Welcome to the tutorial which might just teach you how to do your long desired Handstand. This is a throughout tutorial and I’m presuming you haven’t tried Handstands at all. With that said, more experience handstanders might find it useful making their basic handstand better. Anyways.

The Handstand Tutorial

A 5 step beginner guide.

First of I’ll start with some terms I’ll use throughout this guide. They are also explained on their first appearance.

• Transition:
  This is the term on the technique between your normal stand and into a handstand
• Handstand Hold:
  The term of standing still in a handstand. I sometimes also refer to this as the Basic.
• Core:
  When I talk about core, i mean the core muscles. These are your abdomen and lower back in this article.

Preparations: The Transition

The first thing you should get used to is the pass-trough from feet to hands. In other words, you need to lay your weight on your shoulders joints instead of the hip.

Start with your hands on the floor in most natural way you can lay a pair of hands on the floor, your way. Then slowly lean forward until you feel a bit of awkwardness around your shoulders and arms. This is the weight of your body moved onto your shoulders.

With your hands planted on the ground start with small jumps slightly forward. This is the awkward and most noisy part – in the meaning that you’ll be slamming your feet onto the ground for the next few days.

This is good tip. You should keep the kicking leg straight and try to move it in a straight line above your head. Bring the other leg up when you begin to feel that you have a certain amount of balance.

Your aim with this is to progressively learn to shift your weight down to your shoulder joints. The small jumps will soon be longer and longer, and as time goes, you will find yourself in a more comfortable way of leaping into a handstand – what you are learning is your own technique of going from feet to hands. Also called transition.

Step 1: Handstand Basics

Now is the time for the scary part, the handstand basic. Your transition has become more smoother and you find yourself launching your feet higher and higher. Soon it will be time for you to try and add your whole weight on your shoulders and arms, so called handstand. Note that the transition will determinate if you fall forward or backwards, you need to polish this technique until you can launch yourself steady up. It’sallabout finding your balancepoint.You will encounter some problems finding it, I’ll list the most common ones, and tips how to fix them.

• Elbows.
  Try to keep these ones straight. The most common problem for new beginners is bending these in order to get or regain balance. Keeping them straight will require less strength and more technique, which is the goal, something handstanders should train often. I was told by a wise guy that this is called pressing your shoulders out of their place . So press ‘em!

• Shoulders
  You can’t bend your shoulders, however, you can flex them (others may call it opening your shoulders). Adding a flex to your shoulders makes the handstand more straight as the weight of your body is in a linear path straight down. This however is pretty hard for untrained individuals. On the other hand you should note it, and think about it while doing handstands. Otherwise I can assure you that keeping flexed shoulders with bent elbows is hard to do, so by keeping your elbows straight you help out and ease the pressure on your shoulders. Which is another important part in a handstand.Now, about flexing those shoulders, This is an very important point to stress. It is the core in a good handstand, and is often causing problems all over your handstand if you don’t do it right. Most people won’t be able to stand in a handstand for long if this technique isn’t acquired.The problems are commonly this;  easier to bend your elbows, your lower back will begin to arch and your upper back will not be straight. The feet will come hanging over and you will in most cases look like a banana. A good colleague of mine discussed this important topic with me, shedding some light on how to train so you can be able to do this technique. First of stretch your arms upwards; when their up and you don’t think you can get them any further, push with your shoulders. Stretch them as far as you can and hold that position. That is how your supposed to be in a handstand hold. Now we have to fix that upper back of yours. You need to close your chest. Tuck your ribs in against each other, still while pushing your shoulders as far up as you can. This will create a flat back, and a nice hold. Go on; try.

• Arching back
  An arching back and bent elbows is the two most encountered problems, even for the more experience handstanders. Uncontrolled arched back isn’t something we want and in this tutorial I will only focus on keeping a natural arched back. Still, notice that in some techniques you need to have an arched back – saying that these techniques requires good control of the lower back and abdomen muscles. To prevent your back to arch you need to control the lower abdomen muscles, however the real problem lies in your shoulder blade core, and in most cases you will stop arching your back whenever you can handle the shoulder flexing.

• Feet position
  For novice people I recommend trying to get as straight feet as possible. There are many reasons for this, mainly because these will ease the pressure on your shoulders and lower back, but also because you’ll train your technique more frequently and it requires less strength in arms and upper back. But this requires more strength in the abdominal region and when knowing that the control in handstands lies in this region we want to train here as much as possible. The strength in arms and upper/lower back will come naturally as you develop your abdominal strength. Furthermore we call this your core strength. But I’ll explain more of it later in this tutorial. Just keep your feet as straight as possible for now and you’ll do just fine – there’s been reports about pointing the toes upward, stretch them as far as you can. Note that straight feet is closely related to your lower back.

• Buttocks:
  Imagine that your trying to stretch yourself up trough the sky. Squeeze those buttocks. I’m not joking; in a matter of fact, by using the buttocks we eliminate a part of the arching back and it’s easier to control your feet.

• Abdominal:
  This is a underestimated factor for novice. I suggest you get used to it as fast as possible, use your abdomen muscles. Tighten that six-pack of yours as if there was a photo shoot going on. I can’t say this too many times, but your balance lies in the core, and by the core; I mean your abdomen muscles and lower back.  So it’s crucial for getting a good handstand hold to use your core effectively.

