March 1, 2023 • 25 mins
My Philosophy on 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):
So today's show is for newpeople, and if you are newer to
my world and you aren't familiarwith like my teaching and my
philosophy this is a really goodepisode for you to listen to so
you can understand where, mywhole philosophy behind press
handstand and behind training.
(00:20):
actually lies.
In fact, even if you havefollowed me for a while, I think
this is still a really goodepisode to listen to, to help,
to put things into perspectiveand to understand like why
you're training, right?
So my background, so presshandstand, right?
Because this is a big question Iget when people are brand new or
they find me through an ad, orthey find me somewhere and they
see me talking about presshandstands, et cetera, et
(00:42):
cetera.
Why is it.
I take such a fascination withpress handstand, and another
question is why is it exactly sogood for you?
So what a lot of people will sayto me, which is, and maybe even
they're yoga practitioners,right?
Which is, so what's the big dealabout doing a press handstand
specifically, and why is itsomething that I should add to
(01:06):
my training?
So first and foremost, I'll gothrough this and I'll say that I
look through all of my teachingand the way I train clients is
through the lens of restoringyour body.
So before I ever got into yogaor understanding the body or how
it works or the mechanics of itand the deeper anatomy of it,
(01:26):
like I used to be a baseballplayer and I used to pitch and.
I, I was not what you wouldconsider a guy who was naturally
flexible at all.
In fact, I could barely bendover and reach below my knees.
Like I was one of those, I wasone of those like high school
kids where, I was so stiff.
You had to sit down.
I had to like, Either reallybend my knees to tie my shoes or
(01:47):
sit down on the ground and tiemy shoes, basically, because I
was running my body into theground and I was not really
taking care of it, but frompitching and pitching a lot and
throwing a lot, I had sh, myshoulder was really tight.
I had shoulder injuries, likerotator cuff stuff that was
always going on in very limitedmobility.
And You go through the processof yoga and then you realize
(02:10):
wow, yeah, my hips were reallymessed up.
I was imbalanced.
A a lot of sports, especiallybaseball, leads you to being
imbalanced and naturally you'rethrowing on one side, swinging
on one side.
You have a lot of muscularimbalances and that leads to
back pain and all sorts of otherthings.
And one of the things I quicklydiscovered was that when you're
in, when your body's in pain orit.
(02:33):
Functioning optimally.
It hasn't been functioningoptimally for so long.
Like you don't even realize thatthe pain that you're
experiencing in your body isn'tnormal.
It's not normal, but it is yournormal because you've been
experiencing that for so long.
So I take the lin, I take.
Training through the lens andthe body through the lens of
healing.
(02:53):
My belief is that the body canbe completely healed when you do
the correct things and when youunderstand the way the body
works.
And for lots of people, theyresort to they let quick fixes,
right?
If you've got back pain, it'sgimme a pill, gimme a surgery,
give me something that will justsolve the problem.
Solve.
I don't have to do any.
(03:15):
Make it so that I have to do as,as little work as possible.
And it's what's called the magicwhite pill syndrome is like if
there was a magic white pill tosolve all of your problems, you
would just take the magic whitepill and you would skip
everything else.
But, unfortunately that isthat's a narrative that's sold
for pain.
Here's a surgery, here's a pill.
Just do this, take this, gounder this knife, and you don't
(03:36):
have to do anything, right?
You're totally fine.
It's not your fault.
Just we have a solution foreverything that you can do to
your body, right?
We can concoct up a solution,but that's not necessarily good
for your body in the long run.
And.
tr and healing the bodyholistically is something that
is extremely powerful.
(03:57):
And it's something that, I'vebeen through firsthand, so I
understand the power of it, butit's something that doesn't
interest people because of the,there's a word, the W word, the
elephant in the room, which iswork, hard work.
I have to work really hard to dothis, and it can be boring, it
can be tedious, it can bemonotonous, right to.
Especially if you're in pain,like learning how to move the
(04:19):
body and learning how to correctit when everything hurts is
already, it feels like a bridgetoo far, let's put it that way.
But the reality of thesituation, though, is that when
you can commit to the process,you actually solve the problem
for good, right?
Like whenever you are doing anykind of like quick fix,
(04:39):
especially for back like backpain and sh and shoulder pain,
if you start operating on yourbody and having surgeries, it's
just short term, right?
It's like a very fancy bandaid.
It doesn't go away permanently.
It just resolves the paintemporarily, and then you've got
more problems down the line andthen there's more surgeries and
more pills and more things youhave to take.
The great thing about healingthe body holistically is that
(05:02):
once you heal it, you are good,right?
You're good to go.
Once you've solved the problem,you solved the problem and it's
never gonna come back.
And that means addressingmuscular imbalances, movement
pattern imbalances, all types ofthings like this, and.
And that takes work and thattakes time and that takes
dedication and that takes havinga, that takes having like real,
(05:25):
like a real solid guide.
And it, like I talked about inmy last podcast, a big top level
strategy, but also understandinghow your body works, right?
And so one of the cool thingsabout press handstand, and the
reason I like it so much isbecause like my mission for
training and the reason why, Ilike to train people is so
(05:46):
ultimately their body can bebalanced so that they can be in
a state where their body feels.
It feels optimal.
They can function like a humanbeing.
They can do the things that theywant to do.
You can act and live and jump,flip, swim, do all those things
you wanna do so that you're notinhibited by your physicality.
You're not inhibit inhibited byyour age.
(06:08):
And so that, that way, because Ithink the worst fear for every
human being is that their healthspend.
Exceeds their lifes or theirlifespan exceeds their health
span.
Health spann, let's put it thatway, right?
