Handstands for Beginners

hey friends I'm Kathy Matteo I've got a 20-minute kind of beginner handstand video for those of you not really sure how to get into handstand how to use the wall how to move away from the wall this is your video and I've got a ton of tips for you if you haven't subscribed to my channel I don't know what you're waiting for go ahead subscribe I'm going to be posting a lot of great content and finally if you're absolutely brand new I'm gonna link two of my how-to videos in the description actually want you to pause the video check out elbows and easy kick up at the wall first otherwise let's get started with two huge foundational tips for handstands actually for any inversion so when in general and yoga when we have the arms lifted over the head we are always cueing you to drop your shoulders away from your ears and in inversions it's the exact opposite so if you were to have your arms up over your head in handstand and do that kind of dip it's called depression drop the shoulders back and around you wouldn't have a very nice straight line would you so instead you actually when you lift your arms up want to elevate your shoulders so shrug them up towards the ears and that's going to create that nice straight line now in conjunction with that you've got to think about your ribcage in your core because when we lift our arms over our head our ribs kind of do that and so you want at the same time as you're elevating those shoulders to drop their front ribs down and I call it the handstand prep so when you're in down dog and you're you're about to kick up into your handstand your down dog will no longer look like down dog because you're going to be shrugging your shoulders up to your ears and nipping those front ribs in let's get started all right you're going to take your block and stand against the wall your head sir the wall and I want you to try to decrease your natural curve in your lumbar spine so I want you to tuck your tailbone squeeze your butt drop your front ribs down and bring your block out in front of you now spread the shoulder blades away from this fine tip you're handing the block off to someone keep your belly pulled in and on an inhale raise your arms over your heads and if you really hard to do while you're also pressing that lower back on the mat now I think on I want you get elevate your shoulders draw them up towards your ears let's squeeze your legs together and exhale bring that block back down all the while trying to decrease that space in your low back we're just going to go up and down and down and down so we're working on stabilizing the core and that is some mobility through the shoulders while this is being stabilized which you're going to need while you're upside down one good we're going to warm up our wrists and our forbs and our fingers now there's a crawl starburst so you will make a tight fist and then widen up tight Liman tight widen tightness rate from the side bag and keep going tight Liman tight why don't go as fast as we can ten nine eight faster I'm going to go past her fine four three two one good shake it out you'll come into your tabletop position and begin to put your fingertips to the side and we'll just rock side to side just warming up the rest so while you're here I want you to start thinking about spider fingers that's when you claw them out with your finger pads your knuckles will lift up but the base of your knuckles are grounding down so that your fingers look like spider legs okay so we're flipping the wrists here I'm going back and forth and then I like to kind of just take my time peeling my hands off really getting into the fingers stretching you can shake it out and then we'll do some wrist push-ups so you will lift the heel of the hand up the thumbs will slide in you've got eight knuckles on the ground and we're going five four three two one let's do five more five four three two one good we're going to go in with the shoulders and so it's an internal rotation external in out and then we'll add on so do one hand fingertips pointing towards your knees you'll keep your index finger sorry your middle finger down and you're spinning around that tube like an internal rotation of the shoulder and back to that external and we'll do one more on this side and we'll switch sides starting here Littlefinger spins around in the shoulder and out and and out and we're going to line your box now okay come and lie on the floor and again creating that back as far as you can so we're going to come into a hollow body shape if when you come up your low back hop-hop the mat at any point I actually want you to do one leg at a time and work that low back clap so that's more important than having both legs up okay so we're going to hold here squeeze everything together belly pulls in ten nine eight seven six five four three two one grab your block they'll do basically the same thing we were doing we were standing just on the ground with the legs lifted so flatten your low back lift up imagine you're kind of handing that block off above you and then squeeze the block and bring it up and then come back to starting position arms all the way up back three more Oh whew back wow it's hard to talk and do that at the same time alright now we're going to roll up and come into tabletop position so just think of your enhanced and arms here wrist shoulder wrists parallel shoulders over your wrists and I want you to not do cat-cow so don't move your but instead just bring your shoulder blades in towards the spine so that's retraction and then spread them away that's pro attraction so we'll keep doing this this is scapular push-ups and I would recommend doing these almost daily as you build shoulder stability so scapular push-ups creating a lot of muscular strength around the shoulder girdle to create more stability when you're upside down okay one more your hands out a little bit we'll take that in a plank pose so give me a nice solid plank pose same thing down down down down up down up good we're going to do chaturanga nuts so we're just going to heating and warming everything up I'm giving you guys some drills that you can do right before handstands to build strength for more stable handstands so chaturanga of course your arms are at a 90 degree angle and your body is super straight the whole way down so if at any point you lose that I want you to drop your knees down and I really mean that so watch that again you're coming down notice I go all the way forward so it when I bend my arms my elbows are stacked over my rests and then push back up okay so you can do this with the knees down down up you so go forward down okay we're going to do let's do just like five here we go forward one two three four five good take a quick break okay slide your mat away I actually don't use my mat when I practice hands you come into our first hands down this is the elbows will have your butt up against the wall and you're measuring where your heel is you know flex your