Welcome to the tutorial which might just teach you how to do your long desired Handstand Pushup. This is a full tutorial and I’m presuming you haven’t tried Handstand Push-ups at all. Good Luck

Handstand Push-up

A 5 step beginner tutorial.

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 handstand hold

A crucial part of the handstand pushup is the basic handstand hold. Therefore you should be able to be in a handstand hold a good 30 seconds before attempting this. If you’re still unsure be sure to visit the handstand hold tutorial here.

And of course you need the strength to push yourself up when in a handstand hold. You can test it like this: Perform a handstand hold close to a wall. Place feet at wall and lower yourself until your head almost reaches the floor before you push yourself back up. If you can do it, then go ahead!

I should also mention that you should be able to do a handstand with your head between your arms facing “backwards” (or looking down as it’s common called). 

Step 1: The handstand Pushup – Basics

The first thing you probably will notice is how the balance changes when you start to lower yourself. By all means don’t lift your head at any point, or any stages of the handstand pushup. Keep your head straight down. The main reason for this is the problem of arching your upper and lower back whenever you bend your neck too much. Believe me when I say that lowering down is the easy part, as you soon will experience pushing yourself upwards is the hard part but we will get to that. Anyways, here’s a check list to you before we do a breakdown of the movement. Keep feet straight as straight as possible at

Can’t lower my self down:
1. Check your handstand hold if you can’t balance
2. Mental wall prohibiting you

Can’t push back up:
1. You’re simply not strong enough
2. To wide or to narrow hand positioning
3. Lack of core control

In either cases you may have to go back to the basics, either doing more handstands, gaining strength or simply try to get past that mental wall that’s stopping you. A

Pike Press
If you aren’t strong enough to do a handstand push-up , the pike press is a great trick on the way.. Pike presses allow you to train the bio mechanical pattern without having to bear your entire body weight and it’s highly customizable with a variety of strength levels.

The way to do the pike press is simple. Rest your legs on a bench and your hands on the ground with a shoulder width apart. Lower your head down between your elbows and push back up. If that’s too heavy, try a bit broader stand, if it’s to easy, you should narrow it. 

There to easy ways of making it harder or easier to progress within the pike press, and which will gain you further access to the HSPU.

Hand placement:
This is the first thing I would start with. Normally you are strongest with a wide hand placement (not too wide though) and as it get more and more narrow, it get’s harder and harder. This is because with a wide hand placement your using a part of your upper back and shoulder combination that’s strong, and able to do this kind of work. But if you narrow it more you put more pressure on the shoulders, requiring more strength of them and as you might know, they aren’t half as strong as your back is. 

Feet Placement:
Actually it’s not about the feet, but about your hips. You see, the closer your hips are to the ground, the easier it will be to both have balance, and the use of strength with your shoulders. Placing the feet higher up will therefor make it heavier to do the pike press. To take it more in depth it’s more correct to say that the angle of the hip decides how hard it will be. 180 degrees (a straight up in the air) 

In other words, with feet on ground and wide hand placement is the easiest way to do a pike press. Then you can move on placing your hands closer together OR putting your feet higher, like a bench or a wall.  

Step 2: Breakdown

There are three phases of the handstand pushup: The lowerdown, bottom point, and pressup. But first, let’s talk about that foot positioning and the balance point.

In a handstand pushup,your feet plays an important role to maintain and find your balance point. There are mainly three variants to position you feet so I will explain the pros and cons with all three.

Spread Legs:
having your feet spread will lower your center of gravity apparently making it easier to control your handstand. However with spread legs people tend do arch their lower back a bit too much, resulting in loosing balance when pressing up.

Straight Legs:
Straight legs concentrates your center of gravity -however it’s placed higher – making it easier to lower yourself down, and when pushing yourself up. The bad side is the balance, you need a really good balance as your center of gravity is at a much higher point.

Bent Legs:
Bent legs doesn’t really have any positives sides with it, only negatives when you’re supposed to do a Freestanding Handstand Pushup.

As I mentioned above there is a close connection between your feet positioning and your balance point. However the balance point is much more than just feet positioning..

The best tip, to find your balance point, I got for you is to try and lower yourself straight down. Don’t lean forward or backward, and try not to arch your back too much. Keep your head straight down and lower yourself with your arms and back, you will notice that triceps is under high pressure, as be your shoulders and upper back too. All your handstand hold training serves you good here. In fact, the better you are controlling your handstand hold, the easier it is to keep balance when lowering yourself down. The main difference is how the balance point slightly changes when lowering yourself down. I’ll mention some things to consider when lowering yourself down

Hands:
Keep palms whichever direction that feel natural for you. Use the same technique as you use in the handstand hold when it comes to pressing with your fingers. Your finger, and to some degree your wrists, will help you maintain your balance for a longer period of time. Your fingers will especially help you balance so you don’t fall on your back.

Arms:
Your elbows should be bend – obviously – and pointing backward as much as you can. Try not to spread them too much, the reason is control and strength.The more narrow you’ll have your arms the more pressure you’ll put on the middle part of your upper back (trapezius).

Head:
In a full handstand pushup your head nearly touches the ground. But there is a long and hard way to get there, so take it slow, do one step at time and get used to the lowerdown.

Note that lowering yourself down is a darn good method to find the balance point, and you get strength training with it. Try to lower yourself as slow as you can. There is many good reasons why you should do this, two of them are mentioned above. The third and maybe most important thing is your technique, the corporation between balance and strength is perfected over and over again when doing a lowerdown.

Step 4: The push up

I cannot stress this enough, but don’t look forward. Keep your head straight down, although you may seek your eyes a bit forward but that’s nothing to worry about as longs as you don’t tilt your head.

The worst part here is the strength needed in arms and upper back. The fact is this; your core and strength is closely related,if your core fails your strength fails, and vice versa. So if you are failing a lot go back to step three and keep doing negatives. If you manage to keep balance there this shouldn’t be a problem working on. 

I recommend you to experiment on how far down you can go before you can’t push yourself back up. When you find the lowest point that the strengths alouds you, do repetitions there for awhile, then try lower either next training, or whenever you feel stronger. The key here is to keep challenging yourself lower and lower, until your satisfied with your HSPU. And remember to keep your elbows pointing back, try to fight the urge of pointing them sideways in any way you can. 

Step 5: Training for it

There are many roads to Rome – or something like that. The same applies here, but I’ll try my best to provide you a set of guidelines who are of the better sort.

- First of get hang of the Handstand Hold
– Alter your strength training to involve more upper back,shoulders, arms and core.
- Use Pike presses and overhead presses to increase your functional strength.  
– Practice lowerdowns, as slow as you can.
– Start pushing yourself up when you feel strong enough
- Keep a lookout on you arms, they should point backwards
– Go as deep as you can without failing
– Press yourself up from the deep positioning

Note that if you are above normal upper body strength your chance of success lays on the handstand hold (balance), and your technique(balance).

Happy Handstand
-Tor