• Falling?
  You will fall a lot. However, you will rarely be in the danger of seriously hurting yourself. Mostly you will fall back on your feet, sometimes on your sides and now and then on your back. Based on this you might want to have a open environment to train in. Often people ask me “soft underground or hard?”. If your afraid of falling, do soft ground – grass, mats etc. But i recommend a more harder ground. It’s easier to hold your balance here as your hands will have equal pressure at all times, and not shifting pressure as you often get on grass and softer areas.

• Head Positioning:
  Commonly asked question is how to position your head. There is no question that the head position affects your upper and lower back - even though it’s quite hard - for novice people – holding your head straight down with your eyes pointing “behind” you. P.A. teachers say you should have it this way, and for gymnastics I agree. However this isn’t gymnastics and it will make it much harder for you to find your balance point. I suggest you tilt it a bit “up” and see straight down into the ground rather than focus your eyes backwards.

Note: The way your palms point are completely individually. Whatever feels good for you, is the right way.

Step 2: Straighten up

If your feeling comfortable with your transition, then proceed further. The main point with this step is for you to learn how to stay in your handstand. I call this the handstand hold and you will be spending much time training this technique – in a matter of fact you will train this over and over again regardless of your skills. That’s why I sometimes will refer to the handstand hold as the basics. Your transition and your hold are the two things you can’t train enough.

To hold your handstand you need to find your balance point, there is several ways to increase your feeling of where this is, but in the end the one thing that works best is to be in a handstand – obviously. Furthermore you should know that to hold your handstand your muscles needs to work together. From your palms and all the way up to your lower abdominal. And with that said, you should know that your balance mainly lies at your abdominal and lower back – therefor increasing strengths in these parts will effect your handstand hold a lot.

Your goal now is to get the best hold, using less strength, to be as straight as possible. Feet straight, your lower and upper back straight. Elbows not bend and if you can, flexed shoulders. From this point and on it’s your flexor/extensor muscles – located in your forearm -  and your abdominal/lower back who will determinate your balance. Think of it like being a plank whom tries to stretch out as far as possible. If failing often, check the points at step 1.

Piece of advise: Walking is cheating. The aim is to stand still. So stand still, don’t cheat.

Step 3: One More Time

At this point you have been working on your transition and handstand hold. Repetition and repetition is the key here. Start from from scratch, do a transition and try to find your balance, now here’s a tip: Whenever you feel like failing your balance, try to tip backward and land on your hands. There is two reasons for doing this.

1. You can attempt a new try in a matter of seconds, fine tuning that transition of yours. So every time you land on your feet, hurry up in a new handstand, keep your balance until you fail backwards and try again as fast as you can.
2. You learn to control your “failing” balance which over time will make you feel safer attempting handstands.

After awhile you will find yourself controlling your falls more often, this is a sign that your transition and your balance is coming good a long way. At this point most people start moving their hands to regain balance. Avoid this, you want to control your handstand, not almost control it.

Step 4: Changing Layers

If you are getting the hang of it now, feeling that your eased on the transitions, feeling that you can hold your handstand for a fair amount of time on a average, then my next advice is this; practice on another surface.

• Grass
• Gymnastic Mats
• Wooden Floor
• Gravel
• Concrete
• Small Rocks
• Wet surface
• Hot surface (no I’m not joking)
  

You should get used to the soft ones especially will gain you more experience that will benefit you in the long run. A great deal of handstanding is about doing it wherever, whenever. Training on different surfaces will add an extra challenge to your balance, giving you more experience and a more variate progression.

If you feel really comfortable you should try to be on hands on elevated objects.

• Big flat areas with small elevated objects
• Big flat stones, rugged surface.
• The edge of walk-paths? (Avoid these near roads)

In a matter of fact I urge you to train on elevated objects. You will soon discover that you’ll have to change your transition technique from what height your training on and this will also have a positive effect on your handstand hold as a nice bonus.

Step 5: Activate em’

Your transition should be settling now, but the hard part starts here. At this stage some people will start moving their hands as an action caused by their balance failing. Don’t walk, put your focus on standing still. Remember the arm flexor/extensor that I talked about? Now is the time start thinking about how you can use them, or should I say; how you can activate and control them. Believe it or not some of those muscles are used to control your fingers, so that’s where your are going to start.

When you are in a handstand, and feel like loosing balance forward. Press your fingers down, feel the contact with the ground with your whole hand and all your fingers. This might sound stupid, but it’s a technique that works and helps you control your handstand hold, a lot. However if you loose your balance and fall backwards you need to activate your wrists and your abdominal/lower back to prevent from failing.

Tor’s Note:
That’s a 5 step guide to adding handstands to your world, and as a last useful tip I’ll give you this: Have fun, feel comfortable, get used to the world upside down. This can not be accomplished by words or terms, all you have to do is be on your hands. The more time your on them, thus more comfortable you’ll feel. That I do promise you. I’ll see you On-Hands.

Last Tips:
To test to see if you are strong enough to hold your body straight, lie on the floor on your back, with your arms down by your side. Tighten your body, keeping it straight along the floor. Then, have someone lift only your feet about 3 feet into the air. If you are still tight, your legs, hips, and torso all should still be as straight as they were when you were still flat on the ground.

Happy Handstand

-Tor