Jump Monkey Blog

Ok, the word ‘La Planche’ comes from the French Language. The Planche is sometimes also called a horizontal Handstand, because you are actually doing a handstand, not vertically but horizontally. Planche is a Freeze but I think that this is probably the hardest Freeze which exists out there, and it needs more detailed explanation then other Freezes. So the basic thing what you have to do; when you turn on the next time your TV switch to Euro sport and watch some Gymnastics. The Planche is a very common move in Gymnastics and it helps a lot to see how to get into the Planche. When you are doing the Planche your arms should be totally stiff (not bent). You have to lean your shoulders to the front until you ‘find’ the equilibrium. Another important detail your fingertips should be never facing ‘directly’ to the front, because if you would fall over you would probably break your wrists. The fingertips should not be facing to your side and either to the front as I said but they should be facing somewhere between these two directions. The most IMPORTANT thing, you must have very, very strong shoulders to do a Planche(there is really no trick to this move, you have to be strong). To make your shoulder muscles stronger I recommend to do many push-ups, ‘weight-lifting’ and also a very good exercise are ‘Handstand push-ups’ (get into a Headstand and push yourself up with your hands, get back slowly to the headstand and repeat this many times…it helps).

STARTING POSITION: Start with a push up position with your knees touching the ground (get on all fours). Then modify the position by taking your left arm and do what we call ’stabbing’. Bend the arm and place the elbow into your gut. It should be below your belly button, and centered left to right. You may find your back hunching in order to get it in place. Now your right arm should be stabbed and your right fingers should be pointing behind you. What you’re going to do next, is turn your upper body a bit to the right. Simply rotate your shoulders clockwise so you are looking to the right. Move your left hand over a bit to the right for stability. Rotate your lower body to the right as well so that you drop onto the left sides of your knees and your toes point to the right. You should no longer be on the fronts of your knees and feet, but on the left sides. You should be well balanced and comfortable in this position before you go any further. Take some time to get used to it, and make any adjustments you need.
THE FIRST ROTATION: This part of the windmill is very important, because without a good first rotation, you most likely won’t be able to get good multiple ones. I recommend that you practice this on carpet, grass, or anything else that gives you grip and won’t be painful to bang against. The first step from the starting position is to raise you’re right leg up and to the left. Lift it high above the left leg. Be sure to keep it locked and straight. Once this leg is in place, begin to twist/rotate your upper body to the left. You should feel like your body is ªwound upº like a toy, and as a result of your twisted body, you should feel as if your left leg is ready to fly out to the left. When you are ready, torque your right leg against the left (kick the right to the right, and the left to the left). Keep in mind this should be a circular motion, and while I say you kick to the right and left, I mean that you kick in an arc to the right and left. Imagine the two arms of a compass (one of those math tools for drawing circles) spinning around each other. At the same time as this kick is happening, you should be turning your entire body clockwise relative to the ground with your hands – in a way similar to doing a turtle float. Pretend you are trying to rotate the ground underneath you, and swivel on top of your right hand – which should be supporting almost all your weight. As your legs rotate around each other and your body turns relative to the ground, your upper body should continue twisting to the left and you should turn your head really hard to the left so you can almost see the ceiling. Aim your twisting and turning so that your right shoulder touches down close to your right hand. As it does touch down, continue to twist your body to the left. Let your body bend at the waist as you roll onto your back, but don’t let your legs bend. Let your right supporting arm collapse, and so long as you keep your legs straight and spread, the momentum from the kick should carry you smoothly over your shoulders. You should not find yourself grinding against the ground, as the windmill has a rolling motion, and you shouldn’t really feel like you’re doing a backspin. If this is what’s happening to you, It may help to give a hard push with your left hand to get yourself rolling. There are several things you must really keep in mind during this kicking motion. One of the most important ones, however, is that you have to keep your legs as spread as possible at all times. As soon as that left leg comes out during your first kick, actively try and spread your legs until they can’t go any farther. Something that might help you here is to focus not on kicking that right leg up, but instead across to the left. Sweep it low across the ground until it just can’t go any farther, and only then let it go upwards. This is much more important than it might sound. A second thing is that the legs must remain totally straight. From the moment you initiate this first kick, your legs must go completely stiff. Some people find it helps to point there toes outwards. Don’t think that these tips are just for pros that want to clean their mills up. You will find that it is almost impossible to pull any mills at all if your legs are bending or closing up, so keep them in mind at all times.
CONTINUING THE WINDMILL: If you have more than one rotation down, congratulations! However, I wouldn’t get too excited. Getting the move continuous is the hardest part, simply because it is such a complicated thing to do. It is almost impossible to explain in words, and just as hard to understand from watching people do it. It is something that for most people requires a ton of practice and major dedication, and only experimentation will help you learn. Despite this, I am going to outline a few things that helped me get my windmills continuous and that I would have loved to hear while learning. The first thing I want to tell you is that you must, like I already said, keep your legs totally straight, and spread as far as possible. Don’t think you have to be super flexible. While it may help, you don’t at all need to be. Guys that can’t even touch their toes can do great windmills. Another tip that should help you, is that as long as you are doing ’stabbed’ windmills, never let your right elbow leave its point of contact in your gut. Your arm may bend as you pass onto as you pass onto your back, but this doesn’t mean that elbow ever has to budge. By keeping it there, you will be more ready to go back onto your hands as you roll to your front. The same thing goes for the left arm. Always keep it in a position where it will be useful to you on the front. When doing ’stabbed’ mills, I keep it tight, but this doesn’t mean that elbow ever has to budge. By keeping it there, you will be more ready to go back onto your hands as you roll to your front. The same thing goes for the left arm. Always keep it in a position where it will be useful to you on the front. When doing ’stabbed’ mills, I keep it tight against my left side after my first rotation, and use the forearm flat against the ground in front of me for support. After some practice, you may find yourself able to do more than one rotation, but they are really ugly, you roll all over the place, and you slow down after a few rotations. If you’re doing mills like this, you’re on the right track, but you are using your right arm to push yourself too much. You have to learn to rely on your hips to drive yourself. This is the key to continuing the windmill, and is something only experience will teach you. Here’s are a tip . The first thing you gotta start doing is stop pushing with your left arm completely. It may be instinctive by now to use it, but you’ve gotta force yourself not to. Start concentrating on the motion of your hips and upper body. A common mistake here is to start bending and winding the legs closed in order to generate momentum, but this is exactly what you shouldn’t do. Keep your legs straight and spread and DON’T wind them. What helped me get the hip motion was to concentrate on the way you bend and straighten your waist as go from your back to your front. When you go onto your front, make sure your body is going completely straight and rigid. As you straighten and roll from your back to your front you might also try to turn your torso to your left by looking hard over your left shoulder. Whenever I consider my mills, it always seems like it is this combination of straightening and bending, and twisting and turning that keeps them going. Don’t get me wrong when I say ‘twisting’ though. From your crotch up to your neck has to remain totally rigid and can’t twist. This may be confusing in words, so just keep in mind that your abs must be tight at all times (even on your back), and you shouldn’t run into any related problems.

