Today’s episode is meant to give a foundation of knowledge to kickstart a conversation about recovery in handstands.

There is no progress without adequate recovery after training. It’s the time in which we rest that our body adapts to the stimuli we exposed it to during the training session. As a result we improve in strength and skill. There are so many factors that influence recovery and there are countless questions that we could go into, so I wanted to make a video to start us all on the same page of the conversation. We’ll take all of your questions from here and make episodes to answer more specific questions.

Basic Concepts

The most basic concept of how our body adapts to training can be explained with the supercompensation model. In short, you deplete your energy storage and your performance decreases throughout the course of your training session. But with enough rest, your body supercompensates by increasing its capacity relative to the baseline to tolerate the training stimulus. The optimal time for the next training session is at the peak of the supercompensation curve after the resting period. If you wait for too long, your capacity returns back to the baseline. If you don’t wait long enough, you might not be fully recovered yet and over time, this pattern could lead to overtraining and/or injury.

Assuming that your general health is in place, the biggest influencing factor for your recovery is how you manage your work load. In other words, you need to find a balance between resting and training that works for you and allows you to progress over time. This is where it gets very individual and more complicated. There are tons of factors to consider, like your current level, the activities you do in your daily life outside of training, your sleep and nutrition habits, your personal stress level and your age.

We would love to get into this conversation with the help of your specific questions. So go ahead and let us know what you would like to know more about in the comments below!

It’s never too late to do what you love!

-Sonji

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Don’t run before you can’t walk! The purpose of today’s episode is to give you a general blueprint of what to focus on to get results when you’re in the process of learning a handstand.

Build strength without balance first

Make sure you can hold a shape in a stacked position at the wall without balance for at least 30sec, before you attempt to balance it on your own. If you can’t lock in a shape in the first place, there’s no way you’ll be able to balance it!

Work on balance before improving your form

Once you start getting some seconds of balance, focus on improving your hold times without obsessing over perfect form. It ususally isn’t until you’re pretty consistent with 30-45 second holds that you can focus on anything other than just staying in balance in the first place. It’s hard enough to just balance, and it’s even harder to have it look a specific way. So first things first!

Don’t get upset about not making progress, if you don’t have a consistent practice!

This one is huge! In order to adapt to training and create results, your body needs repetition. Lots of it. Especially if you start later in your life, it just really takes lots of time and lots of practice to teach your body how to exist in a handstand. I’m not saying this to disencourage you. I’m saying it, so you can cut yourself some slack when your progress doesn’t come as expected. And if you’ve seen my episode about frustration in handstands, you probably know that in my opinion you shouldn’t have any expectations in learning a handstand and rather shift your perspective to an explorative one that is fueled by curiosity (click here to watch the episode).

I hope this episode, though it is short and sweet, points your practice in the right direction. If you wish you had more guidance in your handstand quest, come and join my live Zoom classes at nook! You can sign up for a 7-day free trial.

Let me know in the comments below what you think!

It’s never too late to do what you love!

-Sonji

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I’m sure you’ve heard it (or sang it) before: If you want to handstand, you gotta PUSH! But what does that even mean? And why is it the cue number 1 for most handstand coaches?

In this episode I break down what pushing during a handstand really means in regards to the motions of the shoulder joint complex. When we handstand we are basically asking the shoulders to do the work our hips do while we stand on our feet – keep stable and move as little as possible. But in contrast to the hips, the shoulder joint complex consists of many moving parts that have to move in coordination with one another. You have an arm bone, a clavicle and a shoulder blade which glides on top of your ribcage. These three moving parts are connected through four joints that are all stabilized mostly by muscular action, though the inherent structure of the joint complex is built for a big range of motion at the expense of stability. No wonder handstanding is so hard and wobbly! (Click here for more shoulder anatomy)

The motions of your shoulder complex in a handstand

Because the structure of the shoulder complex is so… complex, there are several movements that can happen at each of the four joints, which in turn influence the entire structure. So it’s hard to really paint a black and white picture here, but you can see this as an attempt to create simplicity to get some understanding around a complicated structure. The main motions I describe in this video are:

• Flexion and extension
• Elevation and depression
• Protraction and retraction
• External rotation and internal rotation

The essence here is that in a handstand we are trying to resist gravity. But rather than thinking of the push as a linear force, think of it as a dynamic process that requires subconscious orchestration of all the moving parts and needs to happen in accordance to where your body is being pulled (over- or underbalance) and how strong (how far have you already gone off center). So if you really think about it, a strong push actually means a well coordinated push!