So there's nothing worse thanliving when you can't fully do
the things you want to do withyour body.
And that's the problem.
That's the issue.
So balance like body balance,right?
(06:30):
Like the bigger question to askyourself is what you're doing
creating balance and any type oftraining or anything that you're
doing that results in an imb?
Ultimately leads to injuries andultimately isn't really good for
you in the long run.
It's ultimately gonna break yourbody down.
So for me, I like to look atthings that are.
(06:51):
good for the body one, but buildit up and energize you so that
at the same time you're not justtraining and doing something
well for yourself, but you arealso in a spot where you're
healing, you're becoming better.
And what I like about PressHandstand is it takes that
principle of body balance and itgalvanizes it around an outcome.
(07:13):
And that's the real big thingwith it for me.
And what I find people actuallyfind.
For the first time, they find alot of joy in training because
one thing that's true with presshandstand and doing press
handstands is that it is a skillthat you will not just auto like
accidentally do.
(07:34):
You won't just accidentallystumble out of bed and do it.
And it's also something thatrequires a blend of a bunch of
different things.
It requires balance, it requiresflexibility and re it requires
proprioception.
Your body awareness, it requiresall of these things, right?
And so the essence of presshandstand is that in training
(07:54):
for one, you in turn arecreating balance in your body.
You're creating an environmentfor your body to be balanced.
So again, it's not about thespeed, it's not about the.
It's not about how fast you canget it and it's not, it's, it
has nothing to do with that.
It's more so about can I gothrough systematically the
(08:18):
process?
Can I go through all of theissues, the underlying issues in
my body, and can I address themright?
Can I address them and figureout what those.
those problems are and correctthem.
And then the end results or thevisible proof that you've
corrected these things is thatyour body can now do press hands
(08:40):
down, right?
And you have to build all ofthose pillars, right?
You've got strength, you've gotflexibility, you've got
mobility, you've got balance,right?
And you've got that bodyawareness and all of those
things together.
Those are tools.
Once you learn and you develop'em correctly, like you're gonna
have not just a reallyfunctional body, but a really
happy life, right?
(09:01):
Like you're not gonna beinhibited by your physicality.
And that's what training shoulddo when it's the right training,
is it should build you up and itshould energize you, and it
should leave you feeling goodabout yourself, and it should.
catapult you to that next levelof training and that next level
(09:23):
of comfort that you have so thatyou can continue to do the
things you love.
It's like a base, it's like theultimate base layer of training
now going through that.
And that's why I am such a bigproponent of press sen.
That's why I teach it.
And that's why I, that's why Iam more so like the types of
people that work with me arepeople who are really into.
(09:43):
Not just learning cool skills,but obviously balancing their
body.
They've been through enough torealize how, just how valuable
functional health is, right.
And being able to movefunctionally and not to be
inhibited by your body, not tohave these stupid injuries that
come up.
So I like that's like my, that'smy philosophy on training.
And that's, and when you startto look at it that way, it just
(10:05):
becomes an opportunity.
It's an exploration for.
to, it becomes an exploration toe explore your body, to learn to
understand to learn the waymuscles work.
There's a lot of lessons thatcome into this kind of training,
right?
There's a lot of lessons.
It's not just learning.
a couple of exercises or it'snot just like learning.
(10:28):
It's not just learning some newdrills and new things.
It's actually fundamentallygoing through and learning the
way your anatomy works, but alsohow muscles work in synergy with
other muscles, right?
You develop, you start to learnthe relationship between muscles
in your body and the skeleton inyour body and the way it moves
in the interplay of those thingsbetween gravity.
You.
(10:48):
you have all sorts of musclesand there's, there is 561
muscles in the human body, and Ibelieve it's 561 and something
like that.
I don't have this statistic infront of me.
It's somewhere around there andit's so fascinating and so
empowering to learn how thosemuscle.
(11:10):
All work together, right?
The synergistic nature of themuscles and the patternings and
the pairings and the way theywork.
And when you're learning to do apress handstand, you have to
then learn the way you learnpatterns, right?
You learn muscular patterns.
You learn the way muscles worktogether.
You learn the way your lowerback muscles affect your hips,
(11:30):
and you learn the way yourhamstrings affect your shoulders
and the way you know your neckcan affect your knees and all of
these other.
little parts of the body where,you know, a lot of the time
we're conditioned, likeespecially in America, exercise
is very visual, which is, let mejust look good and let me do
whatever I need to do to lookgood.
And a lot of like traditionalweight training is just.
(11:51):
It's is, it's isolating muscles,right?
But this is the opposite.
Like the way I like to train isthe way I like to train is not
isolating muscles at all, butactually pairing muscles up and
synergizing muscles and creatingwhat I call.
Muscular groups or functionalgroups and learning how groups
or pairs of muscles can worktogether.
(12:13):
So it's not about isolatingmuscles, it's about using as
many as we can in the context ofmovement.
Which is let's create movementthrough.
Using our muscles in all ofthese different ways and
learning the relationships andhow they work together and how
building some muscles helpsstrengthen other muscles.
And how building mobility herehelps strengthen this here and
(12:36):
vice versa, right?
So you have all of those pieces.
So for me, I like to look atpress handstand as a.
like to look at it as it's atool for balance, right?
And the end result is not soimportant as much as the journey
along the way.
And when you do get to a presshand, and theoretically all of
those lessons that you'velearned in going through that
(12:57):
and overcoming the ch theobstacles and the challenges in
your body, and digging deep tolearn those kinds of things.
That's the important part,right?
Again, it's the journey alongthe way.
The person you become along theway, by the time you get your
press answer and you've alreadylearned so much, you don't even
have to do it anymore.
