I started this project with the goal of being able to hold a free handstand for at least ten seconds.  Which for a beginner, is something a little bit daunting to take on.  But, I still wanted to try and accomplish this the best I could.  Going into the first week of my project I did some research on handstand form, warm-ups, and stretching.  During my research phase, I discovered a Youtube channel which I used for the remainder of my project, her name is Morgan Rose Moroney, she uses her platform on Youtube and Instagram to show her fitness journey and offers coaching opportunities to those who want it.  After searching her channel I took one video about stretching and a handful of others actually about executing handstands.

Week 1:

In my first week, I saw a very steep learning curve.  I had said t myself that it shouldn’t be too hard and I just need to get the form down, with my background I have in the gym I don’t have any experience being upside down which was my biggest challenge.  I just wasn’t comfortable being put in a position that was not stable or steady.  Luckily I had my mom and my sister who were both previously gymnasts, so when I first started out they spotted me and gave me some more tips along the way which really helped me get the ball rolling with my whole project.

Week 2:

Week two is when I started seeing a bit more strength gain and progression, the kick up into the handstand was something that wasn’t such a big deal anymore and got easier and easier.  By the end of the second week, I was already more confident in my ability and had worked up to a very shaky 3 or 4 second hold. I was so surprised with myself and this new ability I was learning, it felt like I was progressing so quickly and easily that I think I began to slack a little bit on my stretching and warm-up which ended up hurting my progress later.

Weeks 3&4:

The next two weeks came to a standstill in regards to my progression.  I began noticing inflammation in my wrists and elbows, I can assume from the stress put on my joints from holding my body weight in a way I was not used to.  The other reason I believe that contributed to my minor injuries is that I got too overconfident with myself and my skills, so I started skipping or slacking on my warm-up routine.  Not properly warming up or stretching is bad for you in any physical activity.  I honestly do not know why I started slacking on my routines because in my regular workouts I never do, hand standing didn’t feel like an actual workout so I didn’t treat it with the same level of dedication.

Weeks 5&6

Early in my project, I posted a video on my Instagram story of my practicing and I managed to hold a handstand for about ten seconds, that success did not last long though because I could not replicate what I had done so early and it frustrated me a lot.  If anyone would like to watch the video my Instagram handle is Lochlin00 and I have it saved on my profile.  I was so angry and upset that I just couldn’t get it right so I took a week off of practice in hopes that just taking a break would help my progress.

The Wrap-Up

I am now finishing this project without totally completing my goal, although I did hold for ten seconds one time I couldn’t get good enough to do it again or replicate what I wanted.  Overall I still see my experience with this as a positive one, I may not have gotten to the point I wanted to be at but I still progressed a great deal and for the most part, I did enjoy learning something new and I enjoyed being a novice at something new.  I can’t be sure if I will continue to practice but maybe I’ll pick it back up in the future.

This last week I basically took the whole time off of working on my handstands in a hope to let my wrists and joints recover before I put more stress on them.  The goal for me is to be at 100% for next week which is the last learning project post I will be making, I’m hoping by then I’ll be good to go.  I did a lot of stretching this week and worked more on my flexibility, which is something I have struggled with in the past and I have have been noticing myself feeling looser and not so tight all the time.

As for now, I don’t have any progress to share because of the week off I took, but next week for my final post I am going to try and just hold a handstand for as long as I can and see how I did over the course of this whole learning project.  I know it’s not very exciting, but taking some breaks from training is important.  You need to give your body a chance to rest and reset before you keep throwing more things at it.  This break was the best thing for my body at this time and I’ll do my best when the time comes for my next post.

This week I wanted to do some more editing so I took the advice from my classmates and tried using inshot.   I ended up liking it a lot more than iMovie just because it had a lot more options and editing settings to choose from.  I really enjoyed learning how to use inshot and I found that editing, in general, is just kind of fun, I really like filming and then seeing the footage before it’s edited and seeing it after it’s edited,  is a very rewarding feeling.  in the video you see me using yoga blocks and I got the idea to use those from a video on Morgan Rose Moroney’s  YouTube channel.   I’ve said it before in previous posts but she is very informative and so far seems like a great teacher that has really helpful tips and tricks I can use to get the hang of it.  If anyone is looking for a YouTube channel more centered on stretching, mobility, and body control I would highly recommend her Channel.  If anyone has the time to watch my video it would be greatly appreciated!

