From Day Dreaming to Goal Setting: Everything you Need to Crush it at Handstand Transitions

 

Preface: If you have any other questions from the video that I didn’t cover, you can leave them as a comment at the bottom. Also, what are some other fun transitions you’ve seen or would like to see?

This is more of an inspirational video. If this short clip can inspire you to start practicing today, it’s done it’s job.

We can all use a little extra motivation right?

But other than providing a source of inspiration, let me point out a couple of details that you might not notice.

As your practice gets MORE advanced, believe it or not, your physical ability gets LESS important.

Watch. And Keep reading.

Don’t talk to yourself like this:

“Good, I’ve never liked building strength” or “Thank God, working on flexibility really sucks”.

Wrong.

Don’t skew my words and turn them into an excuse to stop practicing.

Don’t be negative.

Strength and flexibility are important. You need them, in abundance. If you’re going to get anywhere.

Make sense?

Also, don’t be one of those competitive losers who watches videos and says things to themselves like “NOPE, I can’t do that [And here are X reasons why]”.

Truth is, yoga can turn competitive fast if you don’t watch it.

Hear me?

How many times has Instagram left you secretly jealous?

Don’t allow yourself to distill poison from inspiration.

The crippling type of poison that stops you from doing anything at all, robs your happiness and makes you feel inadequate. And depressed.

One more piece of bad news for you:

Developing strength and flexibility is a slog.

Sometimes the truth comes in the form of bad news.

Now the Good News…

Once your strength and flexibility are up to snuff, you can start making fast changes in your practice. Simply by paying attention.

Technical Ability Trumps Physical Ability

If I understood details when I was learning I would’ve learned A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT FASTER.

I would struggle with transitions for months.

Months…

And Months.

Then finally a voice in my head would just say, “Hi Brian, this is the angel of yoga coming to save you, move your hips forward just another inch and you wouldn’t keep falling over”.

Duh???

Why did it take me so damn long to figure that out???? I forgive myself.

BUT WHY COULDN’T JUST ONE YOGA TEACHER POINT THAT OUT TO ME?

Truth is:

Most yoga teachers aren’t technical people and they don’t notice these things themselves.

In order to make your practice beautiful, you must start depending on yourself for things.

I’m going to show you how.

Invaluable Pointers to Apply to Your Practice

Your level of yoga practice doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t consider super advanced, simply starting to get these concepts in your head NOW will amplify that rate that you learn.

How to Make Your Straight-Arm Crow Attempts Count

There’s multiple ways to get into Straight-Arm Crow:

• Starting with the arms bent and pressing them straight
• Pressing into it directly from the ground
• Floating into it from downward dog

In this video I’m floating into it from downward dog and here’s how I not just nail it, but prepare myself to lift up to handstand:

When I jump, I make sure my shoulders go beyond the wrists, but not too much

And here’s why:

This happens to also be a fundamental principle of the Press Handstand.

Lifting/Floating up to handstand requires you to not only shift your shoulders slightly beyond the wrist, but to pull the hips up and over the shoulders at the same time.

Don’t confuse the shoulder position with planche. It’s a different mechanic.

Same thing with LANDING Straight-Arm Crow:

If you shift the shoulders too far forward without pulling the hips up, you’ll just fall forward.

How I take Crow to Handstand

There are 2 distinct “Modes” of Straight-Arm Crow:

• You’re scrapping and clawing with everything you have to fight the collapsing sensation
• Your’re feather-light on your hands and your hips could lift at any time as smoothly as slicing through warm butter

If you’re trying to jump into Straight-Arm Crow,

Don’t forget this:

• Keep your hips as high as possible throughout the entire jump
• Use your core to get your knees closer to your armpits

But don’t make this mistake:

Prioritize bringing your knees to your armpits.

Instead of dropping the hips in an effort to make the knees and arms touch, focus on keeping the hips as high as possible.

That’s what’ll train you to lift.

Got it?

As your core gets stronger, you’ll be able to “hinge” the knees closer to your arms while keeping the hips high at the same time.

The trick:

The higher you hold the hips the easier it is to take your crow to handstand.

Handstand to Koundinyasana 2

The key to smooth sailing starts with the elbows.

Here’s why:

The elbows obviously have to bend. But pay attention to HOW you bend them.

• If you allow the elbows to bend out to the side, you’ll engage (clinch) your traps and shoulders (stress your neck) and disengage the necessary core muscles
• If you can squeeze the elbows in as you bend, you’ll engage your back muscles (lats) which work as a seatbelt

What To Do If You Crash

We’ve all had that feeling.

Lift up to an arm balance…then all of a sudden…crash.

Focus on sending your torso as far forward as possible.

These are my exact teaching words, “Once you think you’ve gone as far forward as you can, shift yourself forward another 2 inches”.

Sounds crazy, or scary, but it works.

Think about this:

You need an equal amount of weight in front of the hands as you do behind the hands to stop yourself from going….

….timberrrrrr….

You get the idea.

What you do with the leg is important too.

Don’t bend your elbows then move the leg.

While in handstand, move the leg into the necessary position FIRST, then bend the elbows and lower.

Now sure what the correct position is?

Do Koundinyasana 2 on the ground.

But…

With your eyes closed, please!

Focus only on what you feel in the legs, specifically in the hips.

Focus hard on that feeling.

Then try to replicate it while on your hands.

Master that feeling, then bend your elbows and lower.

You’ll nail the transition effortlessly, assuming you have the arm strength.

Odds and ends

I could have transitioned Koundinyasana 2 to Ashtavakrasana. But I just sat down.

The mechanic is the same though.

If you’re working on that transition, here’s what might go wrong:

You try to pull the back forward and through, but it gets stuck and drags on the ground.

Fix it like this:

Although you’re transitioning from bent-arm arm balance to bent-arm arm balance, in order to pass the leg though, you must briefly be able to straighten the arms. 

Straightening the arms is necessary.

Here’s why:

With straight arms you can push enough to elevate your entire body (including your leg). And at that moment you pass the leg though.

Make sense?

Ok, I don’t want to talk about Chakorasana now, but I do want to say a few things about putting your leg behind your head.

Might this be you:

You can get your leg behind your head, but can’t get it to stick.

And then you chalk it up to flexibility, and tell yourself you just need more of it?

False.

Often times when learning complex yoga poses or transitions, don’t turn to the obvious. It’s not always true.

You just need more strength. In your neck.

How to fix it:

Do arm balances from Tripod Headstands.

If you struggle with headstands, I recommend you read this post.

Tripod Headstands strengthen the neck.

True, you’re supposed to reduce pressure on the neck as much as possible.

But even when you do, there is still *some* pressure. This makes your neck more resilient.

The arm balances I recommend you work on from Tripod Headstand are:

• Crow Pose (Bakasana)
• One Legged Crow (Eka Pada Bakasana)
• Eka Pada Koundinyasana 2

Doing these consistently will prepare your neck to bare the weight of your leg.

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