That's the irony of the wholething, is that you don't even ha
like everyone, they, there'ssome people who really just love
(13:18):
the press.
They're like, yeah, it'sawesome, it's excellent, it's
great.
But when you're doing it theright way and you're training
the right way, all of those.
That you are doing.
All of the lessons you learnalong the way become in
invaluable in what you learn andknow about your body.
It's very empowering for yourphysical body to learn how it
works.
And when you go through thatprocess it's mind blowing,
right?
(13:38):
And as you can see, I get firedup about talking about it
because I believe in it so muchand I see how much it cha I've
seen my clients, right?
Like how much they change fromgoing through it.
That.
It's one of those things whereit's one of those things where,
yeah, if you can focus on it andyou can really take all the
lessons learned, it's one of themost empowering experiences of
(14:00):
your life to go through.
That's just one side of it,right?
I'm talking about thephysicality, but then you've got
the other side, which is themental benefits.
And the mental benefits are,also equally as empowering
because when you're goingthrough it, you're working on
building.
You're working on building likegrit, resilience, determination,
(14:20):
resolve problem solving skills,patience, right?
You start to pay attention tohow you talk to yourself, the
language.
Are you self-critical?
Are you judgmental of yourselfversus.
Can you approach it, with acurious energy and learning and
because everyone has obstacles.
Like That's the point.
Like sometimes people will saylike sometimes when somebody is
(14:42):
interested in becoming client,they're so worried they're gonna
have challenges, right?
They're so worried it's gonna behard or difficult or, they're
gonna struggle.
And even though they'refollowing a plan, obviously, and
working with me, they feel likeit's gonna be difficult or it's
gonna be challenging and they'regonna struggle with things.
And I always tell'em like,that's the point.
The point is not for you toskate through and just do it all
(15:03):
easily.
There's no, there's nothinglearned in that, the point.
Is to go through it and to runup against obstacles and to run
up against challenges and thenovercome them, right?
That's why you work withsomebody is not to just skate
through it easily.
It's to have obstacles and havechallenges, but then have a
(15:23):
roadmap and guide and a plan toactually go through.
And the more that you start toovercome these challenges, the
more you grow as a person, likeyou build confidence.
That's one of the greatestthings about working on a press
handstand is that it's notsomething, again, it's not
something that you can just doovernight.
(15:45):
You're not gonna get lucky, butit forces you to troubleshoot
all those areas in the body.
And what it does fundamentallyis it change.
Your, it changes the way you seeyourself because you will have
challenges, you will go throughand there will be sticky points
in your body.
Your hamstrings might be aproblem, your shoulders might be
a problem.
(16:05):
Your QL muscles might be aproblem.
You, your quadriceps could be aproblem, right?
It's different for everyone.
But the point is thosechallenges or those problem
areas in your body areblessings.
They're blessings.
Once you have them and you learnto overcome them, you not only
gain that knowledge, but you arenow sending a very powerful
(16:29):
signal to yourself, which is,Hey, it was something that I
didn't think I could overcome.
I didn't believe that I could,but now I can.
And what does that do for you inthat process when you overcome
something that you didn'tbelieve you could?
Is you changes your mindset.
It changes how you see yourself.
You now become a challengetackling machine.
You now see yourself as someonewho can tackle challenges and
(16:52):
who can overcome things, andthere's a carryover into the
rest of your life.
There is a carryover thathappens.
And when you threw your bodystart to change, things that you
didn't think were possible foryourself or you didn't think you
could overcome or you thoughtwere just limit.
You then carry that confidencethat you build into other areas
(17:17):
of your life, right?
Whether that's your professionallife, that's your personal life,
that's your decision makingskills, all of that confidence
that you build.
And the power that you generatefrom learning to tackle
challenges in your own body hasa carry on effect, a knock on
effect into other areas of yourlife.
You become a stronger humanbeing.
(17:39):
That's why it's not for me.
Like a press handstand is notjust about the physical and
yeah.
Is it great to learn thephysical side to it and learn
how the body works?
Yes, absolutely.
But the person that you becomeinternally and how you change as
a result becomes even morepowerful.
That becomes one of the, maindrivers.
(18:01):
Of change from, for you as aperson, right?
That's why when you go throughthis kind of training, when you
train for things that aredifficult, it changes you as a
person.
And if you've, if you've everdone anything challenging, if
you've ran a marathon before,for example, right?
You don't just wake up and runYou don't just wake up and run
26 miles, 26.2.
(18:22):
Because you decided you wanna doit.
No, you have to train for it,right?
It takes months of training, ittakes those long runs on Sunday.
Like you, you know what I'mtalking about, right?
If you've done it before, ittakes those long runs on Sunday
and it's not easy.
It's not easy to continuouslyget up and do it.
And it's not easy to say, look,I'm gonna run 12 miles today for
my training, and then next weekI'm gonna run 14 miles, and then
(18:44):
the following week I'm gonna run18 miles all to build up towards
running this thing.
It doesn't it.
It's not easy, right?
And it doesn't just happen onits own.
You have to dig deep in order todo that.
And a press handstand is thesame way because you're signing
up whenever you're doing anykind of hand balancing,
handstands, arm balances,anything.
You don't just do it on yourfirst try, so you're signing up
(19:05):
for something knowing that youwill fail over and over again,
right?
Probably hundreds of times.
You'll fail hundreds of timesbefore you do it thousands of
times.
Like it would be reallyfascinating to track how long it
takes for someone.
To learn how to do a handstandright from their first attempt
to their time.
Their balancing there withcontrol.
How many jumps does it take?
