handstand alignment

Are tight and weak shoulders impacting your handstands - Part 2

Are tight and weak shoulders impacting your handstands - Part 2

In part 1 of this post I talked about how a lack of shoulder flexion affects our handstand alignment. Often, this presents itself as a banana handstand.

As a quick recap, tight pecs, biceps, lats and teres major are the main muscles that impact shoulder flexion range of motion.

Foam rolling and stretching can help to lengthen these muscles and improve our overhead flexibility.

However, we can also add strength training to speed up the process while increasing shoulder strength and stability.

If the above muscles are short and tight, the opposing muscles may be weak. 

Are tight and weak shoulders impacting your handstands - Part 1

Are tight and weak shoulders impacting your handstands - Part 1

A common problem adults experience when learning to handstand is a lack of shoulder flexion. They lack the strength and/or flexibility to open the shoulder angle to 180 degrees of shoulder flexion.

This affects the alignment of the handstand.

The workaround is to arch the spine.

This allows us to align our wrists, elbows and shoulders and balance our hands, resulting in a banana handstand.

A banana handstand isn't wrong, but it will limit your handstand progress.