Fucking Handstands

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that we all have certain pole moves that we find harder/easier than others. Be they lay backs, twisty, pretzel-esque shoulder rotatory bastards or splitty moves, there’s always something we find horrendous and fills our body with instant dread when our instructors say “okay we are working on XXX this week.” Gulp. Well, mine are the utter, nauseating, petrifying bastards that are handstands.

Be they handstands against a wall or against the pole, handstand dismounts, Scorpio and/or Butterfly handstands, I just do not fucking like them. They scare the crap out of me. I don’t know what it is but whenever I bust out a handstand (well, when I disastrously attempt to) my already noodlely arms morph into wet spaghetti and fail to hold me up. I don’t know why or how, but I just can’t get my head around the art of locking out your elbows and pushing through the floor.

As much as the bastarding things and I do not get along, I desperately wish that we did. I see so many fantastic dancers on good old Instagram making handstands their bitch and, as someone who finds a solid handstand about as mysterious and unattainable as having a pet unicorn, they bloody amaze me. I see so many freestanding (seriously, how?!) handstands, drops from handstands into splits, wavy leg handstands and even some mental, back bending scorpion madness!

I know full well that Rome wasn’t built in a day and that especially when it comes to pole, consistency is key. I’m the first to admit that due to me fucking hating handstands, I haven’t practiced them in at least a year. Well, if I want to be even half as badass as the hand standing queens I see on Instagram, then one is going to have to strap on their big girl pants and get practicing. Starting today! It’s just under four hours until my 5pm practice session, so I have more than enough time to muster up the courage to get practicing the buggers. Also it’s the infamous Handstand February next month, and I’m determined to this time do a new handstand every day to get my confidence and strength up instead of recycling old pics like last year.

So off I go to conquer the quest for a solid hand stand. If anyone has any tips on how to master the bastards, please drop them in the comments!