(19:26):
It takes, the point is it takesa lot and it requires knowing
that you're gonna fail over andover again.
But failure is the path tosuccess in the long run, right?
Failure is the down payment forsuccess and the more you're
willing to go through failure,that's all it is, right?
And there's a quote.
What is.
(19:48):
Success is just going fromfailure to failure without
losing enthusiasm.
It's continuously going throughit like you will change as a
person.
No doubt.
And that is also if you thinkabout it, those character traits
that I talked about, resilience,grit, resolve.
By moving through that process,you also start, you become a
(20:09):
stronger person.
You become a person that cantackle challenges.
You become a person that doesbelieve in yourself, you become.
A person that isn't afraid ofthings, you become a person
that's not afraid to trysomething and fail.
Because you know what?
When you are working on yourpress handstand, you do fail and
you realize it's okay.
There's lessons in the failure.
(20:30):
There's a lack of a lot oflearning in the failure, right?
There is a ton that you learn infailure when you can sit in it
comfortably, and those are thethings that I preached all of my
clients like The goal is not tobe easy.
The goal.
Is to challenge yourself, andthe goal is to fail and overcome
those things and build thosecharacter traits that come with
(20:52):
it.
That's why you do it.
That's why you train for a presshandstand.
So for me, that, that's myphilosophy, right?
Because a lot of people willjust say, what is your
fascination?
There's a.
It's way deeper than just doingsomething cool.
It's way deeper than just takinga photo and posting it on
Instagram.
And quite frankly, those of youguys who have followed me for a
(21:14):
long time know that I'm I'm notthe biggest social media person
by any stretch of theimagination.
It's like pulling teeth.
To post things on social media,but I do it because I realize
it's part of my business, but doit for these reasons, right?
I do it number one A, because Iwant to understand the way my
body works.
And this is why I'm passionateabout, that's why I created Body
Breakthrough is because, a, Iwant to share the passion that I
(21:37):
have with you and have youexperience and learn the body in
the exact same way becausethere's so many lessons that can
be learned in that.
And then at the same time, Thejourney along the way, the
person you become.
Like I, when people ask me, whatelse?
You know about press handstand,I'll say press handstand.
Learning how to do a presshandstand, in my opinion, is
harder than learning how tostart and run a business.
(22:00):
So Running a business online Ithink is far simpler than a
press handstand because there'sjust a certain, there's steps
you follow and you just repeat,right?
The body is different.
Everybody's path, things thathave gone on in the body are
completely different.
So I say that press handstandwas what instilled me with the
confidence.
What instilled me.
With the discipline, whatinstilled me with the ability to
(22:23):
tackle real challenging thingslike this, and I applied that to
business, right?
I took exactly all of thoselessons I learned in failure and
then applied it to other areasof my life, aka a business.
So again, like when you come,like again, I came from it not
being able to touch the ground,like I told you at the
beginning.
Show bending over, like reachingbelow my knees was difficult.
(22:44):
I wasn't naturally born flexibleat all.
I had to overcome these things,right?
And you overcome these thingsthrough really learning to
understand your anatomy and theway it works.
I then realized if I could dothat, I could do anything That
opened up the door to all sortsof other possibilities.
I didn't realize were there.
So that is my philosophy in anutshell.
If you resonate with this,please do let me know.
(23:06):
My, my social media links arebelow.
You can share it in a story andtag me.
Let me know, your, let me knowyour personal journey with press
handstand or let me know whatparts of this resonated with
you, because I think if you'relike a yoga practitioner too,
this is something else that Ifind that is just really, it's
always annoyed me, which is whenthe really classical.
(23:27):
Yoga teachers the yoga people,they say handstands aren't part
of yoga.
They aren't part of this, orthey aren't part of that.
Like those people that do themare just showing off.
There's a whole lot more todoing handstands than like
showing off.
And when you work on thesethings, when you work on these
types of skills and work onbuilding them, you become a
(23:47):
different person.
There's so many lessons thatthey teach you in.
There's so many lessons thatthey teach you in becoming a
better person.
And if you were to ask me, isn'tthat the point of practicing
yoga is to get in touch withyourself and to become a better
person?
So why not challenge yourselfthrough the body, challenge
yourself through, be breathingand fail through that.
(24:09):
That's a mechanism where likeyoga's really powerful in
general because it's a mechanismthat you can use to fail safely,
right?
Like you can fail and there.
Nothing, all that bad thathappens other than you get back
up and try again.
But as simple as that lesson is,you do get back up and try
again, and it becomes easier andeasier every time, and you get
stronger and you get better, andyou apply those things to other
(24:31):
areas of life.
All right, so again, if youlearn something, please do let
me know on Instagram, share thisin a story, tag me in it, let me
know.
I always like to knoweverybody's journey.
with their, with theirhandstands.
Cause everybody has their ownunique thing, right?
There's all sorts of things thatyou can learn, and if this
resonated with you, great, letme know.
And if you know somebody elsewho's really into press
(24:52):
handstands, please do share thisepisode with them.
Let them know as well.
And please take some time toleave a review.
I would also greatly appreciatethat.
Okay.
So that's it.
That's all I've got for you ontoday's show.
And then if you are interested.
working with me in BodyBreakthrough.
All the links and everythingthat you need are in the show
notes below.
There's a full training workshopthat you can sign up for free.
(25:13):
It's a long workshop.
It's almost two hours long, butI pack every it's a free
workshop and there is a ton ofinformation that I pack in there
about the body, how it works,the mechanics, the mechanisms,
et cetera, et cetera.
It's all in there, so you cancheck that out.
and then you can follow thesteps from there.
All right, so that's all I'vegot for you on today's show.
