Handstand Poses 6/4/2014 (flexibility training)

I had my husband take a few photos of me doing some of my bridge work from a handstand.
I do these every day as part of my warm up, and my hope is that in a few months when I redo the photos (September) I will see improvement in my flexibility.  I would just like to state that when I started my poling adventure in February, I couldn't even get into a handstand.  With daily practice, I am able to easily and quickly enter a handstand with no issues, and maintain it for 30-40 seconds (I count).  Working on the bridge seemed like an easy task, just allowing my legs to fall, however I have found out that it requires a great deal of core strength to enter these poses, hold these poses, and fluidly exit them.  (as you just don't want to plop down) 

Personally, I feel that the best dismount is to slowly lower the legs and enter into a plank, lower onto the back and then do a log roll, leg sweep up to kneeling and a kneeling leg spin up to standing.  Or, if you're just messing around like I was here, a controlled dismount with a nice body roll up will suffice ;)

Ok, so these are my starting base on my handstand poses.  With practice comes progress, so hopefully I'll have some great improvements within a few months!  My desired result will be to have my toes touching the top of my head, or extremely close to that.



Partial Bridge

My left leg isn't nearly as low as I'd had hoped, but I have a decent hook with my right foot.

 

 

Full Bridge

 

Side view

I personally love my legs in this photo ;)  You can really see my calf muscles!

 

 

Rear View

You can see that I have moved my head past the pole in this photo, creating more of a curve in my body.  Also, in this photo my legs are not closed together as in the side view.  Please disregard my thigh bruises, as they come with the territory of pole dancing :) 

 

Bow and Arrow:





My arch isn't as wide as I'd like, and I'm hoping to get my left leg closer to the ground, in order to create a more "bow and arrow" look.  I work this by doing the stretch in this move, as well as doing deep lunges.