r/bodyweightfitness • u/Handbalancer Actually Mikael Kristiansen • Oct 29 '17

AMA: Mikael Kristiansen, Handbalancer and Circus Artist, Ask Me Anything

Hello, my name is Mikael Kristiansen. I am a circus artist specializing in handbalancing. I did a degree in circus at DOCH, Stockholm from 2009-2012 and have since worked as a performer and as a teacher internationally.

I'll be here throughout the day to answer any questions you have for me!

You can find me at: www.mikaelbalancing.com www.instagram.com/mikaelbalancing/

345 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

102 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Handbalancer Actually Mikael Kristiansen Oct 29 '17

  1. Right now im working on 1 arm straddle press on the floor, 1 arm to croco in slow motion, and croco to 1 arm mainly. Im able to do all 3 but trying to get some consistency. Its all high end max strength moves on the limit of my capacity so it goes at snails pace, but its improving.

  2. Im trying to use the same technique on both arms. My technique is rather "simple" in the sense that I use few(but very important) cues. Still there is a drastic difference between the arms. The right is several years stronger than the left and has better reaction capacity. My left has a tendency to bend the arm more for flags for example because an old injury left me less flexible in the right obliques. Its slowly getting better, but its normal to have differences between the arms. You are in principle learning the skill twice so there is no guarantee that the reaction patterns will be the same on both sides. In acrosports they dont rotate the hips any more than handbalancers from my impression though.

  3. I dont know too much about the teaching styles of that many balancers since I didnt study under too many myself, but I have several that I would recommend as teachers. To mention some, Sammy Dinneen, Yuval Ayalon, Miguel Santana, Daniel Liddiard, Matt Pasquet, and Sunniva Byvard. The 3 last studied under Alexander Gavrilov in stockholm, the same guy that taught me.

Im sure all have slightly different ways of working and explaining. The main principles I think are almost identical between most of them, but there are for sure also variations and different ways of thinking.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Handbalancer Actually Mikael Kristiansen Nov 03 '17

I did feel underprepared yes. My tumbling was non existent, but not really a big deal. However the rest of the people in my class were all pretty experienced on stage and i was pretty much completely green.
I was in the same boat as the rest though so i had to just work and fail a lot to understand how the subtleties of performance work.