A kick-up starts laying on the ground and sending your legs up so your knees are above your face. Put your hands on the ground behind you, violently sending your legs down again, push with your hands. The result is a dramatic leap to your feet. You should be standing vertically and ready to dance. A Kick-Up is not very hard to learn (usually it takes one to two months), but you will often land ‘hard’ on your back when practicing this on a mat or grass. Kick-Ups are taken from martial arts (I’m sure you’ve seen it hundred times in Bruce-Lee films). Kick-Ups can also be done without hands but, it is more difficult.

This move is dead easy. You will probably learn it in one day. Start by squatting down on one foot extending the other leg. Have your butt touch your heel. Now swing your extended leg counter clockwise towards your bent leg, once they come close, jump over your extended leg. Repeat this ‘for ever’ and that’s it. Eventually you can rotate your leg in the opposite direction and so on (be creative).

This is actually not as hard or dangerous as it looks. If you can get on your head in a tripod position (using both your hands to help you keep balanced) you can do this. You must be able to hold this headstand position pretty much forever before you attempt to spin. Try ‘walking’ in a circle using your hands. Do this slowly at first. Once you can do this fast (it helps you keep straight back while spinning, and trains you to keep balance while rotating) you have to twist only your hips and keep your upper body straight. By twisting your hips you are ‘cocking’ yourself, like twisting a rubber band. Then quickly snap your hips in the other direction and let go of the ground with your hands. You’ll probably only rotate about half a turn at first. Once you can get a full rotation catch yourself with your hands again. This is called a ‘tap’ People will respect you if you can tap forever. Try to use the tips of your fingers too when you tap, and slightly lean into your hands and keep the knees above the elbows. Always use a hat when practicing or you might get a bald spot. Ok, this may seem logical to some but to others it is not. DO NOT TRY THIS ON CARPET!!!!!!! You’ll burn a hole in your head!