I hope this brings a little more clarity into the cue and why it’s used so often! The handstand push really is something that needs to be developed over time with a lot of practice. And we always need to come back to it!

Let me know your thoughts and questions. I love going deeper into these kinds of things!

It’s never too late to do what you love!

– Sonji

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Happy New Year and welcome to Season 03 of the Sonji-Land Show! We’re kicking this year off with a song that I wrote a while back.

The Backstory

It was around April of 2021 when Ivo and I were visiting Ulrik in Vienna. We were training – I was doing chest to wall sidebends and trying to go deeper when Ulrik shouted: “Push, Sonja! Push like you mean it!”

For some reason that phrase stuck in my head and turned into a song. I suddenly heard the angels sing “push like you mean it” in harmony, but it lead to a beat and ended in something I would call an annoying pop song that, once heard, never ever leaves your head. I loved it. It felt silly and comical and the next thing I knew was I had the lyrics written down on my phone and all the chords on my guitar. The song came up quickly, but forming it into something that resembled what I had in my head took forever. Nine months and a ton of youtube tutorials on how to use a DAW (digital audio workstation – don’t ask..) and more frustration than I was prepared for, to be exact.

Of course there also had to be a video to visualize the story. Enter Ivo. Again, it took longer than we wanted and brought us more lessons than we had expected. But here it is – the good enough version to be released to the outside world!

Making music videos has been the most fun we’ve ever had! We started dabbling with it during the first lockdown in March 2020 when we had a lot of time inside and couldn’t travel. I came up with a ton of songs during that time, which some of them made it into a video. We even started a separate Youtube channel called Sonj!.

It’s time for the fun to return!

I hope this song gives you some extra fuel to keep pushing, not take yourself and life so seriously and continue in doing the things you love – because it’s never too late!

–Sonji

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It started with an experiment during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it turned into possibly the best thing that has happened to me and some of our members. Our community at nook movement studios has been flourishing as our members make progress in their handstand & flexibility journeys. Here’s a recap of our first year at nook!

When I started teaching this 30-minute class format my intention was to offer daily consistency. We all know by now that this is what makes progress. But in my mind, 30-minutes wasn’t going to be enough for a full handstand session that would suffice for substantial gains. I thought this format would invite people to learn the essence and then practice more on their own.

The nook system works!

To my surprise, the 30-min format works amazingly well when the content of the session is aimed at skill development in a very specific way. Our member’s progress has been super satisfying and so inspiring to watch!

Aside from the targeted focus of technical skill development there are so many aspects that I found contributed to the progress:

• Learning environment: Having different people with different levels and backgrounds come together to practice daily in real-time has created a hot-spot for growth. Discussing experiences, cues and ideas of concepts between sets has fueled everyone’s practice, independently of their skill level.
• Accountability: With all the different settings I’ve taught handstands in (online and in-person), the daily Zoom classes have by far been the best for creating the habit of daily training. For many of our members, popping on Zoom for their classes is like brushing their teeth!
• Community: Because we see each other so frequently, it feels more like a family than anything else. You get to know each other. We started learning (or at least trying to learn) each other’s languages. You start to look forward to handstands, not only because you’ll work on them and get better, but also because you get to check in with your friends!

The community keeps growing and we’ve scheduled our first in-person retreat for August 2022. The Retreat is fully booked at the moment, but you can sign up to our waiting list if you’re interested!

We’ve added a whole new section of classes under the segment Strength & Conditioning to our schedule, which are taught by our member Gian, who is a certified Calisthenics Coach and Personal Trainer.

I am so proud that we’ve brought up this community in which everyone has a place to be themselves among people who care and are on the same journey together. And I’m so excited to see where we go next!

Happy Holidays!

This episode wraps up Season #2 of the Sonji-Land Show. Thank you so, so much for sticking around and watching what we do! We’ll be back to fuel your practice in January 2022. Until then, be sure to join our #HandstandsBeforeXmas Instagram challenge! You can win 1 free month at nook and 1 leggings by Arctic Flamingo!

Make sure to follow @handstanddiary and @nook_movementstudios on Instagram to stay updated.

It’s never too late to do what you love!

–Sonji

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Frustration… it’s a very common word for everyone who has embarked on the journey of learning how to handstand. In this episode I talk about my perspective on how to deal with it and I tell you a little bit about how my own journey has gone so far.

Frustration in Handstands is something you have to learn to manage. It’s like a separate skill apart from the physical that is often a determining factor when it comes to your progress.