Have a good rest of your day andI will talk to you.
So today's show is for newpeople, and if you are newer to
my world and you aren't familiarwith like my teaching and my
philosophy this is a really goodepisode for you to listen to so
you can understand where, mywhole philosophy behind press
handstand and behind training.
(00:20):
actually lies.
In fact, even if you havefollowed me for a while, I think
this is still a really goodepisode to listen to, to help,
to put things into perspectiveand to understand like why
you're training, right?
So my background, so presshandstand, right?
Because this is a big question Iget when people are brand new or
they find me through an ad, orthey find me somewhere and they
see me talking about presshandstands, et cetera, et
(00:42):
cetera.
Why is it.
I take such a fascination withpress handstand, and another
question is why is it exactly sogood for you?
So what a lot of people will sayto me, which is, and maybe even
they're yoga practitioners,right?
Which is, so what's the big dealabout doing a press handstand
specifically, and why is itsomething that I should add to
(01:06):
my training?
So first and foremost, I'll gothrough this and I'll say that I
look through all of my teachingand the way I train clients is
through the lens of restoringyour body.
So before I ever got into yogaor understanding the body or how
it works or the mechanics of itand the deeper anatomy of it,
(01:26):
like I used to be a baseballplayer and I used to pitch and.
I, I was not what you wouldconsider a guy who was naturally
flexible at all.
In fact, I could barely bendover and reach below my knees.
Like I was one of those, I wasone of those like high school
kids where, I was so stiff.
You had to sit down.
I had to like, Either reallybend my knees to tie my shoes or
(01:47):
sit down on the ground and tiemy shoes, basically, because I
was running my body into theground and I was not really
taking care of it, but frompitching and pitching a lot and
throwing a lot, I had sh, myshoulder was really tight.
I had shoulder injuries, likerotator cuff stuff that was
always going on in very limitedmobility.
And You go through the processof yoga and then you realize
(02:10):
wow, yeah, my hips were reallymessed up.
I was imbalanced.
A a lot of sports, especiallybaseball, leads you to being
imbalanced and naturally you'rethrowing on one side, swinging
on one side.
You have a lot of muscularimbalances and that leads to
back pain and all sorts of otherthings.
And one of the things I quicklydiscovered was that when you're
in, when your body's in pain orit.
(02:33):
Functioning optimally.
It hasn't been functioningoptimally for so long.
Like you don't even realize thatthe pain that you're
experiencing in your body isn'tnormal.
It's not normal, but it is yournormal because you've been
experiencing that for so long.
So I take the lin, I take.
Training through the lens andthe body through the lens of
healing.
(02:53):
My belief is that the body canbe completely healed when you do
the correct things and when youunderstand the way the body
works.
And for lots of people, theyresort to they let quick fixes,
right?
If you've got back pain, it'sgimme a pill, gimme a surgery,
give me something that will justsolve the problem.
Solve.
I don't have to do any.
(03:15):
Make it so that I have to do as,as little work as possible.
And it's what's called the magicwhite pill syndrome is like if
there was a magic white pill tosolve all of your problems, you
would just take the magic whitepill and you would skip
everything else.
But, unfortunately that isthat's a narrative that's sold
for pain.
Here's a surgery, here's a pill.
Just do this, take this, gounder this knife, and you don't
(03:36):
have to do anything, right?
You're totally fine.
It's not your fault.
Just we have a solution foreverything that you can do to
your body, right?
We can concoct up a solution,but that's not necessarily good
for your body in the long run.
And.
tr and healing the bodyholistically is something that
is extremely powerful.
(03:57):
And it's something that, I'vebeen through firsthand, so I
understand the power of it, butit's something that doesn't
interest people because of the,there's a word, the W word, the
elephant in the room, which iswork, hard work.
I have to work really hard to dothis, and it can be boring, it
can be tedious, it can bemonotonous, right to.
Especially if you're in pain,like learning how to move the
(04:19):
body and learning how to correctit when everything hurts is
already, it feels like a bridgetoo far, let's put it that way.
But the reality of thesituation, though, is that when
you can commit to the process,you actually solve the problem
for good, right?
Like whenever you are doing anykind of like quick fix,
(04:39):
especially for back like backpain and sh and shoulder pain,
if you start operating on yourbody and having surgeries, it's
just short term, right?
It's like a very fancy bandaid.
It doesn't go away permanently.
It just resolves the paintemporarily, and then you've got
more problems down the line andthen there's more surgeries and
more pills and more things youhave to take.
The great thing about healingthe body holistically is that
(05:02):
once you heal it, you are good,right?
You're good to go.
Once you've solved the problem,you solved the problem and it's
never gonna come back.
And that means addressingmuscular imbalances, movement
pattern imbalances, all types ofthings like this, and.
And that takes work and thattakes time and that takes
dedication and that takes havinga, that takes having like real,
(05:25):
like a real solid guide.
And it, like I talked about inmy last podcast, a big top level
strategy, but also understandinghow your body works, right?
And so one of the cool thingsabout press handstand, and the
reason I like it so much isbecause like my mission for
training and the reason why, Ilike to train people is so
(05:46):
ultimately their body can bebalanced so that they can be in
a state where their body feels.
It feels optimal.
They can function like a humanbeing.
They can do the things that theywant to do.
You can act and live and jump,flip, swim, do all those things
you wanna do so that you're notinhibited by your physicality.
You're not inhibit inhibited byyour age.
(06:08):
And so that, that way, because Ithink the worst fear for every
human being is that their healthspend.
Exceeds their lifes or theirlifespan exceeds their health
span.
Health spann, let's put it thatway, right?
