Hand Position Matters

One of these pictures is a good hand position, the other, bad… I’ll let you work it out

After a few weeks break on the “how to” front, we are back! This week I’m going to repeat what I say a million times a day and some people will be sick to death of it but for those who don’t know or maybe you are wondering why it is so important, I’m going to explain handstand hand positioning.

So the correct way to hold you hands on a normal flat surface is; index fingers parallel to one another, fingers fanned out wide around that and hands at shoulder width. You should be directing your weight towards your index finger base and your hands should be alive with cambered grip. Your thumbs need no part for now too. Now to break that down to why it is so important.

Index fingers parallel – This means as we fatigue we won’t have such a tendency to lean on our internal rotators in a shoulders, the second we start relying on them the closer we are to bent arms. And as a whole it is easier to keep elbows locked out.

Fingers fanned out wide – The wider the fingers the more directional control you have with your handstands as it is your fingertips that are the main culprit for keeping your heels falling over head.
Hands at shoulder width – This here is more important as you get more competent with your handstand and is more so relevant for tricks and aesthetics but with hands too wide, you can jar up your wrists rather fast as the joint will be rotated as well as flexed.

Weight pushing in at your index finger base – This is one that can be very much over looked, when we begin we generally don’t have enough wrist flexibility to be able to properly ground our index finger base but this is something that you need to change ASAP! Naturally we will hold the weight on the outside edge of the heel of our hand, this not only loads the wrist up in a way it doesn’t like being loaded but it also only utilises half your forearm. Our wrists are like a baby’s ankle, there is no real strength there, so do yourself as much favours as you can and use every muscle you have! Press in at the index finger base, loads your wrist up correctly and activates all through your forearm.

Cambered grip – Last but certainly not least. What is cambered grip I hear you ask? Any acrobat, circus artist or anyone with a good handstand will tell you this is one of the most important things if you are going to stand on your hands. The easiest way to get into a cambered hand position is to place your hand flat on the floor, then curl your fingers up into the proper position. Lean your weight into your hands slowly and get a feel for the hand position, and how it differs from the flat-handed position. It allows you to press your fingertips harder into the ground making them have a more similar function to toes. Now a lot of us just won’t have the flexibility to perform the cambered grip from the get go so I have a wee photo below showing you how to develop this. 1-2 minutes a day of holding this stretch should suffice  

How to stretch for “cambered grip” and how to “cambered grip”

 
So there you are my friends, now look at my pictures and admire ;P

Till next week

One love

Harry