One handed Solar Eclipse guide... have fun
-GENERAL INFO-
Aight first of all, it's easy to look at the move and think you need lots of strenght. That's wrong actually, because it's mostly a matter of balance, so if you want one handed Solar Eclipses, you must either have very comfortable handstands or a natural sense of balance. Havin both ones help lol, and many times one comes with the other.
For strenght, you don't need an extreme bunch, just enough to hold a one handed handstand. Anyways, if you want this move I recommend you to try it when you already are at a pretty good level. Just remember the golden rule lol, the more experienced you are, the less time it takes to get moves. And don't get me wrong, of course havin strenght still isn't a 'bad' thing for this lol.
Another 'myth' is that you NEED one handed handstands to learn this move. That's not true, cause for some aspects of it this is easier than one handed handstands if you do it right. I know this sounds like BS lol, but take a look at the tips section and you'll know why.
Then, one handed Solar Eclipses are a balance move most of all, and if you have any other balance moves or work alot on freezes you know that balance moves are the kind of moves that need practice the
most. On special cases you may hit Mills, Halos, Backflips and alot other moves at your first try or in a very short time, but balance moves are royal bitches to learn, cause noone can teach you how or how much you have to lean and balance on a 90, Headspin, L-Kick and any other move or freeze that's mostly balance, you've got to find it out with practice.
So DON'T expect to know all you need for this one from guides, neither this one or every other you'll find around the net. I can try to get you an idea of it, but you have to learn how much exactly by yourself- it's all up to practice.
This move doesn't go in circles, but usually CW bboys hop on their right hand and CCW ones hop on their left... another advantage of goin CW
Though I've seen some people doin the opposite sometimes, like with 90's it's a personal matter.
-PREREQUISITES...?-
I always say something is a prerequisite to another move only if it's a part of it, so in my opinion the only thing you need for this is
HANDSTANDS- It's good to attempt learnin one handed Solar Eclipses only if you've got good handstands because they're the 'basis' of the move. I started tryin this move when my handstands already were at a decent level and that made me learn it in a short time. So the better your handstands are, the easier it will be to get this. Make sure you can at least hold a handstand for a good time with straight, closed legs and WITHOUT movin your hands.
Then, if you want to make your way to it some more easy, you should also work on
ONE HANDED HANDSTANDS- I dunno if puttin it as a prerequisite or not haha... you don't
need to be able to hold a one handed handstand -I'll explain why later lol-, but it still helps a GREAT bunch. If you're lazy and don't want to spend too much time on prerequisites and helping stuff, I still recommend you to practice at least handstands both with two hands and one, cause they're the most helpful.
OTHER INVERTED POWERMOVES- I recently found out that many powermoves help one with the other. For example, as SOON as I started practicin one handed Solar Eclipses, my 90's got damn better. So if you're patient enough you'd better practice other inverted powermoves, especially one handed ones. Two handed ones don't help much with one handed I reckon.
-ONE HANDED HANDSTANDS-
As I said above, one handed handstands are the only thing you
must practice -except handstands of course lol- if you've got a damn hurry to learn one handed Solar Eclipses, so I'll get in a couple lines on how to practice it in a good way. Trust me, they'll make your work a LOT easier if you work on them a bit.
Gettin into a one handed handstand is more or less the first step to pull out a one handed Solar Eclipse -that's why it helps so much to have it down good-, so to practice it you'll do something like the starting of a Solar Eclipse.
1- Get into a handstand as you'd usually do, but this time let your legs hang in front of you, over your back (this time... cause you usually don't, RIGHT??
). Beware, doin this, not to arch your back- it should stay straight in order to make your legs kick out
vertical when you kick them for Solar Eclipses.
2- Now hold the handstand for a lil bit... when you feel ready, SLOWLY shift your weight on your supportin hand -right one if you generally go CW, left one for CCW... but someone does the opposite for a preference matter- and start takin your other hand off. Doin it slowly is the
key to hold it comfortably and for a long time because it doesn't make you rush and lose balance. Think of doin it in slow motion lol... however, as you gain confidence with them you'll learn doin it quickly.
So, your hand has got to be right under your center of balance.
3- As you lift your non-supportin hand up, stop your arm straight out to your side, more or less parallel to the ground. This helps with balance and I find it prevents your body a bit from leanin sideways.
Aight, now you're in the standard one handed Solar Eclipse position, from there you can make up your own stuff after you learnt them from this position. Balancin on one hand, other arm straight out to the side, legs bent and ready to kick out and straight back. Practice holdin this position for as long as you can WITHOUT swayin and doin weird movements with your body to keep the balance. You have to practice holdin it without movin, completely still. When you can hold that for some seconds -not many, even just 4 or 5, but feelin the balance- move to hopping.
