May 31, 2023 • 19 mins
3 Training Mistakes Preventing you from Making Progress on your Press Handstand | The Asana Academy Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If you wanna master your bodyand master your press handstand,
we're currently accepting newclients.
Head over towww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
Again, that'swww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
What's up you guys?
It's Brian Aganad and I wantedto start the show by saying I am
just getting over a nasty flu.
I don't know what happened tome.
(00:20):
I was, I.
First time I've been sick and Ican't remember in years now, and
it just completely knocked meout.
So I've been under the weatherfor the last like few days, 3,
3, 4, 5 days realistically.
So if I don't sound myself orI'm coughing or like sniffling
on the episode today, Iapologize.
(00:41):
It's just I'm coming, I'm nowcoming back from the dead and I
figured that now that I amcoming back from the dead.
The depths of the, this flu, soto speak.
I will record a podcast episode.
Now, today's show isspecifically, I want to talk
about three things that you areprobably doing wrong in your
(01:02):
training, in your press handsend training that you may or
may not realize.
And this episode is gearedtowards people who are both
brand new to training, but alsomore advanced.
In their training and have,found a way to maybe make some
progress but then get stuck or,you started out of the gates
(01:23):
real fast and everything wasgoing well, and then it just
stopped.
So what I wanna share with youis three things that I see,
especially when I bring on newclients, the things that I see
them doing wrong thatimmediately help to catapult
their progress and to correctthose types of things.
So I want to get into thosethree things today.
Number one, the first thing, andthis is one that I say a lot,
(01:46):
but it's one that's worthrepeating because I get this a
ton.
So the first one is focusing ondrills instead of focusing on
what your body needs.
So I wanna bring this up firstbecause, What happens?
So this is something I get morethan anything, right?
People always message me onsocial media.
I get emails from people all thetime.
They're, they always like, sendme drills and it's not, it's
(02:09):
almost like borderline annoyingto me at this point because I
say it so much, but I wanna justkeep saying it so it gets out.
There is, they always send methis, they say, Hey, they send
me like a link to a YouTubevideo and it's hey what about
this drill?
What do you think about thisdrill for for press Hansen?
Do you think this is aneffective.
Do you think this is aneffective drill?
Or I'll get another, or I'llget, like the other day I got a
(02:31):
DM on Instagram.
Someone someone sent mesomething and they were like I,
I've been doing this drill.
It's not working.
Do you have any other drillsthat you recommend that I do to
help get my press hands down?
The reason I the reason I bringthis one up first is because
there's a trap that.
People tend to fall into intheir training and press
(02:52):
handstand, like when you'refirst starting, it's very easy
to, you can dig around and belike there's this drill, there's
this drill, and there's thisdrill that you found on the
internet somewhere, on somesocial media platform somewhere.
And you're like, I'm gonna tryit.
And then you feel like you do itand maybe you do get a little
bit stronger, right?
And that's fine.
And you will build strength,when you're starting and.
(03:13):
There's a lot of drills that areeffective for building strength,
but after a certain point intime, there becomes a there,
there becomes like a thresholdwhere it's not just strength
anymore that you are having todeal with to get to the next
level.
What you're actually having todeal with is it's proprioception
thing and it is now.
(03:35):
Okay, so it's a patterning thingand then all of a sudden all of
these drills tend to just.
Fall apart.
They're just not effective,right?
And so what you have to do iswhat you have to do is get to a
point where you understand whatspecifically your body needs,
(03:56):
right?
So you're training, you'reoptimizing for your anatomy
instead of optimizing fordrills, right?
So it's a very easy thing to it.
It's a very easy thing.
To make the improvements onceyou understand what's going on
in your body and what it is thatyou need.
But, from my perspective, what Isee, like I'll, if I send out an
(04:18):
email, for example, to myfollowing about press handstand,
people love to respond withvideo.
They love to respond with just,videos here.
What do you think of this?
Can you rate this specificexercise that you saw?
And.
I saw this here.
I saw this here.
What do you think of it?
It's always the same thing.
