YM handstand workshop, Day 1
Nov. 14th, 2015 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonWow, is YM ever a disorganized teacher. He says he prefers teaching small groups to teaching private lessons, and I'm getting to know him better this way and meet new people (new friendly handbalancey people!), but he's totally improvising the curriculum as he goes. Also ripping the shit out of the many fitness gurus who've disowned him so far in his career... he does a truly wicked Toledo impression, and told some incredible stories about the guy who runs gymnasticbodies.com. I'm not sure why so many fitness/wellness people promote themselves as know-it-all gurus, but it's a thing. I like YM's admission that he doesn't know everything, and engineer-style pragmatism about doing what works.
I liked some of his wrist/shoulder warmups -- particularly "eagle claws", and some of the internal shoulder rotation drills. One of these was: do a sort of child's pose thing, but with hands a little bit wider than shoulder width; then internally rotate one shoulder at a time down to the ground.
He teaches three ways to fix an underbalance once it's gone beyond where the hands alone can save you -- piking the butt over, bending the elbows (out, just lowering the center of gravity) and planching.
He teaches two ways to fix an overbalance once it's gone too far -- Mexicaning and contorting. Haha, yes, I call that latter one "the desperate scorpion". :P
In all cases, he kind of takes it for granted that the line can be re-straightened once balance is regained. Ha ha, nope... as Pokemon knows all too well, coming out of each one of those variations requires drilling and learning and finding and feeling.
I'm in the top third of the class, which is a comfortable place to be. Oh and there this this little pole dancer girl wearing one of these sweatshirt-type onesies... I must obtain one.
I liked some of his wrist/shoulder warmups -- particularly "eagle claws", and some of the internal shoulder rotation drills. One of these was: do a sort of child's pose thing, but with hands a little bit wider than shoulder width; then internally rotate one shoulder at a time down to the ground.
He teaches three ways to fix an underbalance once it's gone beyond where the hands alone can save you -- piking the butt over, bending the elbows (out, just lowering the center of gravity) and planching.
He teaches two ways to fix an overbalance once it's gone too far -- Mexicaning and contorting. Haha, yes, I call that latter one "the desperate scorpion". :P
In all cases, he kind of takes it for granted that the line can be re-straightened once balance is regained. Ha ha, nope... as Pokemon knows all too well, coming out of each one of those variations requires drilling and learning and finding and feeling.
I'm in the top third of the class, which is a comfortable place to be. Oh and there this this little pole dancer girl wearing one of these sweatshirt-type onesies... I must obtain one.
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no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 04:59 am (UTC)why are you drilling internal shoulder rotation?
and for overbalancing, what about the fingers? or is this once it's gone too far to save with the fingers? personally i think the goal is just never let it get too far. if you are paying attention, it shouldn't... not that i don't do the desperate scorpion when needed, but i'm not sure that needs to be taught.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-17 05:36 am (UTC)It's good to work shoulder rotation both ways, yes, lest we all become forever stuck in external rotation because that's all we train?
the overbalance and underbalance techniques were specifically taught as "once it's gone too far to save with the fingers and hands", yes. I agree that ideally they're never needed in a controlled, freestanding handstand -- but, then again, we don't live in an ideal world, and it's interesting to break down the more extreme "save" techniques rather than just tell students to never fight for the balance with more than just the hands. Yuri likes wacky organic drills like starting to fall and seeing how far he can still save it from, or having people push him off balance and then saving it from there. I'm not advanced enough for most of these, but I do agree with him that in performance it looks a lot better to have a momentary break in form than to see a performer come down and have to go up again. Also, it's fun to play with all the variations.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-17 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-18 01:19 pm (UTC)