-STEP BY STEP-
...finally
[1] Basically now you have to do what you did durin the one handed handstand trainin: you get into a handstand with your legs bent and 'hanging' over your back. I bend my legs from the startin of the handstand, but some people prefer to get into a stable handstand and then make their legs hang. To me it's less comfortable tho.
Startin from now, always keep your back straight. Don't keep it arched, or else when you kick your legs to hop the kick will get more horizontal than vertical -dependin on how much you arched- and it will result in a loss of momentum and you'll hop lower.
So bent legs, but straight back.
http://www.bboy.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=10398
[2] When you have a good balanced handstand and you feel the balance, slowly begin takin the weight off your left hand and leanin more on your right... SLOWLY! You'll work on makin it faster once you got comfortable hops from a slow start, and plus it will become faster by itself with practice.
http://www.bboy.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=10399
[3] Now you're balancin on your right hand only. Keep your arm straight, it will drudge much less.
Make your left arm, the one you put off, be horizontal. That will save your balance.
http://www.bboy.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=10400
[4] At this point you're ready for the hop- kick both your legs up vertical and straight.
Your hand should lift off a bit from the ground, don't worry if it's a low hop or if it doesn't even completely lift off- that's not that important at all, just make sure you're havin the hopping feeling.
Don't think too much about kickin hard too, or you may get off-focused and lose balance, a medium kick will still do the thing. Of course if you want higher hops after learnin with normal ones, you've got to kick harder... but there's time for that
http://www.bboy.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=10401
[5] Landing here... There aren't many pointers to give on this part, but there are lots of things to make it more comfortable. The most important thing when landing is to absorb the shock, and there are many ways to do it. These probably should go in the tips section, as you don't really need them for the move in itself, though I'll put them here cause this is gonna be a lil long.
As your hand comes back to the floor, bend back your legs and maybe bend your arm A BIT too. Think at a jump, especially off a wall or any other high point. What do your legs do when you land? They bend! They do it automatically to absorb the landing shock. Now try doin a jump (not from a high point, just from standin- from a high point is one of the best ways to crack your knees) and landing without bendin your legs. Keep them completely straight. Do you feel a light pain in your knees? That's because you didn't absorb the shock with anything and so you have to handle more pressure. Now imagine doin it on your arm
Would hurt, wouldn't it?
Even if that legs movement in the jump landind resembles more the movement of your arm -bendin just a BIT, remember?-, the main thing to absorb the shock is to bend your legs back to their startin position as your hand gets back on the ground. You
have to do this also because if you don't and keep your legs straight, they won't be able to kick up again for the next hop.
Bendin your arm, that helps much, but it isn't
needed as the other one and I recommend you to do this only if you have a strong arm. Not Hulk muscles ya know, but just decently strong. The problem is, if you bend with a weak arm it may sometimes cave in and make your teeth meet the ground
So do this if your arm is strong enough.
SO TO MAKE IT SHORT:
As you land on your hand, bend your legs back to their startin position and, if you've got a strong enough arm, bend it a bit. Still have your other arm horizontal for balance.
http://www.bboy.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=10402
[6] Aight, you just did one hop. If you did all the stuff I said you're in the exact landing position and, maybe, with enough balance to go for a second hop... though well, for that it may take some more time, but not always. On the first try you
usually get 2 or 3 hops, so...
Unlike most of the moves, this one doesn't have particular tricks to get it continuous -as I said you usually get a couple hops on the first time-, just practice. Practice will make you improve your hops record, try to take your max number and you'll see it improves in no time if you practice it regularly.
This is a guide for the easier but less good lookin start. Well people, you've seen people do that nice, quick start, right? Haha, it's nothing more than this start done fast! They just do it quicker so that it doesn't look the same, so with practice you'll simply learn to take less time and just go into a handstand, liftin one hand and start hoppin on the other one, simple as that once you've got enough experience with it.
I've also seen some people not even usin the non-supportin hand, just goin into a one handed handstand and startin to hop, but personally I think it's just harder and not as smooth.
http://www.bboy.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=10403
-THE MASTER TIP!-
Aight, there's a tips section just down there, but I wanted to reserve a little section only to this tip because it's DAMN IMPORTANT! lol...
This is a tip to have more hops. This works with Jackhammers as well, I found it out right when I learned those, so probably who can do Jackhammers feels what I mean.
If you feel you're losing balance, when you land from a hop place your hand where you feel it helps to regain it. For example, if you're leanin too much back -so you're about to get back on your feet- hop and put your hand more backwards. Vice versa, if you're leanin too forward, you place your hand on a more forwards spot. Kinda hard to explain lol, but everyone does it while they perform this move, it just is sometimes more, sometimes less evident. Look at the clip at the end, it's there too.