(04:38):
Like people continuously arelooking for just what is one
magic drill that it's going,that's gonna do it.
And it's never one drill thatdoes it.
Like I said it's taking the timeto understand your anatomy.
And that's why like for example,Like a lot of our clients, a
really high percentage of them,I don't know, but I would say
(04:58):
over 80% for sure.
It's really simple to makedrastic changes in their
practice quickly, because weimmediately just go into their
anatomy, right?
It's like it doesn't reallymatter what their training
history is, it doesn't reallymatter, the drills and things
they've been doing.
(05:18):
We just have a very simpleassessment where we look at how
they move.
We have a whole chart of anatomythat kind of goes through and we
like to rate these types ofthings, but we just look at how
they're, we just look at howthey move.
And the way they move currentlyis immediately the, we can see
immediately where thedeficiencies are and what they
actually have to be working on.
And then lo and behold, like alot of our clients, what they
(05:40):
end up.
Realizing after that firstpoint.
That first part is, oh, it'sjust yeah, I was, of course the
drills have nothing to do withwhat my actual problems are, so
I can see why it's not working.
And so that's a really importantthing to understand is from an
anatomical perspective, yougotta just get into it and you
gotta get into it.
(06:00):
And you have to understand whatgoes on in your body, right?
And that's real great.
If you want to learn it and youwant to go through the process
of.
Of learning anatomy.
It's if you're not an expert init, obviously it'll take some
time to go through and do it.
Or again, if you wanna just workwith us, that's one of the
things that we do.
You can work with us, we'll showyou the plan right away.
(06:20):
We'll show you the deficienciesright away and get you on the
right path.
So that's the first point,right?
That's point number one, whichis focusing on drills over
focusing on your anatomy, right?
Over focusing on drills.
To sum up number one, Overfocusing on drills is going to
(06:41):
get you eventually to plateau,and drills are not customized
for your body in any way, shapeor form.
So it's like throwing darts inthe dark or as they say,
fighting a needle in thehaystack.
All right, so number two,prioritizing strength over
mobility.
Okay, so let's go into this one.
(07:02):
A lot of what happens is andthis is, so this, there's two
scenarios in this.
So I'm gonna go over thescenario For someone who is new,
brand new to press handstand andsomeone who is more experienced
they've trained longer, butthey're stuck, right?
So what happens is that we tendto pri we tend to prioritize
(07:23):
strength because we believe thatstrength.
Is what we need more of in orderto overcome our plateau.
But because that's the commonnarrative.
If you dig around the internet,you look you, you look around,
like on YouTube, it's allfocused on strength building,
right?
It's all, or it's all focused onhow can I build more strength,
(07:48):
right?
So that's what it is.
And oftentimes there's inanything, it's really
fascinating how the internetcreates narratives for us in.
In everything, right?
It's not whether it's the news,whether it's our training, there
becomes like a predominantnarrative and the narrative of
press Handen is strength, or ifit's business building, it's if
you want to build an onlinebusiness, for example, there's a
(08:10):
narrative on the internet of howto do it.
If you want to build like anAmazon drop shipping business,
there's narratives for that,right?
There's narratives foreverything that tend to become
common knowledge or consensus,and it's, the thing with them is
oftentimes it's.
They're not always correct.
And what I've learned is thatoftentimes when things are given
(08:35):
away for free, when plans aregiven away for free, they're
often not the right ones orthey're no longer effective.
So I've seen how that tends toaffect.
People in their press hand scantraining, which is they start to
believe things that aren't true.
And it's you get on thatstrength building narrative,
(08:57):
which is I must keep buildingstrength.
I must keep building strength.
I must keep building strength.
And if you've been training fora while, the strength building
isn't exactly the it's not theend all be all that it's made
out to be.
In fact it's.
Actually more of a hindrancewhen in reality there are things
that could be holding you backthat you don't even realize.
(09:21):
And a lot of press handstand istechnical and patterns and
pattern recognition via thebrain.
