The Handstand Toolkits 8 Step To Overcome Your Fear Of Falling

I find the journey outlined below one of the most rewarding to teach, simply because it is the hardest part of the entire journey for some. Furthermore, it’s often the least understood stage of learning because many, especially those teaching this, can skip right past learning to fall on their first attempt at a handstand.

The Kaizen Principle

When learning to bail from a handstand, it’s all too common to see people being thrown in the deep end, have a bad experience, and get shut out of the practice forever. This initial block is highly prevalent in martial arts,  acrobatics and many more practices. Handstands are no different.

For this reason, I am a big believer in the Japanese 'kaizen' principle of incremental but continuous improvement over time. Chip away at it each day, step by step and it is definitely doable. Celebrate the small wins.

Phase 2 - Hand, Foot, Foot

The wall tuck hold is then advanced to the wall tuck bail.

Here we introduce the sequencing of hand, foot, foot. The body remains tucked and low to the ground. We don’t walk the hands in closer or extend the legs. Simply get up on the wall, and then come down by stepping the hand, and then each foot.

Learning to fall out of a handstand is the fundamental first step. It is NOT possible to learn to handstand without being able to fall over in overbalance. This means we must learn to be comfortable and confident in falling through overbalance.

We want to build the bail as a safety mechanism. Thereby we want minimal thought processing behind it. We achieve this through high repetition. This is the only drill I actually recommend practising on one side, because I want it to be an ingrained response where you don’t think, you just do, in order to land on your feet.

Phase 3 - Cartwheel Bail

Once comfortable with landing from the wall tuck bail, the bail is advanced gradually towards a chest to wall bail through this sequence.

1. Extending the legs first
2. Bailing with straighter legs
3. Taking one step closer with the hands
4. Walking in with the hands
5. Tipping Point (phase 4)
6. Bailing from chest to wall (phase 5)

As you build up towards chest to wall with straight legs, don’t force yourself to go closer and higher until you have comfortably bailed from that height.

This phase can be highly objective. For those practising in the same spot, use a marker on the floor to track the distance you’re bailing from. The goal is to fractionally decrease the distance each session. Even a centimeter or two is great! Each step adds in practice and over time will build you up to bailing from the wall. Kaizen principle in action.

There is no rush. Take it at your own pace and focus on quality.

Phase 5 - Reactive NOT Proactive Chest To Wall Bail

Once a chest to wall bail is achieved, we then want to simulate a freestanding handstand as much as possible. When falling in a handstand we are very rarely choosing to fall. For this reason, we must react and then bail in order to save ourselves.

The main issue with the transfer of the cartwheel bail from the wall to falling from freestanding is that we proactively choose when to fall when against the wall. It’s all too easy to psyche yourself up, brace and then bail.

To simulate the freestanding bail we should instead try and balance a chest to wall handstand. Even if it holds only for a microsecond, it removes the proactive choice to fall and becomes more reactive by changing the goal from “I’m about to bail” to “I’m about to balance”.

The aim here is what I call a micro-balance. Even a split second can be enough to make the bail more reactive than proactive.

When the goal is to balance chest to wall, you will accidentally fall in overbalance sometimes forcing you to respond. If the proper steps have been taken, without rush, your body will naturally react to land on your feet. You’ve technically then bailed from freestanding.

Phase 7 - The 50/50 Rule

There is a big difference between a floating hold of a brief second or two and an actual hold of over 10s. When first learning to kick up to handstand it will require going into overbalance sometimes, you need to be comfortable with it.

So much so, that I recommend going into overbalance FOR EVERY time you don’t kick up enough and fall in underbalance. If you’re strict on yourself with this progress is almost inevitable. With practice you will refine how hard you need to kick up to get your centre of mass over the base of support of your hand. This is where you can begin to balance the freestanding handstand.

I also know that 80% of you trying this will still play it too safe when kicking up to handstand and avoid going over. Go for it, be brave!