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Shoulder Placement In Free Arm

Posted: 08 Nov 2019, 16:12
by mikeferris
Hey All!

Sascha Bachman created a couple posts a while back about the placement of the free shoulder in one arm handstand. He mentioned that the tendency to bring the shoulder up (down and away from the ear) will create a rotation in your balance by compromising the alignment of the one arm handstand. He suggests keeping the free shoulder shrugged near the ear to maintain alignment and prevent rotation.

I’ve experimented with this a bit but I don’t think I have enough experience to discover a correlation between the free arm shoulder and OAHS alignment. My focus still tends to stay in the support shoulder alignment to keep me up on one arm. Has anyone else here experimented with this little subtlety? When moving to transitions or more advanced one arm holds, does this suggestion really help?

What are your thoughts, Natalie?

Thanks so much for reading, everyone!

Kindly

Mike Ferris

PS Here’s a link to a recent IG post, where I clearly don’t have my free shoulder near my ear, but am able to still relatively keep control.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3SxhlxgvXS/

Re: Shoulder Placement In Free Arm

Posted: 13 Nov 2019, 22:20
by Natalie Reckert
Hi Mike,

You one arms look great!

I absolutely agree. The free arm and especially the shoulder are active contributors to the balance and need to be engaged/ elevated to the ear.
Pulling the shoulder down and away fron the ear will distort the position, that is my experience especially with Oahs beginners.

From the video it looks like you are doing alright in terms of shoulder engangement. If you payed more attention to that shoulder though, and focussed a bit more on seeng it as a counterplayer to your balancing arm, maybe that shoulder could take over some of the corrections you are executing with the hips at the moment and make for more subtlety in the balancing movement.

Also: taking the arm all the way up changes everything again :) That means you have minus one shoulder to balance with, which makes it harder.

Great question!
So important!

Best wishes

Re: Shoulder Placement In Free Arm

Posted: 15 Nov 2019, 01:46
by mikeferris
Natalie Reckert wrote: 13 Nov 2019, 22:20 Hi Mike,

You one arms look great!

I absolutely agree. The free arm and especially the shoulder are active contributors to the balance and need to be engaged/ elevated to the ear.
Pulling the shoulder down and away fron the ear will distort the position, that is my experience especially with Oahs beginners.

From the video it looks like you are doing alright in terms of shoulder engangement. If you payed more attention to that shoulder though, and focussed a bit more on seeng it as a counterplayer to your balancing arm, maybe that shoulder could take over some of the corrections you are executing with the hips at the moment and make for more subtlety in the balancing movement.

Also: taking the arm all the way up changes everything again :) That means you have minus one shoulder to balance with, which makes it harder.

Great question!
So important!

Best wishes
Thanks Natalie, that means a lot from you!

I never thought of the free shoulder acting as an active counterbalance in one arm, that’s truly interesting! I’ll think about that tonight during my practice, and see if I notice any difference it makes for me in minimizing hip movement to balance.

I’ll let you know of any observations!

Kindly,

Mike Ferris