Wrist Strength & 3-Legged Dog Hops
Let's really focus on our hand and shoulder strength today. The drill is a great way to understand how much strength is needed to get yourself upside down. You'll continue working on shoulder protraction as you tighten up your core. In the handstand variation, we will be working on controlled single-leg hops. This requires a lot of arm strength and the ability to slow down the landing, by keeping the shoulders over the wrists, and not allowing them to move too far forward or stay too far back.
Press Handstand Prep
Start on all fours. Protract your scapula – look back to previous posts if you need a reminder on how to do this.
Step your feet back to plank. Tighten up your plank by pressing into the hands, hugging upper arm bones toward each other, drawing the belly button to the spine, tilting the tailbone toward the heels, and squeezing the leg muscles. Hold 5 breaths.
Step your feet a little bit closer into a short downward facing dog, and keep pressing into your hands and pulling the shoulder blades apart from each other. Hold 5 breaths.
Continue to walk up closer to the hands without lifting the palms off the ground.
Once you get the feet as close to the hands as possible, (basically in a forward fold), keep pressing hands down and lift onto the tippy toes. Reach your hips above your shoulders. Hold 5 breaths. Repeat 3 times.
Three-Legged Dog Hops (I actually don’t know what these are called, so I made up the name)
Start in downward dog, lift one leg up. Keep the hips level and set your gaze between your hands.
Bend into the standing knee, tighten the core and hop up, landing on the same leg. (*Note: these are different than the Switch-Kick Hops we did earlier in the challenge.)
Once you land your foot close to your hands, then hop back to the starting point and repeat 3-5 times. Do the other side.
It’s OK if your foot does not travel very far in the hops. Work on trying to get your hips over your shoulders each time. Keep the hands actively pressing down as you did in the drill (video above). If you are comfortable with these hops, aim to control the landing, and see if can catch airtime.