And so you have to get to apoint where you are saying, you,
you're, you have to get to apoint where you realize okay, I
have to work on things.
That help me move, I have to getto a point where I'm focusing on
(09:43):
something that's helping me movethrough space.
That's helping my, my, it'shelping my, my, my body to be
freer and not as stiff.
Because whenever and one of myphilosophies is that, if you
ever build strength, if you'reever building strength at the
expensive mobility, it's a netfunctional strength loss.
(10:05):
Which means you may build someraw strength, but if you're
sacrificing mobility in order tobuild that raw strength, you are
not you're not building morefunctional strength.
You're losing it, right?
And press handstand.
The problem is that you needmobility in a lot of different
areas.
You need mobility in the qls.
You need mobility in theshoulders, right?
(10:25):
You need.
Mobility in the hamstrings.
You need mobility in hipflexors.
There's all sorts of differentareas that you need to build
mobility in.
And if you don't understand theimportance of mobility, you'll
continue to focus on strength.
And so one of the big issues, Ithink one of the, one of the
(10:49):
biggest issues is that forexample, stacking the hips over
your shoulders, getting that,being able to get that nice
straight lines that you have,the leverage to lift largely
requires your QL muscles to beable to function correctly,
right?
They're lengthening.
And so that's actually whathappens in the press.
Like again, if you're newer, ifyou're newer, one of the, to a
(11:12):
press handstand, one of the keymechanics, one of the key
mechanics is your QL muscleshave to be able.
To lengthen enough to get thehips over the shoulders.
And I should, let me actuallyjust preface this for a second.
So the QL muscles are some ofyour lower back muscles.
They connect the top of thepelvis to the bottom of the
(11:33):
ribcage, and there's a gapbetween your pelvis and your
ribs.
And so as you shift forward, oneof the things that has to happen
in addition to you, in additionto you being able.
To, have the hamstring mobilityto get your hands on the floor,
but in order to get your hipsover the shoulders, one of the
things that happens is that yourQL muscles are actually
(11:56):
lengthening while you do that tocreate a little extra space,
right?
That's how you create a gap or adis more distance between your
pelvis and your ribcage.
That is why in turn, when youare, if your lower back is
tight.
The QI muscles are doing theopposite.
They're contracting when you'reshifting, and so when you're
(12:18):
contracting, when the musclesare contracting, while you're
shifting, they're actuallypulling your hips back down
towards your ribcage instead ofaway.
So it's shortening and it'spulling your hips down instead
of up in the exact directionthat you want to go.
So you're fighting againstyourself and it makes it nearly
impossible.
So over strength training, andespecially if you're over
(12:40):
strength training the arms andshoulders.
Leads to tighter ql.
So if you aren't e if that's noteven on your radar, you're gonna
have a really hard time doingthat.
So I'm not gonna get into allthe different mechanics of how
mobility works in this show, butwhat I do wanna do is now shift
and talk about this forbeginners and that, yeah, if
you're starting, you probablyare gonna have to build
(13:01):
strength, right?
You're gonna have to buildstrength in the body.
You're going to have, there's abaseline level of strength that
you have to have.
But here's the reality.
Is that the strength is theeasiest part to build.
It's the easiest part of thewhole process.
So don't make strength buildingthe cornerstone of, don't make
(13:22):
strength building thecornerstone of your entire
training for very long, butrealize like even if you are
just starting, yes, you needstrength.
And yes, it's always good tobuild strength.
I'm not saying don't buildstrength, but what I'm saying
is, Don't accidentally make itthe number one thing that you're
focusing on, realize, have youreye on the bigger picture, which
(13:42):
is a press handstand is alsorequires movement patterns,
technicality and mobility sothat you can freely move through
space, right?
So think of, I, I like to usethis analogy of the barbell and
the toothbrush in that presshandstand is less bench pressing
a barbell, meaning when you'rebench pressing what do you do?
You just.
(14:03):
Add more weight, right?
It's all about building rawstrength.
You just press the barbell upand down and as you get
stronger, you add more weight.
