The ultimate handstand guide - How you can do it too

There are really no two opinions: The Handstand is pretty much the coolest exercise you can show off to your friends or alternatively in the gym. Even in school, those who mastered exercise perfectly took the credit. However, anyone who has ever tried it themselves will be able to agree with us that the exercise is significantly harder than it looks.

Even gymnasts who can do the handstand to perfection today sometimes had to spend years honing their form. The key to success is by no means to try again and again on the off chance and simply swing your legs upwards. Rather, it's a clear plan that takes you step by step to perfect form. With the help of our guide and a little diligence, you too will master the handstand in no time.

Step 1 - Build strength and endurance

The first step on the way to mastering the free handstand is to use a wall as an aid. This may not look cool or particularly impressive, but it will help you enormously to gradually build up the necessary strength to be able to hold yourself stable without the help of the wall. With the following three exercises you can train exactly the specific strength you need.

The Wall Hold
You know why most people can't even manage a handstand on the wall? They just fling their legs up and hope for the best. Don't make that same mistake, go a different route right away. Instead of swinging your legs up, position your feet on the wall and slowly run them up until you are in full extension.

Squat with your back to the wall and place your hands a little more than shoulder width flat on the floor. Now first place one foot with the ball of the foot against the wall and look for a good grip. Then place the second foot on the wall. Now slowly walk up the wall. As soon as your legs are fully extended, move your hands a little closer to the wall. If you don't dare to get too close to the wall yet, that's no problem. This will come with experience.

It's much more important to build strength in your arms, shoulders, back and abdomen. So once you've reached your final position, tighten all of these muscles as if you were trying to push yourself off the ground. Once that's the case, tighten your butt and thigh muscles as hard as you can. Hold this position for one minute and, after a short break, repeat two or three more times.

The Wall Walk
This exercise builds on the Wall Hold. To perform it, first get into the holding position of the wall hold. Here, however, you should try to get as close as possible to the wall with your chest in order to achieve as straight a position as possible. From this starting position you now slowly walk on your hands parallel along the wall.

If you spread your legs apart a bit to create a larger contact surface on the wall, you can make the exercise a little easier for yourself. While you run up and down on your hands on the wall, you also tense your muscles in the same way as with the wall hold. Here, too, a total of 3-4 repetitions of 60 seconds per day is sufficient to make enormous progress within a short time.

The Shoulder Touch
The so-called Shoulder Touch is another excellent exercise with which you can strengthen your upper body and core. The main goal here is to develop strength and balance in the shoulders. In addition, the Shoulder Touch also prepares you to learn the one-arm handstand. Like the Wall Walk, the Shoulder Touch begins in the starting position of the Wall Hold. Once in position, slowly lift one arm off the floor and touch the shoulder of the lifted arm with your fingertips.

Then balance your body with the help of your hips and hold the position for 30-45 seconds. Then return to the starting position and change the arm. Of course, you don't have to start lifting your whole arm off the floor right away. In order to slowly develop the right balance and strength, you can start by lifting your fingertips off the floor. A total of 3-4 sets are also completely sufficient for the Shoulder Touch.

Step 2 - Use the wall to keep your balance

Once you've spent a few weeks doing the strengthening exercises and feel confident in the three exercises, you can move on to the next step on the path to handstand. Again, start from a squat position and slowly work your way up with your feet as you did with the wall hold. Once you're in position, tighten your muscles as before and move your hands a significant distance away from the wall. The ideal distance is about 30 to 40 centimeters.

Hands, shoulders and hips form a line. Once you have stabilized, slowly lift one foot off the wall while the other remains on the wall to maintain balance. The lifted leg should also be in line with your hands, shoulders and hips. Now lift the other leg off the wall as controlled as possible and carefully try to balance yourself in a handstand.

As soon as you notice that you are losing your balance, support yourself again with one foot against the wall and, after a short concentration phase, start again from the beginning. If you tip over to the front, roll over. To be prepared for all eventualities, you can of course also place a thick gymnastics mat, a gym mat or a mattress in front of you. You can make the exercise even more challenging by slowly spreading your legs apart and bringing them together again while holding the position, thus feeling your balance.

Pro tip: Film yourself while you work out. This way you can not only correct mistakes and work on your form, but also observe your progress. You'll see that there's nothing more motivating than your own successes.

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Step 3 - Training the free handstand

Before you continue with this step, you should be able to hold a handstand on the wall for at least 30 seconds. The longer you can hold this position, the easier it will be for you to stay upright for as long as possible without the help of the wall. Because you have found a very good feeling for the right balance during the previous exercises, you can now swing into the handstand much more easily and hold it without rolling over.

The easiest way to get into position is to use a scissor kick, swinging one leg up at a time. While you're practicing this, you'll nevertheless need a lot of stamina, because until you have the right technique figured out, you may have to experiment a little longer. Because if you take it too easy, you won't get up there. If, on the other hand, you're too brisk, you'll roll over. This step takes time.

So be patient and continue to improve your strength and balance with the exercises we introduced in steps 1 and 2. Even though you're getting better at holding yourself completely free in the handstand, that's no reason to give up training on the wall. Continue to spend a good half of your time doing this form of training to continue to improve physically. Eventually you'll get to the point where you can even hold a free handstand for over a minute.

Conclusion - Constant dripping wears the stone

If you're really serious about learning the technique cleanly, then you also need to work on your technique every day. And when we say every day, we mean every day. However, a good 5 to 10 minutes of practice is enough for you to reach your goal with confidence.