The Question:
Hi David. I have been practicing Ashtanga primary series for four years now and I still cannot do headstand. I am not able to lift up my legs as they feel very heavy. The best I can do is lift only one leg but I cannot support myself on my lower back to lift the other one and stay in the pose. I have worked a lot on strengthening my back muscles which are now much stronger but I still struggle to get through the headstand. Where am I going wrong?
The Answer:
Great question! Headstand is a very popular posture. There are a lot of people working on it who want to do headstand. So, one thing is, if you’ve been working on something—I don’t know that she’s necessarily been working on her headstand for four years, but it sounds that way, so let’s assume it for a moment. If you’ve been working on a particular posture and using a particular method or technique and it’s not changing, it’s possible that you need more time. It’s also possible that you need to change your focus, intention, or the technique that you’re using. It doesn’t fit you specifically. That may be the case here.
Typically, I like to see someone and see what they’re doing before I say that, but it would be my guess. It sounds like Rashi’s been working on strengthening her lower back, which is good. Of course, you do need a strong lower back.
Consider trying a new approach
I get the feeling that a lot of beginners in Ashtanga try to bring both legs up straight at the same time, which is a worthy goal. I would say that it’s not beginner. There are always exceptions to that. Some people can do it. It might depend on their proportions. It might depend on what they’ve done previously, what the strength of their upper body is, or their core. You know, it can happen, but when it can’t, you need to train it. You need to train those muscles and learn how to engage them in a way that can sustain or support both legs at the same time.
Usually what I do—and I’m going to assume she’s not doing any kind of prep. I don’t know. Rashi didn’t say. So what I’m going to do is just break down the way that I typically teach it to people. I would likely do this with Rashi if I met her. One is, just let go of trying to do headstand with two legs simultaneously for the moment. It’s okay to go back there, but for the moment, stop. It’s clearly just not working.
Think about the patterns you want to train
You want to create a pattern of movement that is going to get utilized. In this case, there’s a particular pattern of learning how to control your pelvis that is typically missing. Again, I can’t say that 100% about Rashi, because I don’t know. I find it in handstand as well. So what I do in order to teach that and to build up that sort of—you know she talks about her lower back. There’s lower back and there’s the front lower abdomen, so it’s kind of like a core strength that needs to be created to do this.
So the way I do that is—you know with straight legs you have long lever arms. Right? There’s more weight further away from where you’re trying to move it. That makes it harder to move it. She alluded to this because she said, I can do one leg at a time, which means, what’s the other leg doing? It’s probably moved in. Okay? So, when the legs are straight, it’s going to be harder to lift them. There’s more weight. It means your body, relative to where your head and your forearms are—which we’ll talk more about—all of that needs to move further in the opposite direction of where your feet are, temporarily.
Set up your base
So, here’s what I do. Let me break it down for you. First of all, set up your hands. In my case, the center and maybe slightly back part of my head is what’s in my hands and the front top is what goes on the floor. That’s how my proportions work. That’s my default. I can do the top of the head. I can do headstand almost any way I want to at this point, but this is my default version. This is how I do it. You could have proportions that don’t lend themselves to this, so don’t assume that this is how you have to do it. This is just how it works for me.
So assume all that setup is in place. Remember, that foundation is built on elbows and forearms pressing into the floor which comes from your serratus anterior. That’s what moves the shoulder blades, which then move the upper arms toward the floor. Your forearms are connected to that so all of that goes into the forearms. There are places in the movement where that ends up giving up a little bit or becomes very difficult to maintain, which is okay temporarily. But, try to maintain it as much as possible.
Train the pelvic movement
So you set up that foundation and then you walk both feet in. And then you bring one foot in. This is the beginning of it. Now when you get to the point where you’re bringing in one foot and then the other foot, notice how you have to lean your body beyond your head and neck, just slightly, to get both feet in and up. And once you get to that point, that’s a hard place to hold it. If you can, hold it, but don’t let it be too compressive to your head and neck, especially if you have neck issues. This is a good place to hold because this is going to emphasize that strength in and around the “core” that you need to sustain when you do headstand.
From here—this is a very important part for me. The next movement is where the knees get lifted. How do they get lifted? They get lifted by the pelvis rotating. The pelvis does what is technically an anterior tilt. We’re upside down, so it might look weird to you, but it’s an anterior tilt of the pelvis. The pelvis moving brings the femurs with it. The femurs might move at the hip joint as well until the thigh is essentially parallel to the floor beneath it. This becomes easier to maintain because that pelvic rotation takes your center of gravity and aligns it more closely with the center of your foundation, which is your head, forearms, elbows, and all of that. This is what I would work on first.
Practice the pieces until you can maintain them
Forget the feet going up at this point. If you can do it, great. But, I would hold back from that. I would get up to this point, hold it for a few breaths, and then, very importantly, lower your knees back toward your chest very slowly resisting gravity. That is going to teach and train the muscles of the low back and any other muscle that would be included in doing that anterior tilt part. This is what most people miss. They try to lift their legs from their legs, rather than lifting their legs from their pelvis moving. This is a critical missing point that I see over and over again in headstand.
Skip the wall
You know, what do most beginners do? They go over to the wall or their teacher stands there and they just kick up. They bypass all of these muscles needed to do this on their own. That’s why I never use the wall with beginners. If they learn how to do it there, they’re going to rely on a wall. They’re going to kick too far usually to find that wall and then when you move them away from the wall all the same fear is there. There’s no strength to do it. So, you basically have to learn it again. So, just leave that out.
Go straight to learning how to do headstand properly from the beginning. Don’t be in a hurry, okay? If you’re very scared of being upside down, maybe there’s an exception. There’s an argument for allowing someone to go upside down just to get comfortable with that. Sure. But generally, from a technique point of view, I don’t put people on the wall.