Now, so you say to yourself if Ican't, if I can only bench press
a hundred pounds and I want tobench press 200 pounds, I have
to get stronger in order tobench press 200 pounds.
Now with the toothbrush, forexample, like if you're brushing
(14:23):
your teeth, when you're learningto brush your teeth, you don't
say to yourself I need morestrength.
In my shoulders in order to getthe toothbrush to move, it's,
you don't, you have to learn thetechnique, right?
You have to learn the techniquein the body to brush your teeth.
You don't need more strength tobrush your teeth.
You have to learn the technique.
And I guess a good way to do itis try and brush your teeth with
your opposite hand.
(14:44):
With the opposite hand, and yourealize that by brushing my
teeth with the opposite hand,there's some technique I have to
learn.
It's not more strength.
It's not like you're.
Your off arm is weaker than yourmain arm for brushing your
teeth.
It's just, you gotta learn thetechnique that goes with it.
And that's the analogy forhandstand.
So number three, and the finalthing is now focusing on smaller
(15:09):
muscles, over larger muscles.
So people tend to it's funnybecause people tend to impress
handstand focus on.
There, there's like an overfocuson the shoulders, there's an
overfocus on the arms, there'san overfocus on these littler
(15:29):
muscles that are even like thewrists when someone might have
wrist problems or something.
Something along those lines.
There's always an overfocus onwhat to do for those things
specifically, but it's not itthe, that those are, what's a
good way to put it?
Those things are not problems.
(15:49):
They're symptoms of biggerproblems and in the body, larger
muscles support the smallermuscles.
So if your smaller muscles arehaving problems, it's because
the larger muscles supportingthem are having problems.
And so if you want to correctthe problems of the smaller
muscles, you have to correct theproblems of the larger muscles,
(16:09):
right?
Everything works in like acascading.
In a cascading motion or anarrangement, I guess you should
say.
I could say, I don't know.
I don't know the exact word, butthink about it like this, right?
Think of the pyramid in terms ofbeing important.
Here you've got your TV A, whichis your core.
Your TVA supports your largermuscles.
Your larger muscles support yoursmaller muscles.
(16:31):
Your smaller muscles support thebones and the joints, right?
That's the cascade.
That's the way it works.
So if you have risk problems,for example, Doing like wrist
stretches and wrist things likelearning all these things, like
when people have wrist problems,they say can you gimme like 10
different wrist stretches to doand the thing is, you don't need
10.
If you have wrist problems, youdon't need 10 different wrist
(16:51):
stretches.
You need one good one.
And then you have to address theproblem and the reason why your
hips, I mean your hips, yourwrists are hurting to begin
with.
And that's because there's afunction.
There's something, it's afunction of there's some kind of
deficiency in your largermuscles or there's some
dysfunction in your largermuscles that are creating those
(17:12):
issues in your joints.
So it, again it's a cascade.
The core, the TV a and the core,by the way, is not technically
just the core is not technicallyjust the TV a use them
interchangeably for simplicity,but the core is actually all the
muscles on your torso anyway.
Thet A supports the largermuscles.
The larger muscles support thesmaller muscles.
The smaller muscles support thebones in the joints.
(17:34):
That's the order.
So whenever you have a problemsomewhere, In your body, in the
smaller muscles, arm, shoulders,wrist, hands, feet, knees, these
kinds of things.
It's a problem.
It's a dysfunction with thelarger muscles to begin with.
So you have to go back and lookat those things.
So if you can get just thosethings, if you can get those
(17:57):
things, under your belt or juststart to think about those
things, that's going to make abig difference in.
Your, it's gonna make a bigdifference in your training, and
it's definitely gonna make a bigdifference in your progress
because now you're actuallydialing, now you're actually
dialing in the very specificthings that you need in order
(18:20):
to, get over the line or get ojump over that hurdle that
you've been stuck in yourtraining.
All right, so that's all I'vegot for you in today's show.
Again, if you do want to workwith us, we are currently
accepting new clients.
Head over towww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
Again, that'swww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
(18:42):
Have a good rest of your day andI'll talk to you soon.
