Irish winters make it very hard to keep exercising. Its dark in the morning on the way to work, and dark in the evening on the way home. Constant darkness makes me feel tired, even when its relatively early. Because I train outside, its hard to get the motivation to go out and train, the wind and rain don’t help. Even if you train in a gym, it can be hard to motivate yourself to pack a gym bag and head out the door.
I’ve started moving some of my outdoor exercises, indoors. One such exercise is the triangle headstand. I saw this a few months ago in Men’s Health magazine, I figured that because I can comfortably walk around on my hands, the triangle headstand would be easy, I was surprised by how hard it is. Its a test of your core stabilisers, because you can’t rely on arm strength to hold you up. Instead this works your back stabilisers, abs, and neck muscles. As per the video below, kneel on the floor with your fingers interlocked and forearms in a triangle. Place you head between your arms and walk your feet to your chest, then slowly extend your legs over your torso, tensing your core, and hold. The triangle Headstand can take a while to get right, mine is far from perfect, as you can see from the video below. My legs are not straight enough, and as you can see, I fall a lot. Don’t worry about falling, as you can see, you just roll forward. If you’re not good at something, it means you have to work on it. I’m going to continue working on the triangle headstand until I can get perfectly straight. I can feel the benefits to my core already.
Mark Havel 