyone want to be able to do a handstand in the middle of the room? I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who do. But, how many people are willing to do the work involved in actually making it happen? How many are willing to spend the time to create the patterns in their practice that support making this happen and then do it consistently? I truly believe that it is this part that prevents people from being able to do the handstands they so desire.

I’m not going to promise you a handstand by the end of this article. However, it is a great opportunity to see how patterns of movement and positioning in the practice feed into a yoga posture such as handstands. You may just get a glimpse of where you need to put your efforts and intention. I discuss the entire arm balancing pattern in detail in my book Functional Anatomy of Yoga starting on p. 317 (1st ed.).

Finding strength, flexibility, and technique

Like all postures, handstand requires a certain amount of strength, flexibility, and especially technique. Without all three coming together in their various degrees how can we expect to find ourselves in the middle of the room standing on our hands with control?

Establishing a foundation

First and foremost we need a solid and stable foundation. The ultimate foundation for doing a handstand is, well, the hands. It’s not the hands that are normally the problem. If we’re fair, we aren’t really designed to stand on our hands, but we can if we really want to. The real difficulty is when you follow the chain of joints upward and get to the shoulder girdle.

Since our hands are playing the role of our feet in this posture we should make a quick anatomical comparison. We can see that the shoulder girdle is not nearly as stable as the pelvis and hips that we normally stack above our foot foundation. The shoulder girdle with all of its mobility and adaptability needs to be strong and stable in a handstand. There are a number of muscles that attach to the scapula which can help stabilize it. In my mind, however, the single most important one is the serratus anterior muscle which lies mostly hidden under the scapula. This muscle helps keep the edge of the scapula closest to the spine pressed down against the rib cage. That is its stabilizing role.

The actions of serratus anterior

Just as significant are the actions that this muscle makes the scapula do when it contracts. The two actions are protraction and upward rotation. As it turns out these are exactly the actions we do and need to do when performing a handstand. Protraction pulls the scapula around the front of the torso and upward rotation takes the humerus movement above eye level and over our head.

By combining these actions and stabilization, activating this muscle is crucial for preventing the chest from collapsing through the scapula. It’s also the muscle responsible for preventing the scapula from sticking up off of the back. As a result this muscle needs to be strong to help create the foundation for this and all arm balances.

Seeing the pattern: the arms and shoulders

If you take a close look at pictures of arm balancing postures, you’ll notice a common pattern between the hands and the shoulders. This basic pattern is that the shoulders sit in front of the wrist. It may be an ideal to have the shoulders above the wrist and the hips in line with that, but in my experience, very few people have the ability to do this.

Instead we want to take our shoulders just in front of our wrists and sometimes further to line up with the middle of our fingers. That depends on the individual. You’ll notice in my bakasana image below, my shoulders are even further out. The first thing that normally comes up for students when I get them to do this is fear that they will collapse onto their face. This is a very natural fear, and if the shoulders aren’t strong enough, it could happen. It also shows us that we are probably missing out on a fundamental anatomical pattern that has created the strength and support that we need to hold our shoulders in this position.

Stacking the pelvis over your foundation

The second pattern is created at the pelvis. It needs to be stacked above a stable and strong foundation. Part of it is positioning and part of it is about controlling the pelvis. Personally, I see a related pattern between how we work our headstand and how we work our handstand. There is a similar, and necessary, pelvic movement in both of these postures if you want to do them with control. More on this in a moment.

As for positioning, the pelvis needs to fit in the line moving upward from the hands and shoulders. If I were to draw a line in most people, the hands would be behind the shoulders. And, the pelvis would be almost in line with the hands. That creates a bit of a zig-zag between the three points. Look at the recent image of me at the bottom.

Understand the pattern

Where is it that we create the hand and shoulder pattern? Let’s look for it. We know we’re looking for a place where the hands are on the floor. They are weight-bearing and the shoulders are just in front of them. Of course, anytime we do an arm balancing posture this element is there. Put yourself into a simple bakasana position and you’ll see it. Are there other places we see this before ever doing a bakasana?

Practicing the pattern in sun salutations

If you do any type of vinyasa practice, it means you probably do sun salutations. If you do them, the moment before you jump back to a plank position is a key moment for setting up this pattern. You have the potential to set yourself up in the very position between the hands and the shoulders that we’re talking about.

So many students don’t lean into their hands in sun salutations, much less put their shoulders in front of their wrists. Often students keep their shoulders back. And then when they jump, they move their shoulders even further back in space, rather than keeping them forward with weight in the hands. It’s almost as if they are avoiding the weight in their hands. If you placed weight into your hands and kept your shoulders forward, you would essentially be doing a handstand as you jumped back. This is the most significant anatomical or neuromuscular pattern of handstand. It is the seed that the handstand can grow from.

Taking the time to train the pattern

The question is, how many of you are willing to take the time to work this? It takes time to train the tissues to support your shoulders so that handstanding almost happens on its own. Certainly, any other yoga postures which help create strength in the shoulders are beneficial. Even high plank and then lowering to chaturanga have their place in creating strength in both the shoulders and in the serratus anterior to help stabilize the scapula. But, it’s when we can most closely approximate the ultimate pattern that we can do the best neuromuscular training, like jumping back.

Breaking down the pelvic pattern

“IMAGE IS: position just before jumping back”

To understand the pelvic pattern we can look to headstand and the ways in which we get into it. If we begin our headstand with bent knees, squeezed in toward our chest, then we have two options for getting our feet up above us. We can initiate the movement from our feet and spring open the whole lower half of our body. Or, we can uncurl our body first, with the spine becoming straight, leading to the pelvis tilting and then creating a slight backbend (neutral spine). From there the knees can come up with the feet, as they are moving from a well-established pelvis which has already been set over the foundation of the shoulders and head beneath it.

Avoid negative patterns

The most common negative pattern I see is people jumping up on walls. That’s true both for handstands and headstands. I must admit, if you have no strength in your arms then handstanding on a wall may help with creating the necessary strength. The potential problem with it is that it first teaches you to bypass your hand and shoulder foundation. By throwing your legs up at any cost you avoid using the muscles that you need to give you the stable foundation you’ll need later. It also avoids the abdominal and or core strength needed to help stabilize and move the pelvis in the way we described above. This leads to a lack of control over your center of gravity when you eventually do try in the middle of the room.

In addition, most people I see doing this keep their shoulders behind their wrists. That creates an overarched back and shoulders. This isn’t going to train the shoulders to work in the way they ultimately need to. It teaches the pelvis to be in the wrong place relative to the hands and shoulders. Last but definitely not least, how are you going to stop the momentum created from jumping when there is no wall to catch you? You won’t have trained any of your tissues to be able to do that.