I’m Max Whitlock, a British gymnast and Mirafit athlete. Today I’m going to be taking you through from start to finish my top exercises and tips to achieve a handstand.

Handstands are traditionally a gymnastics movement. However, they are also used in CrossFit workouts and becoming increasingly popular in the general fitness world where people are looking to add variety to their training.

But learning how to master a handstand takes time, which is why I’m going to walk you through the process step by step.

The most important thing you need to be able to do is support your body weight with upper body and wrist strength.

Building Strength

Wrist Strength

The first exercise is making sure your wrists are strong enough to hold your body weight. Begin in a high plank position with your fingers spread wide, push up onto the balls of your fingers and drop back down. Without strong wrists you’re going to really start to get wrist pains and aches. You’ve got to make sure those joints are strong enough to hold your weight.

Upper Body Strength

Get into the high plank position again and perform shoulder shrugs. Drop your shoulders as low as you can and push them up as high as possible. One of the most common mistakes when doing a handstand is that people go really soft in their shoulders, so you need to make sure you’re pushing as tall as you possibly can in the shoulders.

Core Strength

Also, what’s massively important but underrated is your core strength when performing a handstand. A lot of people think it’s just about upper body strength, but you need your core too. You want to be aiming for a perfect line from your fingers to your toes. A lot of people make the common mistake of creating an arch in their back which puts a lot of weight on your back and shoulders which can cause back pain and other problems.

A simple exercise you can do to improve core strength is get into an elbow plank, make sure you’re straight, not sagging down in the middle or too high. In this position, if you were to lift your feet in the air it would look like how you want your handstand to look. You can do a range of core exercises, but the plank is the most effective one.

How to Progress a Handstand

Put Your Weight Over Your Hands

The next stage once you’ve built some strength in your upper body is to transfer your weight over your hands. Place your hands on the floor and bend your knees and begin with bunny hops, jumping your feet off the ground. Start with small hops and then jump higher until you start to feel your weight over your shoulders, and you’ll get comfortable. Make sure you take it slowly and eventually you’ll get to pause at the top.

Pike Press Ups

Next is probably one of the most important exercises for shaping your handstand. For a pike press up you need to put your feet on a raised surface and walk your hands away from your feet. Your body should be close to a right angle with your bum over the top of your head. The line should be fairly straight as you go up from your fingers to your bum. If you find this exercise easy then you can slowly bring one leg up to a handstand position, then lower and repeat on the other side.

Don’t rush these exercises, you’ve got to feel comfortable bringing your weight over your body so that you can eventually learn to do a full handstand.

Walking Handstands

Once you’ve mastered the above movements the next stage is to walk up very slowly towards a handstand position. You want your hands close to a wall or Stackable Boxes and slowly walk your feet up the boxes, then back down. Use the wall or boxes to take some of the weight out of your shoulders. When you feel comfortable with this, you can take one foot off and feel the balance in the handstand position.

Reverse Walks

Next you can spin around so that you’re facing the opposite way. Your back will be against the boxes. Put your hands close to the boxes or wall, lean forwards and slowly lift your legs up, shift your weight onto the boxes for support, then come back down. Straddle your feet to the sides to lift your legs overhead.

Kick Up to a Handstand

Finally, when you feel comfortable with everything you’ve done so far the next stage is kicking your legs up to a handstand. Here are some of my top tips -

• Make sure your hands are shoulder width apart

• Keep your fingers open to make a bigger base of support

• Look at your hands, don’t tuck your head in

To kick up into a handstand you want to step one foot forward, place your hands on the floor and very slowly lift one leg up and come back down. Over time you’ll eventually build up and get enough control to hold it. When you’re comfortable you can bring both legs up. You need to have a strong back, push up through your shoulders and look at your hands.

A lot of people think it’s about holding that one handstand shape, but a great practice to do is walk about in the handstand. It will help you keep your balance and condition your muscles.

Remember, a handstand is an advanced movement that requires a lot of full body strength. It’s going to take a lot of practice and there will be plenty of failures, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. It’s all about ticking boxes, make sure you feel comfortable with one exercise before you move onto the other. Once you’ve cracked it, you can add variations to your handstands and use them as a tool to build upper body strength and stability.

Written by Eryn Barber

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Tags: Exercise Type > Conditioning