One Armed Handstand Madness

A article about the madness behind it

I don’t know for how long I’ve been longing for this move, this balance, this control, being able to balance on a car pretending to surf the streets. But since this is reckless, and stupid madness I can’t write an article about it. Instead I’m stuck with a much simpler and less impressive move, the one armed handstand,  though it’s still  madness.

The one armed handstand requires the strength of a polar bear, the balance of a puma, the agility of a hippo and the mind of monkey. Nice collection of madness right there, and if you can control all of em, you’re doing a one armed handstand.

It's for sure an awesome picture, yes that is me. The beauty of this picture that you didn't see the fall who came 1.5 seconds after this was shot. Pretty awesome when the truth is this; the total time spent on one arm was only 2 seconds...

Madness

Yes, this is the first statement I hear when I’m talking about one armed handstands. And to be honest, it is. There isn’t anything natural being on hands, especially when it comes to balance on only one of them. However if you look at the risks doing it, which ain’t to many of them, you will see that this is for sure an awesome move to learn. What are the risks behind it? Truth is none. There isn’t a long way to fall, landing on your back or head wouldn’t hurt you, I reckon the biggest risk is waving your feet until you hit something or somebody. What I’m trying to say is that if you are alone, on a desert place, and suddenly got the urge to learn a one armed handstand, there shouldn’t be a question!
If there’s people around, be sure to notify them about your waving feet and keep away from stores and breakable things like cars and ducks.

What are you thinking about?

Hopefully your not thinking about too much at this moment, that is if your find yourself upside down attempting the one armed handstand. It may help you to think that you’re a crooked pole leaning for support, but then realize that you can’t get it and decide to just stand there and wait, on one arm. Okay I admit that was a pretty bad picture, everybody knows that poles don’t have arms. What I meant to say was, try to think that you are a crazy, attention sick, starstruck, polar bear attempting a one armed handstand in front of seven amazed Eskimo’s with their newly acquired camera given from Queen Elisabeth herself in a attempt of getting a look at how English Eskimos lives, and what they encounter in the desert fields of snow and blizzards. Now in a situation like that you can’t fail and that’s the only thing you should be thinking of while attempting that one armed handstand. It’s madness.

What you shouldn’t think..

There’s so much you shouldn’t think of attempting this. But the most important thing is not thinking that now you’ll fail, or that if you left the stove on, or how you look, or who’s taking picture of, who’s laughing at you or if the ground hurts if you fall, cause it does, or when you are failing, how you are failing, why you didn’t pick the other arm, why you did it in front of so many people with cameras, or thinking “is there a kid behind me now?”. Avoiding these and you’ll stand about two seconds longer, which will make a good snapshot like the one on the top of the article.

Reasons

There’s pros and cons for everything, however in this particular case it’s just pros. What on earth could be negative controlling a one armed handstand. I mean come on. I should also notify that being able to stand on one hand balancing creates a lot of tension in the crowd, a bit of gasping and mouth dropping jaws which is a very good reason to do it. It’s ever so fun watching people who have funny looking grimaces locked on you.

The technique

If you’re not worried about the technique itself, you should. Not only is it hard balancing on two hands, but it’s even worse when you have to lean to one side or another to create the balance needed, and the worst part is: there is so many different ways to position your feet that it isn’t even fun! Spread legs, closed legs, bent legs, one bent leg, bent different directions and so on.  However it’s said that the two easiest and perhaps most used ones are the spread and closed legs variate.

Another part of the technique is how far you have to lean to either side, the balance point is hard to  find, and even harder to maintain once found, but when you do find it try to get there at every other attempt and hold the position as long as possible. You will get it someday. And when I get it someday I’ll write an tutorial about it, and not a wishful article.