How To Spot Handstand

hi friends welcome to a how to spot handstand and really any inversion i've got gabo saturno joining me here today definitely check out his page it's amazing filled with calisthenics yoga strength training and so much more you can check it out in the description box below for today we're going to show you a bunch of different spots that you can either train someone at home to do for you in your practice or if you're a yoga teacher how to spot your students let's get started so first we'll start imagining your student is kind of brand new to inversions and the thing with this student is what they're not used to is feeling their hips stack over their shoulders and it feels really scary and so when they're at it alone trying to kick up usually that's what's preventing them they're just not able to stack their hips so for you being able to move their hips in space where they should be will help them proprioceptively know where their body needs to be in space so that ultimately they can do it by themselves so you'll have your student take downward facing dog and for this spot you will place one foot in between your students hands and one foot to the outside that way you're here you can keep your knees bent you're not hurting your low back pulling them up but also when you pull them up they can't fall because they would just land right on your body so all that being said you'll be here knees are bent you're going to take your hands to their hips remember this is your newbie student so you're not going to let them go the whole time you'll have your student step one foot in shift your shoulders to stack over your wrists shrug your shoulders it's the same kick up they'll kick and you're going to take their hips and stack them and then come back down and now we'll ask your student to bring the bottom leg up so he does the same thing kick second leg comes up you're just going to hold them don't worry about what the handstand looks like forget about alignment they're just like oh my god i'm balancing right come on down notice i never let my hands leave his hips right so that new student will be scared if they feel your hands go away and they'll come on down so stay with your student the whole time as they start to get more comfortable then you're going to kind of lessen your grip on them so we'll show what that looks like here so i'll actually start the same way i'm going to take his hips up when he's ready he'll kick oops i take his hips up now from here i'm going to move to the side of him and grab his thighs i've got one hand on the other side i've got a sturdy grip here and now i can actually start working on alignment with him now he's so good right he doesn't really need it but shrug your shoulders up to your ears hollow out your belly firm your quads and then you can start moving their legs whether they need to go back a little bit engage your glutes for me good and then you're here as they balance you can start moving their legs kind of in one direction we call it the hot potato right and then to come down you could lightly take their hips if they need it or they want that support and then let your student come down all right so let's move into a couple of other ways that we can spot so the next way is gearing up towards a press up i wouldn't do this one with newer students because they need to be able to shift their shoulders and their hips to stack and if they don't know that stack it's not going to go very well so come into downward facing dog but this is a fun one and it'll help with a single leg press as well so you'll have your student take downward facing dog and get into their handstand prep so whatever leg they're going to swing up you'll have them step in and lift up now this is one of those spots that requires you to work together so you have to communicate to your students so gabo lift your straight leg up now i don't want him to kick up it's a press remember so there's no kicking it requires him to press down into my horseshoe grip and me into his leg and then watch his bottom leg it'll float up so i've got this here press into my hand and then he floats up now from here i can get his legs and then we can do that whole spot come on down i didn't want to block you there so that's a nice one to really feel that float as well this next one is for pike press which if you've been practicing handstand you know how difficult it is so this is not one designed for beginners but those of you working on your press-up handstand what's nice about this is impressive handstand the shoulders past the wrists and oftentimes what happens with practitioners is when they come up by themselves their shoulders stay past their wrists and impress a pan stand to get that straight line you have to push your shoulders back so you'll see in this spot that having my knees there at his shoulders first he rests them on my knees and then i can help push his shoulders back so you'll see it here i'll have gabo come into his press position here you'll stand quite far away from your practitioner because remember it's press up they have to lean forward he leans forward he takes his hips and then you can help him press up and back down let's do that one more time you'll take his hips he'll lean forward all the way up holds and then to come down you're here for him beautiful okay so lastly i just want to show how the these spots translate into other inversions we won't go through them all but for instance with forum stand we'll have gabo take it we'll work on kind of the second one we did here so same spot i've got one foot here one foot here he can kick up i've got his hips good i'm going to come around towards his thighs we can play with balancing here you're just communicating you can elevate your shoulders engage your glutes and then come down nice and slow we hope you enjoyed this video if you did give us a like leave us a comment below don't forget to subscribe on both of our channels and we'll see you in the next video