If you wanna master your bodyand master your press handstand,
we're currently accepting newclients.
Head over towww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
Again, that'swww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
What's up you guys?
It's Brian Aganad and I wantedto start the show by saying I am
just getting over a nasty flu.
I don't know what happened tome.
(00:20):
I was, I.
First time I've been sick and Ican't remember in years now, and
it just completely knocked meout.
So I've been under the weatherfor the last like few days, 3,
3, 4, 5 days realistically.
So if I don't sound myself orI'm coughing or like sniffling
on the episode today, Iapologize.
(00:41):
It's just I'm coming, I'm nowcoming back from the dead and I
figured that now that I amcoming back from the dead.
The depths of the, this flu, soto speak.
I will record a podcast episode.
Now, today's show isspecifically, I want to talk
about three things that you areprobably doing wrong in your
(01:02):
training, in your press handsend training that you may or
may not realize.
And this episode is gearedtowards people who are both
brand new to training, but alsomore advanced.
In their training and have,found a way to maybe make some
progress but then get stuck or,you started out of the gates
(01:23):
real fast and everything wasgoing well, and then it just
stopped.
So what I wanna share with youis three things that I see,
especially when I bring on newclients, the things that I see
them doing wrong thatimmediately help to catapult
their progress and to correctthose types of things.
So I want to get into thosethree things today.
Number one, the first thing, andthis is one that I say a lot,
(01:46):
but it's one that's worthrepeating because I get this a
ton.
So the first one is focusing ondrills instead of focusing on
what your body needs.
So I wanna bring this up firstbecause, What happens?
So this is something I get morethan anything, right?
People always message me onsocial media.
I get emails from people all thetime.
They're, they always like, sendme drills and it's not, it's
(02:09):
almost like borderline annoyingto me at this point because I
say it so much, but I wanna justkeep saying it so it gets out.
There is, they always send methis, they say, Hey, they send
me like a link to a YouTubevideo and it's hey what about
this drill?
What do you think about thisdrill for for press Hansen?
Do you think this is aneffective.
Do you think this is aneffective drill?
Or I'll get another, or I'llget, like the other day I got a
(02:31):
DM on Instagram.
Someone someone sent mesomething and they were like I,
I've been doing this drill.
It's not working.
Do you have any other drillsthat you recommend that I do to
help get my press hands down?
The reason I the reason I bringthis one up first is because
there's a trap that.
People tend to fall into intheir training and press
(02:52):
handstand, like when you'refirst starting, it's very easy
to, you can dig around and belike there's this drill, there's
this drill, and there's thisdrill that you found on the
internet somewhere, on somesocial media platform somewhere.
And you're like, I'm gonna tryit.
And then you feel like you do itand maybe you do get a little
bit stronger, right?
And that's fine.
And you will build strength,when you're starting and.
(03:13):
There's a lot of drills that areeffective for building strength,
but after a certain point intime, there becomes a there,
there becomes like a thresholdwhere it's not just strength
anymore that you are having todeal with to get to the next
level.
What you're actually having todeal with is it's proprioception
thing and it is now.
(03:35):
Okay, so it's a patterning thingand then all of a sudden all of
these drills tend to just.
Fall apart.
They're just not effective,right?
And so what you have to do iswhat you have to do is get to a
point where you understand whatspecifically your body needs,
(03:56):
right?
So you're training, you'reoptimizing for your anatomy
instead of optimizing fordrills, right?
So it's a very easy thing to it.
It's a very easy thing.
To make the improvements onceyou understand what's going on
in your body and what it is thatyou need.
But, from my perspective, what Isee, like I'll, if I send out an
(04:18):
email, for example, to myfollowing about press handstand,
people love to respond withvideo.
They love to respond with just,videos here.
What do you think of this?
Can you rate this specificexercise that you saw?
And.
I saw this here.
I saw this here.
What do you think of it?
It's always the same thing.
(04:38):
Like people continuously arelooking for just what is one
magic drill that it's going,that's gonna do it.