In my view there are three big things to manage:

• Expectations: In the big scope, this is about understanding that becoming good at handbalancing is not as easy as it often appears. When I compare it to figure skating, I never really saw people expect of themselves to learn double or tripple jumps in the first year of starting to train. Yet when you look at people who start on a handstand journey, many expect to get to a level where they can perform handstands on command within a year. It might be doable for some, but there is no reason to put that pressure on yourself. The only thing that matters in the long run is that you put in the work, so this is where you should attach your expectations! Be honest with yourself: are you really putting in the time and the drills? And are you fully focused on making things work in your body when you practice?

• Progressions/Regressions: A big part of the puzzle is to make modifications to your exercises whenever they’re not working on a particular day. If you’re working with a coach, this is what the coach does. We make sure that you stay efficient and productive in regards to where you are at the moment. But if you’re on your own, it’s important for you to know how you can make exercises easier or harder, depending on the day. The “danger” of becoming frustrated is that you can get hung up on not being able to do something, instead of figuring out how you can actually make it work for your body. This can result in unproductive sessions and wasted time. Know your regressions and you’ll still get value from your handstand practice, even on bad days.

• Support Systems: observe what helps you both, long-term and short-term. This can be anything from training with music, with a community or a coach to watching videos of handbalancers you admire to keep you motivated. What makes the journey more fun for you? And what helps you through immediate rough patches?

How to deal with frustration in handstands is a topic that comes up super often. We are all in the same boat and I hope that this episode helps you over the hump of a bad balance day.

I’d love to hear about how you manage your frustration! How do you keep going when your balance is off? Leave a comment below!

It’s never too late to do what you love!

-Sonji

The post How to deal with your Frustration in Handstands appeared first on .

This episode is all about what it takes to hit your handstand every single time. I hope it gives you some perspective on how advanced this is. It’s easy to believe that a 100% successful kick-up rate comes with you being able to balance solidly for a few seconds. But the thruth is that being able to hit your handstand every single time is usually the thing that comes last. You’ll probably nail many handstand skills, like shape transitions and press to handstand before you get consistent with your kick-ups.

Hitting your handstand on command requires precision in timing, dosing of effort and it requires you to have good handstand specific proprioception. All of these things take time and lots and lots of practice to develop.

What to focus on?

In my experience the best bang for your buck thing you can do to get more consistent is to increase your circle of balance. In other words, get super solid and learn how to transition to different shapes without losing balance. This comes through a lot of practice and trial and error. The more solid you get on your hands, the better your successrate will be. This may sound like a no-brainer, but I’ve seen many people believe that they’ll get better at kick-ups by practicing their kick-ups without actually focusing on the balance part. And while it’s true that there’s value in practicing the kick-up movement per se, the biggest focus is better invested in improving the balance skill.

Some major keypoints in my personal journey

In my personal journey there were two things that I believe supercharged my successrate with handstands.

1. When Ivo and I started traveling I was forced to become more adaptible to different training environments and different surfaces. I think this had a big effect on my consistency and it made my handstands a lot more solid. I went from about 30% successful kick-ups to about 70%
2. As I got better I started introducing exercises to work towards one-arm handstands and that’s when two-arm handstands really started to become a non-issue. Obviously you should be at a certain level when you start working towards a one-arm handstand. But even if you’re not aiming to ever get a one-arm handstand, exposing your body to the process makes everything on two arms easier.

I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to not expect consistency and just grind away. You’ll improve sooner or later!

Let me know in the comments below if there’s anything you’d like me to go into deeper.

It’s never too late to do what you love!

–Sonji

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Ok guys, so here is an original song I wrote out of inspiration from Josh’s and my morning training. We are all experiencing quite stressful times right now and I know that many of you are staying at home in isolation due to the corona virus pandemy. So I thought it would be a good time to put out something humurous to brighten up your day.

After having produced my first original “ouchies in my wrist”, I kinda started having ideas and I’m slowly putting together an album called something like “brainfarts of a handbalancer”. (Not sure yet if that will be the definite title). But as you can see, we’re just having fun with that in our creative handstand/video/music house. And it’s just hard to resist being silly in here with these guys. Especially when they drop lines like “poopedipoop is coming!” and jump out of their one arm handstand to run away.

There’s not much more to say, other than I’m looking forward to getting back to making some more tutorials for you guys, so if there’s anything that you would like me to cover in particular, let me know in the comments below!

For now I’m planning to go a bit deeper into improving flexibility.

It’s never too late to do what you love!

