Fast Fitness - Handstand Rows

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - rows to strengthen the upper body, practice balance and neutral spine, and avoid lower disc injury from bad forward bending.

Readers have been writing in, excited about doing handstands for the first time or improving the handstand they do to get whole body functional fun exercise. My student Danielle demonstrates:

1. Hold a handstand, either using Easy handstand or Step Up To Handstand. Don't overarch the lower back (overarch is pictured). Instead of overarch/hyperlordosis, hold neutral spine in handstand.
2. Shift your weight to stand on one hand. Grasp a hand weight in the other hand
3. Do rows, and any variety of arm free-weight movements that you want to improve.

There is no need to bend over forward to do rows. It does not train functional posture, and unequally squeezes lower discs outward, which adds to degeneration and herniation forces that are common during bad daily sitting and unhealthy bending. You don't need more unhealthy things while exercising.

• To understand herniation forces on discs from bad forward bending, click: The Cause of Disc and Back Pain and Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

• To understand the damaging force on the lower spine of bad backward bending (overarching, hyperlordosis): Prevent Back Surgery

• To reduce overarching/hyperlordosis during handstand: Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine.

Labels: arm, balance, disc, fast fitness, handstand, lordosis, shoulder, strength, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Handstand Dips

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Dips upside down holding a handstand, for shoulder and arm strength, balance, agility, and fun.

Readers Dave, Nine-Volt Terry, and others asked about dips. You don't need weights and equipment to increase strength. Body weight can be used in many fun ways. Fitness Fixer has shown how to do an easy handstand, then last Friday featured a short movie to learn a regular handstand - Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand.

This week - use the handstand for more:

1. Hold a handstand the way you are safe and comfortable.
2. Bend your elbows to lower toward the floor like a pushup, then push to straighten.
3. Increase how deep you can dip and how many you can do and push back up again.

These dips are safer for the anterior (front) shoulder than conventional dips which are done by leaning or hanging on hands while upright, and bending elbows behind you to lower and raise. They can work like a Safer Overhead Military Press. Make sure you don't have glaucoma or uncontrolled high blood pressure before doing these. Breathe and stay relaxed instead of tightening.

To increase skills, work until you can do handstand dips without a wall.

Labels: arm, fast fitness, handstand, shoulder, strength

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Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn to lift up to a full handstand, for shoulder, arm, and wrist strength, balance, agility, skill, and fun.

Previous posts showed how to step up to an easy handstand by putting one foot up high behind you on a wall or surface. Here is how to learn swinging up to full handstand:

1. Stand close to a secure surface.
2. Plop both hands on the floor about a foot from the wall and swing one leg upward
3. Use momentum of putting hands down and swinging leg up, to swing the other leg upward to the wall.

• Mr. Sosaku at right holds the finished stance.
• Helen, center shows swinging up straight, bringing both feet to the wall.
• Kimberly shows the beginning - placing hands and getting the idea of lifting legs upward.

Let your feet come to the wall and straighten your body, so that you do not curl your back against the wall. Work to increase strength and balance, so that you need the wall less and less, eventually holding straight handstand without the wall. Note the hand weight on the floor. Future posts will show weightlifting with one arm while in handstand on the other.

More on handstand:

• Don't let your back sag or overarch when holding handstand- Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine
• Step backward to easy handstand - Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie and Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand (still photos and full description)
• Using a Handstand for More Than an Exercise - Real Life.

Labels: arm, balance, fast fitness, handstand, strength, video/movie, wrist

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Using a Handstand for More Than an Exercise - Real Life

A reader wrote about the handstand against wall in the post Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie. GingerB said,

"My Yoga teachers uses that, but you hold you legs at a right degree angle to the floor. It forces your back to be straight. Seems to me it sets you up for more shoulder action. I don't think I'll ever be able to do a handstand without the wall."

The handstand against the wall can be done with legs straight or bent as Ginger describes, or a variety of other stretches. However bending the legs at right angle, or any angle, does not "force" a straight back. Rounded back can still occur. Many people with tight hamstrings wind up rounding the back doing this stretch as Ginger describes because the back is the only place they can get the stretch from and they do not know how to transfer the stretch to the hamstrings. The shoulders also can be in any posture or level of "action" from good to bad depending on how much you know about posture and allow to happen.

The photo at right shows five of my students demonstrating the easy wall handstand in both positions. First at right in the foreground is Diana who hold straight good neutral spine. Next, also in good neutral spine is 67 year old Leslie who starred in the post Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady? Click the post to do your pushups with her every day. Third in the middle, Johanna demonstrates right angle (photo taken just before reaching parallel to floor). This can be a fun stretch for hamstrings without loading the lower back.

Most important, use a straight handstand position in neutral spine to train straight body position against resistance, then transfer that knowledge to daily life. If you use the right-angle pose alone you do not learn that.

All my exercises are developed to be more than exercise alone. Instead of just "doing a move" or "holding a pose" use them to train how to move out of bad positioning into healthy position for everything you do.