And it's never one drill thatdoes it.
Like I said it's taking the timeto understand your anatomy.
And that's why like for example,Like a lot of our clients, a
really high percentage of them,I don't know, but I would say
(04:58):
over 80% for sure.
It's really simple to makedrastic changes in their
practice quickly, because weimmediately just go into their
anatomy, right?
It's like it doesn't reallymatter what their training
history is, it doesn't reallymatter, the drills and things
they've been doing.
(05:18):
We just have a very simpleassessment where we look at how
they move.
We have a whole chart of anatomythat kind of goes through and we
like to rate these types ofthings, but we just look at how
they're, we just look at howthey move.
And the way they move currentlyis immediately the, we can see
immediately where thedeficiencies are and what they
actually have to be working on.
And then lo and behold, like alot of our clients, what they
(05:40):
end up.
Realizing after that firstpoint.
That first part is, oh, it'sjust yeah, I was, of course the
drills have nothing to do withwhat my actual problems are, so
I can see why it's not working.
And so that's a really importantthing to understand is from an
anatomical perspective, yougotta just get into it and you
gotta get into it.
(06:00):
And you have to understand whatgoes on in your body, right?
And that's real great.
If you want to learn it and youwant to go through the process
of.
Of learning anatomy.
It's if you're not an expert init, obviously it'll take some
time to go through and do it.
Or again, if you wanna just workwith us, that's one of the
things that we do.
You can work with us, we'll showyou the plan right away.
(06:20):
We'll show you the deficienciesright away and get you on the
right path.
So that's the first point,right?
That's point number one, whichis focusing on drills over
focusing on your anatomy, right?
Over focusing on drills.
To sum up number one, Overfocusing on drills is going to
(06:41):
get you eventually to plateau,and drills are not customized
for your body in any way, shapeor form.
So it's like throwing darts inthe dark or as they say,
fighting a needle in thehaystack.
All right, so number two,prioritizing strength over
mobility.
Okay, so let's go into this one.
(07:02):
A lot of what happens is andthis is, so this, there's two
scenarios in this.
So I'm gonna go over thescenario For someone who is new,
brand new to press handstand andsomeone who is more experienced
they've trained longer, butthey're stuck, right?
So what happens is that we tendto pri we tend to prioritize
(07:23):
strength because we believe thatstrength.
Is what we need more of in orderto overcome our plateau.
But because that's the commonnarrative.
If you dig around the internet,you look you, you look around,
like on YouTube, it's allfocused on strength building,
right?
It's all, or it's all focused onhow can I build more strength,
(07:48):
right?
So that's what it is.
And oftentimes there's inanything, it's really
fascinating how the internetcreates narratives for us in.
In everything, right?
It's not whether it's the news,whether it's our training, there
becomes like a predominantnarrative and the narrative of
press Handen is strength, or ifit's business building, it's if
you want to build an onlinebusiness, for example, there's a
(08:10):
narrative on the internet of howto do it.
If you want to build like anAmazon drop shipping business,
there's narratives for that,right?
There's narratives foreverything that tend to become
common knowledge or consensus,and it's, the thing with them is
oftentimes it's.
They're not always correct.
And what I've learned is thatoftentimes when things are given
(08:35):
away for free, when plans aregiven away for free, they're
often not the right ones orthey're no longer effective.
So I've seen how that tends toaffect.
People in their press hand scantraining, which is they start to
believe things that aren't true.
And it's you get on thatstrength building narrative,
(08:57):
which is I must keep buildingstrength.
I must keep building strength.
I must keep building strength.
And if you've been training fora while, the strength building
isn't exactly the it's not theend all be all that it's made
out to be.
In fact it's.
Actually more of a hindrancewhen in reality there are things
that could be holding you backthat you don't even realize.
(09:21):
And a lot of press handstand istechnical and patterns and
pattern recognition via thebrain.
And so you have to get to apoint where you are saying, you,
you're, you have to get to apoint where you realize okay, I
have to work on things.