This week for my learning project I think I overcame some of the challenges I had last week.  since last week when I added the stretching routine and wrist Mobility exercises, I have noticed a great increase in my wrist flexibility and there’s also been some reduced swelling in my wrists after each handstand session.  Overall, I think my handstand had improved, the biggest change I have noticed is that I have been able to control my core much better than I could a few weeks ago and I find that I’m staggering a lot less during the Handstands.  So far my greatest challenge during this learning project hasn’t been that I can’t do the handstands or that I’m lacking in strength, the biggest challenge has been the setbacks with injuries I am experiencing.  some of the pain in my wrists and shoulders has held me back from improving overall.  

 

Editing this video was a bit of a challenge.   I found it very difficult to find editing software that I could easily understand and could learn in a time frame that would fit for this class.   first I downloaded a video editing software program called blender.  It was very confusing and looked super complicated, I was immediately put off and started to feel stressed about how I was going to figure out editing on this software.  I ended up deciding not to use blender to edit my videos, partly because it was very confusing but also because all of my footage was on my phone and I couldn’t find a way to transfer the video from my phone to my laptop because the file size was too large to send.   I ended up editing my video on my phone using iMovie, and I know iMovie is not something that is very complicated and a lot of people use it but it was the only thing I had available to me that I could use to fit the time constraint to finish it before the due date.   overall I’m happy with how my video turned out and I’m pleasantly surprised to see the kind of quality I could achieve from editing on my phone.   In the future, if I ever need to edit more videos hopefully I can figure out a way to import videos from whatever camera I use onto my laptop and use real editing software in order to get a better result.

This week of my handstand practice felt more challenging than usual.  Although I am enjoying the practice and I love seeing the progress, I guess it is expected that the progress slows a little when you start to get more comfortable with any skill.  I think I have somewhat settled into a rut with my practice,  My sessions feel good and I can tell that I’m building more strength but I can’t seem to progress any further than about a six-second hold.

The plateau feels awful I want to improve but it is definitely feeling more difficult for some reason.  My wrists have also been feeling not too great, even though I started incorporating some wrist stretches before I practice there is still some strain and slight pain when I bend at certain angles.  I think that my training and practice has just come down to very small adjustments now that I can hopefully fix one by one in the next few weeks.  I am going to include a Youtube video I posted that shows the most recent clip of my handstand form and time held.  If anyone has any experience with handstands or gymnastics, I would love some feedback and criticisms!

Since my last learning project post, I feel I have definitely gotten stronger and have started to gain more balanced overall.  For the first few days, almost a week of doing handstands my shoulders and upper back were extremely sore.  But now I can do a practice session and finish everything with little to no soreness which means I have gotten stronger and can practice for longer without fatigue.

I did start to notice a little bit of pain in my wrists from all the weight on them so I started incorporating a bit of a stretching and warm-up routine I do before and after I practice the actual handstands, it seems to be helping a little bit, but the pain might just be something normal I need to get used to.  After all my practice, so far the longest I’ve held a handstand was about six seconds, which is already such an improvement from where I started.  If I am going, to be honest though, it was a very shaky six seconds and it felt like forever, but ill keep getting stronger and improve on the form until I can get this right! Heres an updated picture on my form so far.

To begin my learning project I was not sure about what I was wanting to do and had to think about it for a while.  All I knew was that I wanted to learn something related to fitness and so at first, I wanted to learn how to backflip.  needless to say after about thirty minutes of “practice” and watching videos trying to figure it out, I decided I didn’t want to break my neck, so I settled for handstands.  I have very average balancing skills so it is something I thought would be good to work on.  I got the inspiration to do handstands from an Instagram personality who is famous for her fitness and extreme ability to control her body balance and strength.  This Instagrammer also posts tutorials on her youtube channel about the steps towards handstands and tips for how to better your balance, strengthen your shoulders, as well as a lot of stretches you can do before and after practice.  I want to document at least some of my progress but I forgot to record my starting point a few days ago, but let me just tell you… it was not very good.  According to the person I am following on how to do a handstand, you can officially do a handstand when you can hold it freely without any help for 10 full seconds.  And so far 3 seconds of being upside down feels like forever.  Even after only a few days I already feel like I am getting better so hopefully, I can do it in time for this assignment.