So there's nothing worse thanliving when you can't fully do
the things you want to do withyour body.
And that's the problem.
That's the issue.
So balance like body balance,right?
(06:30):
Like the bigger question to askyourself is what you're doing
creating balance and any type oftraining or anything that you're
doing that results in an imb?
Ultimately leads to injuries andultimately isn't really good for
you in the long run.
It's ultimately gonna break yourbody down.
So for me, I like to look atthings that are.
(06:51):
good for the body one, but buildit up and energize you so that
at the same time you're not justtraining and doing something
well for yourself, but you arealso in a spot where you're
healing, you're becoming better.
And what I like about PressHandstand is it takes that
principle of body balance and itgalvanizes it around an outcome.
(07:13):
And that's the real big thingwith it for me.
And what I find people actuallyfind.
For the first time, they find alot of joy in training because
one thing that's true with presshandstand and doing press
handstands is that it is a skillthat you will not just auto like
accidentally do.
(07:34):
You won't just accidentallystumble out of bed and do it.
And it's also something thatrequires a blend of a bunch of
different things.
It requires balance, it requiresflexibility and re it requires
proprioception.
Your body awareness, it requiresall of these things, right?
And so the essence of presshandstand is that in training
(07:54):
for one, you in turn arecreating balance in your body.
You're creating an environmentfor your body to be balanced.
So again, it's not about thespeed, it's not about the.
It's not about how fast you canget it and it's not, it's, it
has nothing to do with that.
It's more so about can I gothrough systematically the
(08:18):
process?
Can I go through all of theissues, the underlying issues in
my body, and can I address themright?
Can I address them and figureout what those.
those problems are and correctthem.
And then the end results or thevisible proof that you've
corrected these things is thatyour body can now do press hands
(08:40):
down, right?
And you have to build all ofthose pillars, right?
You've got strength, you've gotflexibility, you've got
mobility, you've got balance,right?
And you've got that bodyawareness and all of those
things together.
Those are tools.
Once you learn and you develop'em correctly, like you're gonna
have not just a reallyfunctional body, but a really
happy life, right?
(09:01):
Like you're not gonna beinhibited by your physicality.
And that's what training shoulddo when it's the right training,
is it should build you up and itshould energize you, and it
should leave you feeling goodabout yourself, and it should.
catapult you to that next levelof training and that next level
(09:23):
of comfort that you have so thatyou can continue to do the
things you love.
It's like a base, it's like theultimate base layer of training
now going through that.
And that's why I am such a bigproponent of press sen.
That's why I teach it.
And that's why I, that's why Iam more so like the types of
people that work with me arepeople who are really into.
(09:43):
Not just learning cool skills,but obviously balancing their
body.
They've been through enough torealize how, just how valuable
functional health is, right.
And being able to movefunctionally and not to be
inhibited by your body, not tohave these stupid injuries that
come up.
So I like that's like my, that'smy philosophy on training.
And that's, and when you startto look at it that way, it just
(10:05):
becomes an opportunity.
It's an exploration for.
to, it becomes an exploration toe explore your body, to learn to
understand to learn the waymuscles work.
There's a lot of lessons thatcome into this kind of training,
right?
There's a lot of lessons.
It's not just learning.
a couple of exercises or it'snot just like learning.
(10:28):
It's not just learning some newdrills and new things.
It's actually fundamentallygoing through and learning the
way your anatomy works, but alsohow muscles work in synergy with
other muscles, right?
You develop, you start to learnthe relationship between muscles
in your body and the skeleton inyour body and the way it moves
in the interplay of those thingsbetween gravity.
You.
(10:48):
you have all sorts of musclesand there's, there is 561
muscles in the human body, and Ibelieve it's 561 and something
like that.
I don't have this statistic infront of me.
It's somewhere around there andit's so fascinating and so
empowering to learn how thosemuscle.
(11:10):
All work together, right?
The synergistic nature of themuscles and the patternings and
the pairings and the way theywork.
And when you're learning to do apress handstand, you have to
then learn the way you learnpatterns, right?
You learn muscular patterns.
You learn the way muscles worktogether.
You learn the way your lowerback muscles affect your hips,
(11:30):
and you learn the way yourhamstrings affect your shoulders
and the way you know your neckcan affect your knees and all of
these other.
little parts of the body where,you know, a lot of the time
we're conditioned, likeespecially in America, exercise
is very visual, which is, let mejust look good and let me do
whatever I need to do to lookgood.
And a lot of like traditionalweight training is just.
(11:51):
It's is, it's isolating muscles,right?
But this is the opposite.
Like the way I like to train isthe way I like to train is not
isolating muscles at all, butactually pairing muscles up and
synergizing muscles and creatingwhat I call.
Muscular groups or functionalgroups and learning how groups
or pairs of muscles can worktogether.
(12:13):
So it's not about isolatingmuscles, it's about using as
many as we can in the context ofmovement.
Which is let's create movementthrough.
Using our muscles in all ofthese different ways and
learning the relationships andhow they work together and how
building some muscles helpsstrengthen other muscles.
And how building mobility herehelps strengthen this here and
(12:36):
vice versa, right?
So you have all of those pieces.
So for me, I like to look atpress handstand as a.
like to look at it as it's atool for balance, right?
And the end result is not soimportant as much as the journey
along the way.
And when you do get to a presshand, and theoretically all of
those lessons that you'velearned in going through that
(12:57):
and overcoming the ch theobstacles and the challenges in
your body, and digging deep tolearn those kinds of things.
That's the important part,right?
Again, it's the journey alongthe way.
The person you become along theway, by the time you get your
press answer and you've alreadylearned so much, you don't even
have to do it anymore.
