I have promised you all a few blog posts about handstands, and straps. Here is one of them (and the only reason I found the time to write this is because it is my week off , and I am in Brattleboro, at Amy’s, drinking a cup of decaf and wondering in awe at the leaves that are so much more brilliant than anything I’ve ever seen since last fall here). I was told over the summer by a coach that I will eventually come to hate handstands, but I will love handstands more than I hate them, and that is the reason why I will stay a handbalancer. I told him that I have felt those moments before. But I have yet to feel that here, at ECQ, because holy god I am learning. I have yet to wake up and not want to go to school. I sit outside on my balcony drinking tea (yes, it is cold, but the wind is refreshing and I love it) every morning, and I look at the crown of the school, and I think to myself, “I am going there. In 15 minutes I will be there again, and it is magical.” I still get shivers of joy and excitement. You’d think I’d be over those by now, but I haven’t, and the feeling is still secretly delicious.
While the school itself is churchy and old and very Hogwarts-like, the handstand corner is utilitarian. A giant rolling shelf of blocks and canes dominates one end, while handbalancing benches and boxes stand tilted onto one end, scattered into wherever they fit. Two walls are meticulously kept clear of clutter. The floor is scuffed from use. Tucked out of the way of everything else, hidden by several large pillars and the slackliners, it sometimes feels small and secluded, separate from the rest of the school.
As I mentioned before, I have two handbalancing coaches. Sania (who has also become my straps coach; that is another blog post entirely) is gorgeous. She is from Quebec, but has dark skin and black hair, long strong muscles, and a piercing under her right eye that looks like the diamond of a gypsy. It makes her royal. She did gymnastics as a child /teen, and can still demonstrate most of the handbalancing skills she’s teaching us (including hovering in a one arm press). Virginé is shorter than I am, from France, and speaks very little English. Our attempts to understand each other are often hilarious—they involve miming, the occasional translator, and a lot of being poked in various muscles. Her love of ‘the plank of death’ (La planche du la mort)—a wooden board with eight blocks attached to it in a row to ‘walk’ across—is terrifying. Steve calls her the devil. I call her hardcore. Virginé loves endurance work. On Thursdays, Steve and I are the only two in the class—our last class of the day, directly after straps and conditioning. There is no time for a pause to let our muscles recover. We must dive straight into it. “Dechaufeé?” she asks us as she walks into the handstand nook. “Are you warm?” “Oui,” we respond. “Montegroupe, handstand, dis second, cinqe groupe, montecarpe descent a chaise. Montecarpe, handstand, dis second, cinqe carpe, montecarpe descent. Monte-escart, handstand, dis second, cinqe escart, monteescart descent a chaise. “Due foie.” So we begin, every time: press, handstand hold, five tucks/straddles/pikes, descent to straddle or L-chair, two times. After that, she usually pulls out the Plank of Death, and sets up a block station. She spots the Plank. We struggle on our own for the blocks. For it is a struggle. She works us mercilessly, cycling between the two with nar a pause. I stand in front of her, waiting. “Legs together, avec la descent,” she tells me. I nod. This is the worst of the Plank exercises: instead of just walking from one block to the other down and back, we must combine the walking and the up-down drill by walking into the valleys between the blocks. Up and down, across, up and down, across. She never lets you find bad form. “Hold five second,” she adds. Hold each one arm for five seconds. By the end of the first round—which takes several minutes—you are panting and sweaty. “Good,” she nods. “Stephen?” We switch exercises. The goal, she told us, is to not come down from the solo block exercises the entire time the other person is walking the Plank. Needless to say, this feels impossible. “Petit ecart,” she says. And we do the same thing, again, with a small straddle. And then again in tuck, and again in full straddle. If there is time left, we hold piano fingers or one arms, freestanding or against the wall, until she tells us to come down. By the time I come to the tuck, things are hard. My shoulders burn. Sometimes, my stomach starts to rumble, until the intense training forces it to stop. “Tighter,” she tells me, squeezing my knees into my ribs. I contract my abs, try to hold it. Hold it all together while breathing, while pushing, while extending my free arm. She lets go, and my tuck one arm hovers, suspended, balanced, “une, due, tois..” she catches my hips as they twist out of place. She pushes my knees back into my ribs. “You stay. Stay there.” I try. I keep it, and switch to the next arm. Half way through on the way back my muscles start to fail. My arm is vibrating, floppy, my shoulders don’t engage. She pushes my knees into my chest. I pant, try not to. For a moment, I feel the urge to flee, to run from her hands as my heart pounds and I try, try to push and engage and hold the one arm, and feel my hips twist and be caught by her hands. But awareness is more powerful now: I calm myself, even while transitioning to the next arm. “If I focus on the flight response, I will not get through. But I am safe, almost done, and just need to focus on the handstand.: My heart calms somewhat. My mind snaps to my shoulder, tying to stop the wobbling. My abs engage further. My tuck stays tight. I hold it, “une, due, tois, cat…” She grabs me on the last second. And then I am at the last block. I straighten into a handstand, trying desparately to hold my body together for ten seconds. I sway back and forth, she pokes me in the ribs, in the hips, back and forth. I feel like a beginner again. She laughs. I tumble down, my descent choking and faltering as I try to control it, as muscles start and stop until I half-crash, half-place my feet down on the floor and I stand up. I blink the sparks from my eyes to find her nodding. “Good! Good!” she tells me, claps me on the shoulder. “You feel, the groupe—c’est facile! You tight, c’est facile!” I nod. “OUi,” I say, though it comes out like ‘way’, the Quebecois way of speaking, with a very strong American accent. I pant. I sway. And then, somehow, I manage to traverse the blocks, up and down, twice without falling, my arms steadily getting weaker and weaker. I hear Steve fall, get up, fall again. Until it is my turn again, to do wide straddle, and nothing works. I leave that day aching, exhausted, jubilant, because I did not fall with her once, and I managed to find the tuck one arm, and life is good.
Sania is a lover of endurance in another way: she believes in a long straight body hold. Every day we have her we start with three holds. They have grown over time into a two minute freestand hold, minute break, three minute wall hold, minute break, one minute freestand hold. That is her warm up. She focuses on presses, especially stalders (they call them ‘makos’). We do fewer one arms, but more one arm press work with her. And she loves ankle weights during 100% week. And because I have her for straps as well, it means that every day during 100% week I did three hours of ankle weight work. Let me tell you—leg lefts are easy when you no longer have five pounds attached to the end of your legs. Easy peasy. Sania is less hands-on intense. Rather, she makes you want to push yourself to be intense. Virginé forces you there. The two styles are good to have together—or at least I have been enjoying the variety.
During 30% week, Sania takes our artistic break seriously. “Create a sequence,” she says, “using the box. Thirty minutes, and then you will present.” She comes back around, watching our ideas, helping us, laughing as we fall. “C’est cool, ça,” she tells me as I hop one hand off the ground onto the box before sweeping my body sideways into a crocko. “C’est interesant.” Artistic creation at ECQ can be just as demanding as volume or technique training, but it is wonderful to be given artistic suggestions every week and grow within my own movement style.
OK, blog friends. Stick with me. This is the point at which I left the post, thinking I’d get back to it. I had vague ideas of the direction it would go in and the stories I would tell. Three months later, I have no idea what I wanted to say. I will sum it up with this:
Handstands are hard. I mentally know what my body needs to do to find a one arm. I know what my body is doing wrong. Now I have to find the ways the make my body do the right thing. Welcome to the circus. Petit a petit, les equilibres vienent.