Balancing or Being-Balanced in Mixed Pairs
Author: Flosha, 26.05.2025
Last change: 03.05.2026
There are two philosophies of balance, which are particularly relevant to Mixed Pairs. One approach suggests that the base should be the one who balances most, the other approach suggests that the top should be the one who balances most.
Why the question is primarily relevant to Mixed Pairs
In men’s pairs, where the balance is most often performed in hand-to-head instead, the question of being balanced doesn’t arise. Although the base reacts with his head, the top has to be able to stand on one arm on his own. The base cannot see him and can only try to slightly compensate for mistakes of the top.
In Women’s Groups the question doesn’t arise either. When Balance is performed in Hand-to-Hand in pyramids, most often the Middle doesn’t even look up, keeps a neutral head position and just serves as a platform for the top. The trio top has absolutely to be able to balance herself. All the elements that she performs on the partners she can well perform on canes. Many other elements are performed on one or two feet; here too the bases only act as platforms.
In women’s pairs it is often similar due to the elements performed on feet. If the top has to do handstands on a foot of the base, she has to balance herself anyway; thus it wouldn’t make sense and would hardly be possible to switch to a different technique for hand-to-hand balance.
It is therefore that the question here is particularly relevant to Mixed Pairs, because Mixed Pairs are traditionally doing most if not all of their balance in hand-to-hand and occasionally in foot-to-hand, but rarely on the feet of the base and never on the head.
Isn’t balance always done by both?
To repeat our statement at the beginning: Some think that the base should be mainly responsible for the balance and others think that the top should be mostly responsible for the balance. But isn’t the balance always achieved by both?
If we equate balance with stability and define balance as merely the perfect static, stable state, then yes, but if we define balance as the process, as the little constant corrections necessary to remain in balance, then no.
What do we mean? Doesn’t have the top to be able to balance a handstand anyway? In fact - no. It is a viable question if she should be able to, but it is a fact that she doesn’t have to be able to in order to stand well in hand to hand.
Two examples in this context.
I am currently coaching an 8 year old girl and she can not yet do a handstand on the floor nor on canes. She might occasionally stand for 2 or 3 seconds as a matter of luck, never more. But she can stand in a handstand on my hands for 30+ seconds without us doing any steps. Why is that? Simply because she does not balance, she is being balanced by me. This may not be the perfect example, since it isn’t the most stable hand to hand. I am making big corrections with my arms in order to balance her, but it is simply to illustrate the fact that I am balancing her, she isn’t balancing herself. What she is doing is trying to hold a stable line. But when the line is lost, whenever she is tending to fall in one or the other direction, I am the one who pulls or pushes her back into balance.
As another example: I once tried to balance an older girl who practiced handstands often and was able to hold her handstand for about 2 minutes alone. But when we tried hand to hand for fun we always struggled and we couldn’t hold the handstand almost at all. Simply because she was constantly trying to do things in order to balance herself which were counter to the things that I did to balance her. She had lots of trust in her own ability to balance, but wasn’t at all used to be moved around by someone below her, trusting him to move her correctly, letting him to catch the balance instead of overreacting with her legs etc. to do it herself. And her body was so used to that, that it would have been very hard to overcome these reactions. We would have needed to particularly train to avoid them.
This second example shows that standing on ones hands alone and in particular doing so with a technique in which one allows oneself to catch the balance by all means, mostly via leg movements from the top down, in order to catch the balance via counterweight etc., can be extremely detrimental to achieving a solid static hold in hand to hand. If one practices so that the balance is build from the bottom up, by the fingers first and alone, while the shoulders and the back and legs are not allowed to react, then it is a different issue, but most who train handstands are not doing so.
If one believes so or not, but the very same principle described above is possible with one arm handstands too. There are or were a few mixed pairs, of which we know that the tops weren’t able to do one arm handstands alone and yet could stand one on one on their bases very efficiently, during long motions of the highest difficulty. Not only did those girls not hold one arm handstands alone, but they also weren’t allowed to do so. They are only ever training their line, never balancing themselves; and this is truly an entirely different training philosophy compared to what is usually done.
In order to understand what is going on there and which way may be more favourable, we have to consider what balance is in the first place.
What is balance?
We have seen that the top being responsible for the balance in hand to hand and the base only trying to hold as still as possible, being like a platform for the top to work on, is a very different approach and the opposite extreme to the idea that the base is responsible for the balance and that the top should not balance herself at all.
But how is this difference expressed in practice? When something is in perfect balance, then there is no movement at all, it is a perfect, unmoving static hold. But such a perfect balance is only possible in theory. If everything is perfectly stacked upon each other, there is no actual balancing effort involved and no visible balancing movement. This is what perfect technique is about.
Perfect balance is still and looks easy and perfect technique is what enables it. And while such perfect balance is not possible to achieve, mastery in balance comes close to it, such that the balancing movements or “corrections” are so small, subtle and controlled, almost only in the hand(s), that it almost looks perfectly static.
If such a perfect balance could be achieved, then the two different approaches we deal with wouldn’t really look any different from each other, as the balance is so perfect, that almost no balancing occurs, there is just stability. It would look as stable and effortless as a man who stands on his feet. Thus, at the two extremes, the two approaches connect with each like the two ends of a circle, since perfect balance is motionless. But where balancing occurs, there the difference appears.
The difference in practice
The difference becomes apparent when actual balancing occurs, which in practice is almost always the case. Then it is a matter of responsibility and of priority.
One approach is to say: First and foremost the base has to keep absolutely still as much as possible. When anything happens, he just should try to keep being as still as possible while the top should try to catch her balance.