That's the irony of the wholething, is that you don't even ha
like everyone, they, there'ssome people who really just love
(13:18):
the press.
They're like, yeah, it'sawesome, it's excellent, it's
great.
But when you're doing it theright way and you're training
the right way, all of those.
That you are doing.
All of the lessons you learnalong the way become in
invaluable in what you learn andknow about your body.
It's very empowering for yourphysical body to learn how it
works.
And when you go through thatprocess it's mind blowing,
right?
(13:38):
And as you can see, I get firedup about talking about it
because I believe in it so muchand I see how much it cha I've
seen my clients, right?
Like how much they change fromgoing through it.
That.
It's one of those things whereit's one of those things where,
yeah, if you can focus on it andyou can really take all the
lessons learned, it's one of themost empowering experiences of
(14:00):
your life to go through.
That's just one side of it,right?
I'm talking about thephysicality, but then you've got
the other side, which is themental benefits.
And the mental benefits are,also equally as empowering
because when you're goingthrough it, you're working on
building.
You're working on building likegrit, resilience, determination,
(14:20):
resolve problem solving skills,patience, right?
You start to pay attention tohow you talk to yourself, the
language.
Are you self-critical?
Are you judgmental of yourselfversus.
Can you approach it, with acurious energy and learning and
because everyone has obstacles.
Like That's the point.
Like sometimes people will saylike sometimes when somebody is
(14:42):
interested in becoming client,they're so worried they're gonna
have challenges, right?
They're so worried it's gonna behard or difficult or, they're
gonna struggle.
And even though they'refollowing a plan, obviously, and
working with me, they feel likeit's gonna be difficult or it's
gonna be challenging and they'regonna struggle with things.
And I always tell'em like,that's the point.
The point is not for you toskate through and just do it all
(15:03):
easily.
There's no, there's nothinglearned in that, the point.
Is to go through it and to runup against obstacles and to run
up against challenges and thenovercome them, right?
That's why you work withsomebody is not to just skate
through it easily.
It's to have obstacles and havechallenges, but then have a
(15:23):
roadmap and guide and a plan toactually go through.
And the more that you start toovercome these challenges, the
more you grow as a person, likeyou build confidence.
That's one of the greatestthings about working on a press
handstand is that it's notsomething, again, it's not
something that you can just doovernight.
(15:45):
You're not gonna get lucky, butit forces you to troubleshoot
all those areas in the body.
And what it does fundamentallyis it change.
Your, it changes the way you seeyourself because you will have
challenges, you will go throughand there will be sticky points
in your body.
Your hamstrings might be aproblem, your shoulders might be
a problem.
(16:05):
Your QL muscles might be aproblem.
You, your quadriceps could be aproblem, right?
It's different for everyone.
But the point is thosechallenges or those problem
areas in your body areblessings.
They're blessings.
Once you have them and you learnto overcome them, you not only
gain that knowledge, but you arenow sending a very powerful
(16:29):
signal to yourself, which is,Hey, it was something that I
didn't think I could overcome.
I didn't believe that I could,but now I can.
And what does that do for you inthat process when you overcome
something that you didn'tbelieve you could?
Is you changes your mindset.
It changes how you see yourself.
You now become a challengetackling machine.
You now see yourself as someonewho can tackle challenges and
(16:52):
who can overcome things, andthere's a carryover into the
rest of your life.
There is a carryover thathappens.
And when you threw your bodystart to change, things that you
didn't think were possible foryourself or you didn't think you
could overcome or you thoughtwere just limit.
You then carry that confidencethat you build into other areas
(17:17):
of your life, right?
Whether that's your professionallife, that's your personal life,
that's your decision makingskills, all of that confidence
that you build.
And the power that you generatefrom learning to tackle
challenges in your own body hasa carry on effect, a knock on
effect into other areas of yourlife.
You become a stronger humanbeing.
(17:39):
That's why it's not for me.
Like a press handstand is notjust about the physical and
yeah.
Is it great to learn thephysical side to it and learn
how the body works?
Yes, absolutely.
But the person that you becomeinternally and how you change as
a result becomes even morepowerful.
That becomes one of the, maindrivers.
(18:01):
Of change from, for you as aperson, right?
That's why when you go throughthis kind of training, when you
train for things that aredifficult, it changes you as a
person.
And if you've, if you've everdone anything challenging, if
you've ran a marathon before,for example, right?
You don't just wake up and runYou don't just wake up and run
26 miles, 26.2.
(18:22):
Because you decided you wanna doit.
No, you have to train for it,right?
It takes months of training, ittakes those long runs on Sunday.
Like you, you know what I'mtalking about, right?
If you've done it before, ittakes those long runs on Sunday
and it's not easy.
It's not easy to continuouslyget up and do it.
And it's not easy to say, look,I'm gonna run 12 miles today for
my training, and then next weekI'm gonna run 14 miles, and then
(18:44):
the following week I'm gonna run18 miles all to build up towards
running this thing.
It doesn't it.
It's not easy, right?
And it doesn't just happen onits own.
You have to dig deep in order todo that.
And a press handstand is thesame way because you're signing
up whenever you're doing anykind of hand balancing,
handstands, arm balances,anything.
You don't just do it on yourfirst try, so you're signing up
(19:05):
for something knowing that youwill fail over and over again,
right?
Probably hundreds of times.
You'll fail hundreds of timesbefore you do it thousands of
times.
Like it would be reallyfascinating to track how long it
takes for someone.
To learn how to do a handstandright from their first attempt
to their time.
Their balancing there withcontrol.
How many jumps does it take?
(19:26):
It takes, the point is it takesa lot and it requires knowing
that you're gonna fail over andover again.