-TIPS-
- First and most important,
you don't NEED one handed handstands to do one handed Solar Eclipses! I told you I was gonna explain it, didn't I... hehe
To make it simple, think at it, with the 'master tip' above here you move your hand from spot to spot to keep balance if you lean too much towards any part, right? You can't do this with one handed handstands, if you lean too much in any direction you fall, ends there. So the move in itself is technically easier than one handed handtands.
But then again, even if you can physically do it even without them, ONE HANDED HANDSTANDS HELP A GIGANTIC BUNCH WITH THE MOVE, so I suggest gettin them down for some time, the longer you hold it the better it is of course.
- After you trained good one handed handstands and moved on to one handed Solar Eclipses, you can still include one handed handstands in your practice. For example, you warm up, work five minutes on one handed handstands, then ten minutes of Solar Eclipses, then other five minutes of one handed handstands... or however you want to set it. I don't use warm-ups, but whatever... lol
- Do not practice them for long times. This is a move that is better to practice when you're fresh, else, apart from the fact that you can get hurt, it gives bad results. Trust me, 20 minutes every day is better than 2 hours.
- Take your rest times. This is kinda similar to the previous one, but referred to days instead of hours. There may be days in which your arms or shoulder muscles hurt, when it happens rest them for some days -dependin on how much they hurt- and they'll get better in no time. This one doesn't work only for one handed Solar Eclipses but for bboyin in general, it just happens more frequently with this move cause it tends to fatigue your arm pretty quickly.
- NEVER have blind practice. Blind practice is when you just try a move without thinkin about your errors, without even tryin to find them out. If you practice like this, you'll still eventually get the move, but in a very longer time and with much more drudgin. So always know what you're doin and mistakin and try to correct it every time, rather than just tryin over and over like a donkey.
- It's good to bend your arm only at the landing from a hop, NOT at the beginning! I've seen people bendin their arm at the beginnin of a hop to make it higher and collapsin on their arm because they couldn't hold the weight. It's good to bend your arm at the landing to soften it, but not to do the opposite, you'll just have to do alot harder work! It's not worth it!
-QUESTIONS & ANSWERS-
Q: Argh, I can't even go into a handstand before taking my other hand off! What's up with it?
A: I said how important one handed handstands are for this move, right... but how can you have good one handed handstands without havin them two handed first? So go practicin them, then move to one handed, then get back to Solar Eclipses.
Q: As soon as I take my left hand off, I fall, sometimes after doing one hop. What can I do?
A: You're probably takin your left hand off to suddenly, do it slowly and gradually puttin more weight on the right hand until it's all on it. At that point, since there's not any weight on the other hand anymore, you can take it off. Remember to feel your balance and to be sure of what you're doin before tryin to take the hand off. That's a part of the one handed handstand trainin too.
And for the one hop, don't be too excited about it: it's probably not a good one if you did it like this, because you did it without balance and you've got no chance to continue it beyond the first one or two. It's like when gymnasts are learning Circles on mushrooms, the first times they just jump up and do one, then they fall down. That isn't a good one, cause when they do it that way they won't be able to continue it, that becomes just a matter of how much you can turn before the gravity brings their feet back on the ground.
Feel the balance when you're hoppin, even if it's just one. A good thing to try is to do your one hop and stop for awhile in a one handed handstand- that's a good hop, cause you have the balance to continue it if you wish to.
Q: While I was hopping I hurt my supporting arm, it was like my elbow bent the other way a tiny bit and made a little creek. What's that and how did it happen?
A: Don't worry, you just slightly crooked your elbow. It feels like it bends the wrong way, but if it actually did it would be cracked -and it NEVER happens, unless you're a real chump with it-, so it's just a little pain you'll no longer have in half an hour generally.
If you land without absorbin the shock right with your legs and at the same time keepin your arm perfectly straight, it sometimes happens- that's why I recommend bendin your arm a bit in addiction to using your legs as soon as your arm can make it: if you bend your arm it's impossible for it to get that kind of injury.
Q: I can only get a little number of hops, any other tips to raise it apart from practice?
A: Apart from practicin more... try to stay on the thumb side of your hand. It sounds weird, but I've found out it helps. Must be because that side of your hand has got your thumb sticking out to its side, so if you lean too much towards that side you can oppose that by pushin with it to regain balance, while the other side of the hand hasn't got any fingers sticking out that way and so it can't do that work. Though I don't know, it may just be my impression. Anyway, the first thing still is to practice it more.
Any other
Q's, PM/E-mail me or ask here for
A's.
Lastly,
here's a OHSE clip. You can see it from both front and side there.
Hope this helps.
