During our trip around the world we spent some time in Iceland where I found myself a small handstand heaven. Primal Iceland is one of the coolest gyms I’ve ever been to. The three owners, Einar, Thor and Helgi are very knowledgable and are perfect to hang out with if you’re interested in anything like Movement, Wim Hof or… you guessed it: Handstands!
Helgi, the handstand coach at Primal, is one of those people who if you looked back a couple of years, you would have never thought that this guy would even be related to movement. Having torn both of his adductors in his adolesence he quit doing sports and dedicated himself to playing video games, until one day he decided that he wanted to change that.
I always find it really impressive to see how peoples skills can change in a relatively short matter of time. In this case we’re talking about 5 years, in which Helgi went from not being able to hald a wall handstand to working on one arm handstand tricks daily. So this episode is packed with experiences from his journey from being overweight to having the life of a gym owner, being the father of three kids and working daily to improve his handstands and his mobility (be prepared to hear about some interesting approaches in his mobility training with Emmet Louis to improve his middlesplits after having a somewhat traumatized adductors).
Helgi is such an awesome person to talk to and he has so much wisdom to share, so the interview turned out to be a bit longer than the ones before. We talk about many different topics, so here are the times for each subject for those of you, who are interested in one specific thing:
Time stamps
Helgis Story: 0:54 – 20:30
His mobility work with Emmet Louis: 8:50 -12:55
His handbalance work with Mikael Kristiansen: 12:55 – 17:00
How his training changed after having a new born and how long breaks have affected his training: 17:00 – 20:30
About Primal Iceland (Classes/their philosophy/who they work with): 20:30 – 38:59
Handstand Classes: 20:30 – 24:33
Movement Classes: 24:33 – 26:06
Private Sessions and dealing with the typical sedentary lifestyle and physical imbalances: 26:06 – 34:48
Wim Hof Classes: 34:48 – 38:59
Helgis Advice for handbalance beginers: 38:59 – 45:41
Workshops at Primal: 46:13 – 47:20
Primal is connected to a bunch of great Coaches and hosts workshops throughout the year. They usually host through motion impulse, so if you’re interested, go check out www.motionimpulse.com to see what workshops they will be offering.
As always let us know in the comments below what insights you could get out of this interview! And if you ever have the chance, go visit the guys at Primal. There is a ton of interesting stuff to learn there!
The world is you playground, so just go ahead and do what you love!
See you next Monday 🙂
-Soundschi <3