This video from the article Your Journey to a Handstand Push-up: Part 1 by Karen Smith on the StrongFirst site inspired me to try something a little different with my headstand:
I didn't do exactly the same movement as shown in the above video. I still started on my hands and knees instead of lying on my belly. What I did incorporate from the video was contract the muscles of my core to pull my knees towards my elbows. This feels more stable than just lifting a knee to the elbow without the core engagement. I wore socks to make it easier for the feet to slide across the floor.
I asked Eduardo Orihuela if I should start working on transition to Crow Pose right away, or work on a longer headstand hold first. His reply was You can experiment with it either way. There’s no one specific way to go about it. It’s about having fun and developing control
For this session I tried to focus as much of my weight as possible on my hands, working towards removing so much weight from head that I could lift my head off the floor. Once I can lift my head off the floor, I should be ready to transition from headstand to Crow Pose. I managed to hold the headstand for about 5 seconds, at best, before my hands fatigued. Thus I spent the 10 minutes of Practice A doing multiple sets of 3-5 sec. holds.
The Play session focused on practicing the Frogger while sliding the feet slowly and stalling with the feet in the air if possible. I managed to stall with the feet in the air on a couple of reps in the first set. Pushing hard with the arms seems to be key to the stall. For the 2nd set, I tried doing the same thing but in what GMB calls the Baby Frogger - which is the Frogger with legs inside of the arms. It's harder to stall in Baby Frogger because the legs don't get to rest on the arms like in regular Frogger. I switched back to regular Frogger for the last 2 sets, thus calling it a day after 4 total sets.
Every training session in the mini course includes Prepare and Ponder sessions. Writing about my training experience is a Ponder session. After my first Practice A session last week, the back of my neck was sore for the rest of the day. I then studied this video:
This yoga teacher recommends taking some time to decompress the spine after headstand practice to help prevent neck pain. She shows one way to do it. I used my FeetUp device instead, since I already have it. I just got into an assisted headstand on the FeetUp and hung out on it for about 30 sec., gently turning my head left and right, doing a few neck nods, and playing with my legs - at some point resting my feet on the wall next to the FeetUp. I did not feel any neck soreness for the rest of the day, or the following day. I don't know if the lack of soreness is due to neck muscles adapting to headstand training, or the decompression on the FeetUp prevented it - happy either way.
I feel like my hands/wrists are not ready for the headstand to Crow Pose transition. So for the next Practice A session, instead of working on transferring weight to the hands, I'm going to work on the 2nd progression from the StrongFirst article. The 1st progression was setup and balancing in headstand. 2nd progression is maintainng headstand while slowly extending one leg towards the sky then holding it straight.
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