Backbends, Side Splits and Handstands

One of my biggest intentions for this blog is to track my progress with my strength and flexibility goals, what I’ve called “bodyflow” in my tags.The term “Body Flow” comes from the book and video of the same name by Scott Sonnon a physical culturist whose work I’ve been following and experimenting with for … wow, come to think of it almost two years now.

Right now I basically have three main physical goals that I’d like to accomplish by mid December (in time to show off when I go visit my family and old friends in Philadelphia for Christmas.)
* Handstand for three minutes against the wall, 30 seconds balanced on the floor
* Splits, full side and full front
* Backbend progress, I’d like my backbends to look more like Ana Forrest’s. And to increase my flexibility enough to pull off the following pose.

The “icing on the cake” goal that all three of these goals are really training towards, is to be able to balance this pose, for at least 10-20 seconds:

And here are pics of my backbend and side split progress as of the end of last month.

Since then I’ve made a few inches progress on my splits (which is actually a significant amount of progress for splits), my backbends have likely improved. As for handstands, I am up to 2 minutes and 5 seconds before failure. And I have to be in a really strong mood with high energy to pull it off. Some days I’m failing at 1 minute 30. So I have some work to do there.