–Soundschi

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Ivo and I got to be part of the first “Bali Handstand Retreat”, or “Spin Bali Retreat”, organized by Spin Circus in July 2019. If you’re thinking about joining a retreat in the future, I hope this review helps you make a decision!

So far Ivo and I have been at the “Handstand Factory”, a retreat with Miguel Santana, we’ve spent a few days at the circus school INAC in Portugal and we’ve been at the circus school in Kiev for an intensive training. And this retreat was nothing like anything we had done before. While all of the other training opportunities were mainly focused on handbalancing alone (including everything that comes with it, like flexibility), this retreat had three parts to it, taught by three different teachers:

• Handbalance (taught by Rhiannon Cavewalker)
• Acrobatics (taught by Chris Carlos)
• Yoga (taught by Sarah Yassin)

It was very refreshing to have kind of a mash of these different forms of movement and I was definitely challenged to move out of my comfort zone and try some new things. The teachers and all the people were amazing! It was particularly interesting, because there were a lot of people who were in some kind of performing art, like dancers, actors, musicians, etc. So it was really cool to connect with some creative, expressive minds who enjoy playing around with skills. After the classes we would do long jam sessions in the evening, accopmanied by some good music.

The schedule of this retreat was the most versatile I have ever seen. We covered everything from handbalance basics, to artistic exploration, different partner tricks and acro moves, restorative acro yoga and thai massage. There was something in there for everybody and you could choose what to attend and what not to. And because we had people of such different levels and from different areas, we could feed off of eachothers experiences and help eachother out. Aside from that, the organization was top notch, thanks to Mel Grace who took care that everything ran smoothly!

So if you’re into handstands and are interested in taking it a step further into other areas, like hand 2 hand and artistic development, I would highly recommend you check out this retreat. The next one will be held in 2021, so be sure to head over to the Spin website to stay up to date about the specific dates!

You can also stay up to date about upcoming retrats on their IG:

@spinbaliretreat

If you have any more specific questions about the retreat, don’t hesitate to write into the comment section below, or reach out to me directly!

It’s never too late to do what you love!

–Soundschi

The post My Personal Review of the Bali Handstand Retreat 2019 appeared first on .

I’m excited to celebrate Handstand Diary’s first anniversary with you! Thinking back to where it all began, I thought I would take you through a journey with us from where it all started to where we are now and share some insights I’ve learned along the way.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride. But there has been so much growth and both, Ivo and I, have transformed ourselves and our lives. It’s so funny to watch the first few videos we made. The quality was way worse. And even though I still feel a bit akward in front of the camera sometimes, it has become so much more natural compared to the begining.

What strikes me most is everything I’ve learned about handbalance during this past year. Even though it was oftentimes hard to keep up with training while traveling, it’s nice to see that there has been progress. I started with a wobbly 2-arm handstand and I was super happy every time I managed to nail a decent one outdoors on uneven grounds for a picture. Now my capacity for work and my understanding of technique have improved a lot and I’ve also been developing my own way of teaching. And my main focus isn’t to get cool pictures, but rather to level up to one arm handstands and be able to create something authentic and interesting. When we started our trip I was struggeling to get my first straddle press. For a very long time it felt like an unachievable thing. And even though pressing is still not my favourite thing, I can at least do it and it’s not an issue for me anymore. Standing on 2 arms has become quite easy. And remembering the times where I was wishing for that and it felt so far away, this makes me so happy!

We’ve traveled through 11 countries and have held 24 interviews, including some of the best handbalancers in the world. This all happened out of a passion and curiosity. I am so greatful for being able to live this kind of life!

Thank You!

But most of all, I wanna THANK YOU so much for your support and for watching the show! It’s because of you that Handstand Diary was able to grow the way it did. I really do hope that you get inspired and that you learn some valuable things to find your own way for training and becoming better at handstands. I will keep an open ear and heart to anything you wish to know or learn. So don’t be shy and drop me a comment or a message!

Last but not least, I’m changing my closing line at the end of my videos. I find the sentence “the world is your playground” outdated and it doesn’t feel right anymore. What it comes down to for me is doing what you love. And since I was stuck with a mindset that made me think I was too old to really persue what I was longing for, I want you to know that it’s never too late to do what you love. I know that now. And I want you to keep that in mind too. Because in the end our time here on earth is brief. So we better fill it with what makes our lives worthwhile. For me clearly it’s a physical and artistical exploration of what can be revealed within my body.

So here’s to many more years and many more insights! And of course all the handstands 🙂

-Soundschi

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