That help me move, I have to getto a point where I'm focusing on
(09:43):
something that's helping me movethrough space.
That's helping my, my, it'shelping my, my, my body to be
freer and not as stiff.
Because whenever and one of myphilosophies is that, if you
ever build strength, if you'reever building strength at the
expensive mobility, it's a netfunctional strength loss.
(10:05):
Which means you may build someraw strength, but if you're
sacrificing mobility in order tobuild that raw strength, you are
not you're not building morefunctional strength.
You're losing it, right?
And press handstand.
The problem is that you needmobility in a lot of different
areas.
You need mobility in the qls.
You need mobility in theshoulders, right?
(10:25):
You need.
Mobility in the hamstrings.
You need mobility in hipflexors.
There's all sorts of differentareas that you need to build
mobility in.
And if you don't understand theimportance of mobility, you'll
continue to focus on strength.
And so one of the big issues, Ithink one of the, one of the
(10:49):
biggest issues is that forexample, stacking the hips over
your shoulders, getting that,being able to get that nice
straight lines that you have,the leverage to lift largely
requires your QL muscles to beable to function correctly,
right?
They're lengthening.
And so that's actually whathappens in the press.
Like again, if you're newer, ifyou're newer, one of the, to a
(11:12):
press handstand, one of the keymechanics, one of the key
mechanics is your QL muscleshave to be able.
To lengthen enough to get thehips over the shoulders.
And I should, let me actuallyjust preface this for a second.
So the QL muscles are some ofyour lower back muscles.
They connect the top of thepelvis to the bottom of the
(11:33):
ribcage, and there's a gapbetween your pelvis and your
ribs.
And so as you shift forward, oneof the things that has to happen
in addition to you, in additionto you being able.
To, have the hamstring mobilityto get your hands on the floor,
but in order to get your hipsover the shoulders, one of the
things that happens is that yourQL muscles are actually
(11:56):
lengthening while you do that tocreate a little extra space,
right?
That's how you create a gap or adis more distance between your
pelvis and your ribcage.
That is why in turn, when youare, if your lower back is
tight.
The QI muscles are doing theopposite.
They're contracting when you'reshifting, and so when you're
(12:18):
contracting, when the musclesare contracting, while you're
shifting, they're actuallypulling your hips back down
towards your ribcage instead ofaway.
So it's shortening and it'spulling your hips down instead
of up in the exact directionthat you want to go.
So you're fighting againstyourself and it makes it nearly
impossible.
So over strength training, andespecially if you're over
(12:40):
strength training the arms andshoulders.
Leads to tighter ql.
So if you aren't e if that's noteven on your radar, you're gonna
have a really hard time doingthat.
So I'm not gonna get into allthe different mechanics of how
mobility works in this show, butwhat I do wanna do is now shift
and talk about this forbeginners and that, yeah, if
you're starting, you probablyare gonna have to build
(13:01):
strength, right?
You're gonna have to buildstrength in the body.
You're going to have, there's abaseline level of strength that
you have to have.
But here's the reality.
Is that the strength is theeasiest part to build.
It's the easiest part of thewhole process.
So don't make strength buildingthe cornerstone of, don't make
(13:22):
strength building thecornerstone of your entire
training for very long, butrealize like even if you are
just starting, yes, you needstrength.
And yes, it's always good tobuild strength.
I'm not saying don't buildstrength, but what I'm saying
is, Don't accidentally make itthe number one thing that you're
focusing on, realize, have youreye on the bigger picture, which
(13:42):
is a press handstand is alsorequires movement patterns,
technicality and mobility sothat you can freely move through
space, right?
So think of, I, I like to usethis analogy of the barbell and
the toothbrush in that presshandstand is less bench pressing
a barbell, meaning when you'rebench pressing what do you do?
You just.
(14:03):
Add more weight, right?
It's all about building rawstrength.
You just press the barbell upand down and as you get
stronger, you add more weight.
Now, so you say to yourself if Ican't, if I can only bench press
a hundred pounds and I want tobench press 200 pounds, I have
to get stronger in order tobench press 200 pounds.