The post Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine shows a short movie of letting spine sag in the handstand and how to fix it so that you can train what to do when you are walking around, running, lifting weights, and just enjoying life. Instead of "doing" exercise, restore real life.

For doing handstands without the wall, it’s just real life balance and stretch training - a post soon will cover how.

Labels: handstand, leg stretch, shoulder, strength, yoga

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Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine

Last week's Fast Fitness showed a movie of how to step up into an easy handstand and get back down. This week shows a common pitfall - letting your lower spine sag under gravity - and how to fix it and hold neutral spine.

My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates:

1. Step your foot up behind you high onto a wall, then the other.
2. For the first 5 seconds of the movie, Dennis allows the lower spine to overarch (increase the inward curve) under the pull of gravity, a bad posture called hyperlordosis. It is not the normal inward curve, it is an easily changed bad posture.
3. At second 5 he changes the tilt of the hip and lower spine back to neutral spine. The action is like doing an abdominal crunch to bring the spine and torso just forward enough to be straight.

This technique practices the muscles and positioning for straight standing, making it better than just a handstand. If you want to gain abdominal strength, using neutral spine uses those muscles. An important difference in Fitness Fixer exercises is that they are not only exercises alone. All the techniques I developed are supposed to be used to train muscle function and positioning for when you stand up and walk away.

Use neutral spine, not only for handstands, but all you do. Examples are in Prevent Back Surgery.

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, fast fitness, handstand, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, video/movie

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Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a quick, safer way to try a handstand. Standing on hands has many health and strength benefits and can be easily practiced in this way.

My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates in this short movie. Click the arrow to watch the movie:

1. Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall, and crouch to put your hands on the floor (avoid slippery surface)
2. Put one foot high up on the wall, then lift the other foot up too
3. To get down, step one foot back down, then the other

To see step by step still photos and more explanation, click the post Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand where David from Belgium shows the handstand plus how to add a nice overhead hamstring stretch.


Keep breathing. Smile. Relax. Send in your own photos of trying this. Be safe and have fun.

Labels: arm, balance, circulation, fast fitness, handstand, shoulder, strength, upper back, video/movie, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - if you have been afraid to try a handstand, here is a quick easy way to have success. You will strengthen your hands, wrist, arms, shoulders, upper body, and core, practice balance, and get blood circulating.

1. Crouch down near a wall (avoid slippery floor)
2. Put one foot high up on the wall
3. Lift up the other foot

If you have uncontrolled glaucoma or high blood pressure, ask your care providers first.

• Click here to see a quick video showing how to change sagging spine to neutral spine.
  
• Click Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener for more on the benefits, plus drawings and description.

Labels: arm, balance, circulation, fast fitness, hand, handstand, shoulder, strength, wrist

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Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener

Upper body strength is important for health, making daily activities easier, and other benefits including preventing osteoporosis of the upper back and wrist, two major sites of bone loss in both men and women. It is often said in gyms and fitness articles that body weight is not enough to strengthen, and that you need weights and equipment. Fortunately, that is not true.

Here is a quick, fun, upper body strengthener using your own body weight. It has the added advantages of also strengthening core muscles plus training a fair amount of balance. It also gives many benefits of a tilt table or inversion machine. You can use this fun exercise anywhere you have even a small wall space. It is fun and not as hard as it looks. Be brave, and (safely, carefully) try this:

• Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall (face away from the wall).
• Crouch down and put both hands on the floor - drawing #1 at right.
• Put the bottom of one foot high on the wall - drawing #2.
• Lift your other leg to the wall so that you are standing on your hands with both feet up on the wall - drawing #3.
• Hold as long as you can. Keep breathing.
• When you want to come down, just step one, then both feet back down to the floor the way you started in drawing #1.

Avoid this one if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or problems with pressure in your eyes or brain. To keep this exercise fun and safe, when you are upside down standing on your hands, don't let your lower back sag into an arch. Keep your hip tucked to straighten your back and you will get free core strengthening while you do this. Don't let your body weight pressure your shoulders. Use your upper body muscles to maintain shoulder position instead of letting your shoulder joints grind under your weight. Don't fall down on your face. Use your arm strength and hold yourself up. Keep breathing and don't tighten and strain, which increases blood pressure.

Don't think of this as an extreme exercise. It can be simple; don't be afraid to try it daily. My Grandmother "downgraded" to this one in her 90's from full handstands (without the wall), because it is easier and safer.

When this exercise becomes too easy, rock side to side so that you stand with weight first on one hand, then the other, as if walking on your hands. Keep your feet against the wall for balance, at first. When this becomes too easy, stand only on one hand for increasing periods. Start doing small dips, like upside-down pushups. Increase until you can dip your head almost to the floor, then push back up to a handstand again. Work until you no longer need the wall.

You do not need to lift big weights in a gym to strengthen. Your body weight provides fun, effective strengthening, with no machines, gyms, or extra weights needed.


Drawings copyright by Jolie Bookspan

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, balance, hamstring, hand, handstand, leg strength, leg stretch, strength, stretch, upper back, wrist

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