CALISTHENICS
MOVEMENT
HANDSTANDS


BLOGS & TUTORIALS

 
Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

Tuck Planche - 7 form cues and 4 adjustable exercise drills

In this Tuck Planche tutorial I will teach you practical tips on how to perform the movement, what muscles to tighten, and what to do and think about while you are doing the Tuck Planche. I will also teach you technical drills that will help you learn the Tuck Planche faster, as well as strength drills that will help you develop the relevant strength for this skill.

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10 Tips on Managing Injuries For calisthenics & handstands

The difference between people who make it far in handstands and calisthenics and those who don’t, is how well those people manage their injuries. Cause let’s face it - everyone doing high level athletics will get injured. In this article, I’m going to give you 10 helpful tips on how to deal with injuries particularly related to calisthenics and handstands. Of course, preventing injury in the first place is ideal. But, when that is a foregone conclusion, we must learn to manage our injury.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

How to Handstand Kick Up

In this tutorial I will simplify the handstand kick up, the must-know handstand entry for all movers. In other words, I want you to think about as few steps as possible when entering the kick-up, and still perform it as effectively as possible. We will cover the steps for entering the kick up, form cues to keep in mind, and drills for training your kick up.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

6 set types for better progress in Calisthenics & Strength training

What kind of sets you use can make a difference in your motivation, as well your ability to break through plateaus. In this piece we are going to cover a whole bunch of them, so buckle up! While you may already be familiar with a few of the set types covered in this piece, I am confident you will pick up at least a couple new helpful ways to switch up your set/rep scheme to help you break through plateaus and force progress.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

Prevent under balancing (falling backwards) your handstand!

We’ve already gone over how to use your fingers to avoid falling forwards over your hands. In this short but juicy article, I will teach you how to use your hand heels and avoid falling backwards/under balance. I will share the form cues you need to think about to make correcting your balance more efficient, and some practicable exercises to improve your balance while in the handstand.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

How to do a Handstand? Learn How to Use Your Hands!!

One of the most important things when you learn to handstand is learning to really use your hands to balance! In particular, you must learn to push in with your fingers to adjust your body one way, and push in with your hand heels to adjust your body the other way. In this article I give you drills which help specifically train your ability to use your hands to balance. I truly believe that these drills in particular may produce your biggest leap in progress learning the handstand.

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John Donohue John Donohue

Handstand: The Most Important Form Cues

A lot of people might think, at first, that there isn’t much to think about when performing a handstand, other than just to not fall down. However, those looking to achieve a correct handstand will be confronted with the opposite: a barrage of a form cues such as: flexing the shoulders, elevating the shoulders, pointing the tows, keeping your elbows straight, posteriorly tilting your hips, and on and on. In this article I organize and consolidate the many form cues down to the ones you need to focus on most.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

Muscle-Up in 3 steps - How to do the Slow Muscle-Up

In this tutorial I will go over how to do the slow muscle up , using a false grip.. We will attack the muscle-up by breaking it down into three parts: the pull, the push, and the transition. As well, I will go over tips on how to avoid injury while training for the muscle-up, how to use a so-called “false grip”, how to use bands to aid in your progress, and specifically what exercises to train and how to do them.

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Explosive Muscle-Up - How to do it

Taking a look at the Explosive Muscle-Up (as opposed to the Slow Muscle Up), we dissect this movement into three important parts. The pull, the push, and technique. For the technique part we will be taking a look at learning the Bar Kip and applying it to develop a Kipping Muscle Up, and from there try to make our Explosive Muscle Up more and more strict, with less and less kip. We’ll also take a look at learning the Over Grip.

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Tutorials Sondre Berg Tutorials Sondre Berg

4 uncommon planche strategies & the best planche progression

This tutorial will NOT tell you to simply work through those same 4-5 planche progressions that many other tutorials do. Here we talk about how to create half-steps BETWEEN planche progressions and introduce planche training from different angles. We also discuss some specific exercises for building the necessary core strength to perform the planche.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

How to Press Handstand - are you making these mistakes?

How to press handstand? This tutorial for the Press to Handstand attacks the move from three angles: strength, mobility, and balance/technique. In this article I will let you in on the best exercises, progressions and drills to build strength for the Press to Handstand, stretches and exercises to acquire the needed mobility, and techniques to help you learn the press to handstand.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

Can't learn the front lever? - Try these uncommon progressions!

The Front Lever is a great bodyweight exercise for back. But too many tutorials out there tell you only the 5-6 basic front lever progressions you should go through in order to perform the full front lever. The problem is, the jump in difficulty between each of the main front lever progressions is WAY TOO BIG. In this article I give you a strategy for breaking those front lever progressions down into bite sized pieces. I will also talk about why the front lever is more difficult for some people, but regardless if it takes you 1 year, or 10, it will still provide a great bodyweight exercise for back and core strength.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

Back Lever Tutorial - Your first calisthenics party trick

The back lever is a cool and beginner-friendly calisthenics movement. As well, it is a great bodyweight exercise for building strength. Whereas you don’t see too many children rocking muscle ups or front levers during play time, the back lever is actually something you may have tried before as a child, messing around on the monkey bars or pull-up bars. In this article I will go over some positional cues to keep in mind when learning and training the back lever - in particular I'll cover the correct shoulder positioning, grip variations, and spinal positioning. As well, I will cover the different back lever progressions you should work through. Finally, I will go over some exercises which will help build strength specifically for the back lever.

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Tutorials John Donohue Tutorials John Donohue

10 Things to avoid doing when learning handstand

if you’ve come here to learn how to do a handstand, then you’re in the right place. In this article I will highlight 10 common mistakes I see people making while learning to handstand, and how to overcome them. Learning to handstand is a crucial part of your calisthenics journey, and it is a great way to build bodyweight strength. Here are 10 things to avoid in mastering one!

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The Weird Yoga Calisthenics Move That Went Viral - Inverted Locust Press to Hollow Back

The story of how watching a movie as a teenager evolved into creating a weird skill that people doubted was legit when it was posted to social media. one part of the skill is based in an actual yoga move which is called the Inverted Locust Press, but the rest is an improvisation of sorts that came to be from combining moves like the hollow back and planche. Read more to see what the hell I’m talking about :)

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