Now with the toothbrush, forexample, like if you're brushing
(14:23):
your teeth, when you're learningto brush your teeth, you don't
say to yourself I need morestrength.
In my shoulders in order to getthe toothbrush to move, it's,
you don't, you have to learn thetechnique, right?
You have to learn the techniquein the body to brush your teeth.
You don't need more strength tobrush your teeth.
You have to learn the technique.
And I guess a good way to do itis try and brush your teeth with
your opposite hand.
(14:44):
With the opposite hand, and yourealize that by brushing my
teeth with the opposite hand,there's some technique I have to
learn.
It's not more strength.
It's not like you're.
Your off arm is weaker than yourmain arm for brushing your
teeth.
It's just, you gotta learn thetechnique that goes with it.
And that's the analogy forhandstand.
So number three, and the finalthing is now focusing on smaller
(15:09):
muscles, over larger muscles.
So people tend to it's funnybecause people tend to impress
handstand focus on.
There, there's like an overfocuson the shoulders, there's an
overfocus on the arms, there'san overfocus on these littler
(15:29):
muscles that are even like thewrists when someone might have
wrist problems or something.
Something along those lines.
There's always an overfocus onwhat to do for those things
specifically, but it's not itthe, that those are, what's a
good way to put it?
Those things are not problems.
(15:49):
They're symptoms of biggerproblems and in the body, larger
muscles support the smallermuscles.
So if your smaller muscles arehaving problems, it's because
the larger muscles supportingthem are having problems.
And so if you want to correctthe problems of the smaller
muscles, you have to correct theproblems of the larger muscles,
(16:09):
right?
Everything works in like acascading.
In a cascading motion or anarrangement, I guess you should
say.
I could say, I don't know.
I don't know the exact word, butthink about it like this, right?
Think of the pyramid in terms ofbeing important.
Here you've got your TV A, whichis your core.
Your TVA supports your largermuscles.
Your larger muscles support yoursmaller muscles.
(16:31):
Your smaller muscles support thebones and the joints, right?
That's the cascade.
That's the way it works.
So if you have risk problems,for example, Doing like wrist
stretches and wrist things likelearning all these things, like
when people have wrist problems,they say can you gimme like 10
different wrist stretches to doand the thing is, you don't need
10.
If you have wrist problems, youdon't need 10 different wrist
(16:51):
stretches.
You need one good one.
And then you have to address theproblem and the reason why your
hips, I mean your hips, yourwrists are hurting to begin
with.
And that's because there's afunction.
There's something, it's afunction of there's some kind of
deficiency in your largermuscles or there's some
dysfunction in your largermuscles that are creating those
(17:12):
issues in your joints.
So it, again it's a cascade.
The core, the TV a and the core,by the way, is not technically
just the core is not technicallyjust the TV a use them
interchangeably for simplicity,but the core is actually all the
muscles on your torso anyway.
Thet A supports the largermuscles.
The larger muscles support thesmaller muscles.
The smaller muscles support thebones in the joints.
(17:34):
That's the order.
So whenever you have a problemsomewhere, In your body, in the
smaller muscles, arm, shoulders,wrist, hands, feet, knees, these
kinds of things.
It's a problem.
It's a dysfunction with thelarger muscles to begin with.
So you have to go back and lookat those things.
So if you can get just thosethings, if you can get those
(17:57):
things, under your belt or juststart to think about those
things, that's going to make abig difference in.
Your, it's gonna make a bigdifference in your training, and
it's definitely gonna make a bigdifference in your progress
because now you're actuallydialing, now you're actually
dialing in the very specificthings that you need in order
(18:20):
to, get over the line or get ojump over that hurdle that
you've been stuck in yourtraining.
All right, so that's all I'vegot for you in today's show.
Again, if you do want to workwith us, we are currently
accepting new clients.
Head over towww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
Again, that'swww.theasanaacademy.com/apply.
(18:42):
Have a good rest of your day andI'll talk to you soon.
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