Ok the Flare is one of the hardest moves so don’t think that you will learn it in one week. But if you practice hard for about 5 months you should get this move.

First, the starting position.
There are many different ways of getting into flares, but the most common way is from a standing position with the legs spread. When going clockwise, you start by placing down your right hand and kicking your right leg under your left and sweeping it all the way around the front. When you place your right hand down you try to place it as far forward as you can. This forces you to jump FORWARD with your legs when you are kicking them around and this is what I think is the most important part. When most people try to flare they kick their legs UPWARDS. This isn’t good, because what goes up must come down. Instead, throw your legs FORWARDS. This allows you to maintain the horizontal momentum that you need to sustain your flares. So after placing your right hand down, you kick the right leg under the left and the sheer weight of your legs will throw your entire lower body forwards and up. Since you are driving you body in a circular motion, your body will naturally keep turning and when your body weight shifts to the right, your left arm will naturally come down to catch yourself. Just make sure that when the left arm comes down that you keep it stiff and close to your body. If you place your arm down to far out from your body then it will not be able to support the weight, or it will slip out from under you. Keep it close to your body. Now, your legs should be flying around the right side of your body. Now almost all of your weight should be on your left arm, so now you must lift your right arm so that your legs may pass beneath it. Here your body will be tilted sideways with all the support on the left arm because of the momentum of your legs. As long as you had sufficent momentum to begin with, then you don’t have to worry about your legs hitting the ground. Your legs should be travelling HORIZONTALLY anyway, so even if they hit the ground, they will not stop your momentum.
Now here is another important part of the flare. At this point, picture yourself leaning forwards, almost as if you were trying to ram your head against an imaginary target in front of you. But you must keep your arms stiff otherwise there is no way that you can get your legs around at the back. As long as you are leaning slightly forwards, and your arms are stiff, and you still have good mometum, your legs will have no problem with hitting the ground. Your ass should be pretty high in the air at this point and both of your arms are down in front of your to support the weight. Now when your legs are at the back, your weight will start to shift to the left side because of the circular momentum. Here, you must lift your left arm so that your legs may pass beneath it. Your body will start to tilt to the right with the weight supported by the right arm. Here, just remember to try really hard and keep your left leg high, close to your head, as the right leg swings out under it to the front.
At this point everything repeats itself, and if you’re comfortable with all of that then it shouldn’t be much effort to flare repeatedly.

Ok B-Boys and B-Girls, for learning four step, you should first learn to do six step relatively well. For clockwise four-step, start from the push-up position (the way you would start a six-step). Basically this part is the six-step). Lift your left arm, and move your right leg through so it’s more or less where your left hand just was. Move your left leg so that your left foot is tucked behind the left knee. Move your right foot around to your right side so your legs are uncrossed. At the same time, switch your hands. Extend your left leg and sweep it around hard in a clockwise arc (like a helicopter), but instead of stopping there like in the six-step, or swinging it and jumping with your right foot like in the helicopter, swing your left leg hard and let it carry your right leg back around your body to step one, and continue. (You can also extend your feet in a “V” shape.)

A 1990 is a move when you are spinning on one hand in a handstand position. Basically you have to be able to do a good handstand to do this move. As I’ve already said; practice a lot of handstands to build up your shoulder strength and balance, then you have to get the feeling of the motion of a 1990 by standing on your hands and winding your legs in a circular motion. As you place your first arm down, swing the opposite leg of the arm you just used. Swing that leg up in a circular motion and open both legs wide on one arm. The second you have both legs open on one arm. Slightly shift your weight onto your other arm. The minute you are on both hands try to focus energy on winding your legs. At the same time lifting up your first arm and balance your self on your spinning arm. You should spin on the lower part of your hand opposite your thumb. Also look down at your hands as you are spinning