But failure is the path tosuccess in the long run, right?
Failure is the down payment forsuccess and the more you're
willing to go through failure,that's all it is, right?
And there's a quote.
What is.
(19:48):
Success is just going fromfailure to failure without
losing enthusiasm.
It's continuously going throughit like you will change as a
person.
No doubt.
And that is also if you thinkabout it, those character traits
that I talked about, resilience,grit, resolve.
By moving through that process,you also start, you become a
(20:09):
stronger person.
You become a person that cantackle challenges.
You become a person that doesbelieve in yourself, you become.
A person that isn't afraid ofthings, you become a person
that's not afraid to trysomething and fail.
Because you know what?
When you are working on yourpress handstand, you do fail and
you realize it's okay.
There's lessons in the failure.
(20:30):
There's a lack of a lot oflearning in the failure, right?
There is a ton that you learn infailure when you can sit in it
comfortably, and those are thethings that I preached all of my
clients like The goal is not tobe easy.
The goal.
Is to challenge yourself, andthe goal is to fail and overcome
those things and build thosecharacter traits that come with
(20:52):
it.
That's why you do it.
That's why you train for a presshandstand.
So for me, that, that's myphilosophy, right?
Because a lot of people willjust say, what is your
fascination?
There's a.
It's way deeper than just doingsomething cool.
It's way deeper than just takinga photo and posting it on
Instagram.
And quite frankly, those of youguys who have followed me for a
(21:14):
long time know that I'm I'm notthe biggest social media person
by any stretch of theimagination.
It's like pulling teeth.
To post things on social media,but I do it because I realize
it's part of my business, but doit for these reasons, right?
I do it number one A, because Iwant to understand the way my
body works.
And this is why I'm passionateabout, that's why I created Body
Breakthrough is because, a, Iwant to share the passion that I
(21:37):
have with you and have youexperience and learn the body in
the exact same way becausethere's so many lessons that can
be learned in that.
And then at the same time, Thejourney along the way, the
person you become.
Like I, when people ask me, whatelse?
You know about press handstand,I'll say press handstand.
Learning how to do a presshandstand, in my opinion, is
harder than learning how tostart and run a business.
(22:00):
So Running a business online Ithink is far simpler than a
press handstand because there'sjust a certain, there's steps
you follow and you just repeat,right?
The body is different.
Everybody's path, things thathave gone on in the body are
completely different.
So I say that press handstandwas what instilled me with the
confidence.
What instilled me.
With the discipline, whatinstilled me with the ability to
(22:23):
tackle real challenging thingslike this, and I applied that to
business, right?
I took exactly all of thoselessons I learned in failure and
then applied it to other areasof my life, aka a business.
So again, like when you come,like again, I came from it not
being able to touch the ground,like I told you at the
beginning.
Show bending over, like reachingbelow my knees was difficult.
(22:44):
I wasn't naturally born flexibleat all.
I had to overcome these things,right?
And you overcome these thingsthrough really learning to
understand your anatomy and theway it works.
I then realized if I could dothat, I could do anything That
opened up the door to all sortsof other possibilities.
I didn't realize were there.
So that is my philosophy in anutshell.
If you resonate with this,please do let me know.
(23:06):
My, my social media links arebelow.
You can share it in a story andtag me.
Let me know, your, let me knowyour personal journey with press
handstand or let me know whatparts of this resonated with
you, because I think if you'relike a yoga practitioner too,
this is something else that Ifind that is just really, it's
always annoyed me, which is whenthe really classical.
(23:27):
Yoga teachers the yoga people,they say handstands aren't part
of yoga.
They aren't part of this, orthey aren't part of that.
Like those people that do themare just showing off.
There's a whole lot more todoing handstands than like
showing off.
And when you work on thesethings, when you work on these
types of skills and work onbuilding them, you become a
(23:47):
different person.
There's so many lessons thatthey teach you in.
There's so many lessons thatthey teach you in becoming a
better person.
And if you were to ask me, isn'tthat the point of practicing
yoga is to get in touch withyourself and to become a better
person?
So why not challenge yourselfthrough the body, challenge
yourself through, be breathingand fail through that.
(24:09):
That's a mechanism where likeyoga's really powerful in
general because it's a mechanismthat you can use to fail safely,
right?
Like you can fail and there.
Nothing, all that bad thathappens other than you get back
up and try again.
But as simple as that lesson is,you do get back up and try
again, and it becomes easier andeasier every time, and you get
stronger and you get better, andyou apply those things to other
(24:31):
areas of life.
All right, so again, if youlearn something, please do let
me know on Instagram, share thisin a story, tag me in it, let me
know.
I always like to knoweverybody's journey.
with their, with theirhandstands.
Cause everybody has their ownunique thing, right?
There's all sorts of things thatyou can learn, and if this
resonated with you, great, letme know.
And if you know somebody elsewho's really into press
(24:52):
handstands, please do share thisepisode with them.
Let them know as well.
And please take some time toleave a review.
I would also greatly appreciatethat.
Okay.
So that's it.
That's all I've got for you ontoday's show.
And then if you are interested.
working with me in BodyBreakthrough.
All the links and everythingthat you need are in the show
notes below.
There's a full training workshopthat you can sign up for free.
(25:13):
It's a long workshop.
It's almost two hours long, butI pack every it's a free
workshop and there is a ton ofinformation that I pack in there
about the body, how it works,the mechanics, the mechanisms,
et cetera, et cetera.
It's all in there, so you cancheck that out.
and then you can follow thesteps from there.
All right, so that's all I'vegot for you on today's show.
Have a good rest of your day andI will talk to you.
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