A totally different approach is to say: First and foremost the top has to keep absolutely still in her ideal line as much as possible. When anything happens, the base should try to correct the balance while the top should just keep being as still as possible and fixate her form.
In the first case the top has to be able to balance herself in a one arm handstand. In the second case the top has to be able to particularly not balance herself in a one arm handstand. If the two approaches are mixed, it doesn’t get better, but makes it worse, as the balancing movements from the bottom and the top will lead to over- and underbalance by overreaction. Therefore they both require a very different training.
One will train handstands on her own and balance herself on canes. One will never train handstands alone or just two-arms and only with a very strict bottom-up technique (instead of a top-down technique), only be held by the coach or partner. It is about achieving utmost stability in the right line, not about developing balancing capabilities.
Both approaches are valid for mixed pairs. The second approach has the disadvantage that it can be more difficult to change technique if e.g. the top has to change the partnership and becomes a top in a trio. It has the advantage that it can result in higher stability in mixed pairs and it results in a different aesthetics, when it is the base who balances.
Two very different Handbalancing techniques
We mentioned how handbalancing is learned as another factor. There are two very different approaches to it.
The usual way of learning handstands, and the way it usually happens when a handstand is self-taught or taught by someone who isn’t an expert in the field, can be described as top-down balance. If anything is off, you will see movement in the feet, in the back, in the shoulders, trying to catch the balance by movement at the top; balance is re-established by using different body parts in a counter-weight manner and this results in all kinds of problems.
The other approach, and this is how Handbalancing is learned e.g. by the handbalancers of Kyiv or the tops of our coach Galina Sinyavskaya, may be described as bottom-up balance. Here no movement at the top is allowed; the handstand is always kept in alignment and any little over- or underbalance is fought against by the hands only, just as one who can effectively stand on ones feet will only need to use the muscles of his feet slightly in order to keep standing, whereas the toddler will wobble around at the upper body and hips, since alignment has not yet been established.
How handstands can be learned in this more effective bottom-up technique is too complex to deal with here. Books could be filled to explain it, but we may at least roughly outline the process in a future article.
In the first approach usually the balance is learned first and only then the alignment is tried to be perfected; but every now and then, and usually very often so, the handstand will be out-of-alignment, sometimes from the very beginning, and then one attempts and is able to move body parts around either to bring them back into alignment or simply to keep standing out-of-alignment.
In the second approach the alignment is learned first and balance is only allowed in-alignment. A loss of alignment equals then a loss of balance, because the alignment is ones balance, whereas in the first approach they are separate things. That means that one will exit the handstand as soon as alignment is lost, but it also means that the alignment won’t be lost easily, since the entire practice rests on perfecting and stabilising the alignment.
If the first approach is learned as a handbalancer, the handbalancing will be much less stable and aesthetically unpleasing. It is what many calisthenics athletes are doing, but also how some professional handstand artists are learning their handstands.
If the second approach is learned as a handbalancer, the handbalancing will be much more stable. For handbalancers this approach does not exclude the ability to catch balance via motion of the legs etc. too, if necessary. But it is then learned in a way that the priority of balance is a very different one, and that usually one simply won’t fall out-of-alignment, since any loss of alignment that cannot be re-established by effort of the wrists and fingers alone, will, in training, result in a fall out of the handstand. So, when an athlete trains in such a way he will constantly work on improving his efficiency in remaining in alignment, while those training the other method will constantly train their efficiency to be out-of-alignment and to react in out-of-alignment scenarios.
This should make obvious how learning handstands in one or the other way (or, as also sometimes done and as formerly mentioned, not learning the one arm handstand at all) will affect the work of the top in mixed pairs. If the top learned handstands in the first way, then the top itself will work out of alignment and will attempt to catch the balance herself. The base is then best to not react at all and to just remain as stable as he can. When she has learned handstands in the second way, or has not learned to stand alone at all, she will keep her form, stay in alignment as stable as she can, and won’t do nothing to catch the balance, as only the base will feel, hold, pull and push her into equilibrium. She is only letting it happen.
This “letting it happen” of the girl in mixed pairs is an art in itself and can be extremely difficult or impossible for someone who learned to balance handstands in the first way, with the top-down approach. And it can also be difficult, although much easier to achieve, for someone who has learned to balance in the second way, by the bottom-up approach. Therefore there is a school of acrobatics which, particularly for mixed pair tops, prefers a third way: non-balance.
Being-balanced by non-balance
If we assume that a top in mixed pairs should rather be balanced than balance herself, then most optimal balance could be achieved by not balancing herself at all. Therefore there is this third method, that appears to be little known even in acrobatic circles, which has proven effective in several cases, in which the tops are prepared in a way that particularly teaches them to not balance at all. This has to be done from the very beginning. These girls, particularly to be prepared for mixed pair balance, have to be taught from scratch. Any former handbalancing experience can be problematic. In that these tops cannot balance themselves, they are most optimally prepared to be balanced, to let themselves be balanced.
Others aren’t fully capable to let it happen. There will then always be moments of fear, moments in which they will instinctively react and these reactions will be visible and show how they do not completely rely on their base and haven’t been prepared in the non-balance approach. Much instability at the top is the result. They cannot just “let it happen”. This method of preparation results in a different kind of trust between base and top, in a different kind of relation and in a deep reliance of the top from the base, which, arguably, can be very beautiful to watch in a mixed pair and can complement the artistry.
How this non-balance can be learned, how tops are prepared in practice to be balanced in complete reliance on the base (which, as I said, is a not well-known technique used only in a few acrobatic schools in the world), cannot be elaborated on here, although it is a very straightforward process. It is more about what not to do than what to do. It is about what has to be avoided and how alignment of the top has to be established without creating any reactive patterns.