If it wasn’t hard enough to walk on hands down stairs, you should try to walk up, it might be tougher, though i cannot guarantee it. But I do guarantee that you’ll either love it, or feel amazed over yourself. That last one applies to others watching especially.

Walk Up Stairs (On Hands)

A 5 step on hands tutorial

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

• Core Control:
  This is the muscle control you use on your three major core areas of your body. Upper back, middle core and hip core.
  

Preparations: The strength needed

You should know by now, that everything thing on hands that involves lifting your self up a height is though, not even to mention multiple ones. In order to do this you need a certain strength in arms, shoulders and upper back. You also need some experience on the one armed part, since your arms have to support your whole weight after another.

Step 1: Steady yourself

Upon starting your walk up the stair you need to do some mental preparations. It’s not always easy to stand head on to a stair, and all your watching is those first two steps. It may be easier to start in the middle of the stair, or perhaps on the last one. Just get used to handstanding in a stair. Many people tend to think that it’s dangerous, that you can crash head on and hurt yourself and I say that’s bullish. Never have seen or heard somebody crash into a stair with head first, nor have I done it myself. I shall claim that people don’t fall while on hands in stairs, but let’s be reasonable; it’s the same percent chance of damages/injures there as it is in any other handstand technique.

If you are afraid to fall while practicing this, I recommend that you start on the top, and work your way down. When you manage one step, move one another one down and repeat. Do this until your fear is gone.

If you wonder if you will fall I can tell you that the answer is yes. You will fall. However most times you land on your feet, other times on just one of them, and even less on your side or back. So work on that mental wall that’s prohibiting you

Step 2: The Essence of Balance

When you’re going to place your first hand firm on the step, you need to shift your point of balance in your body, this is done by shifting the balance point. That’s not always easy, especially if you don’t know what to look for. So here’s some tips.

• Don’t exaggerate the tilting
• Let your upper back do the work,your legs are merely balance sticks
• It may help keeping your knees bent.

That’s the universal rules that includes in all types of techniques when walking on hands up stairs. Surprised to hear that there is different ways to walk up a stair on hands?

When walking normally in stairs you tend to just bend your knees and lift yourself up to the next stair. Since your arm joints are build differently you simply cannot do this on your hands. So there is different techniques involved in walking up stairs. I’ll explain the two most common ones used.

Leg tilting:
This is where your use your legs as a big part in the balance point shifting, by tilting your leg(s) to the opposite side of the hand your going to move you are able to lean yourself up to the next step, not only does the leg act as a momentum provider, it also keeps your balance. By using each leg independent you can create momentum and keep balance at the same time. Quite useful. 

Torso Twist:
The difference between leg tilting and torso twisting is where you create momentum to move your arm to the next step. With this technique you rarely tilt your legs, the reason is that all tilt motion happens in the upper back core area, and only there.  Instead of tilting your opposite leg you use your arm and shoulder to create a  movement. This is done by twisting your torso in the same direction as your arm (looks like a penguin waddling) when you at the same time bend and lift your elbow and place your hand at the next step.  

This technique requires much more strength and core control than the previous, but  is also more stable, and its required when walking double steps which I’ll explain later on.

Note that this are the two most common ones, if you found a way that works for you, that’s great. Don’t let anybody tell you that it ain’t working.

Step 3: Choose your arm

Now its time to move your arm, but which one? I recommend that you use your strongest arm to move onto the next step. The reason behind this is the fact that your recently placed arm need to support the weight of your whole body in a bent position which requires strength, much strength. Usually the side with your strongest arm also is the side with your strongest shoulder.

When you have the feeling of control with your preferred arm, I recommend start trying with the other one, you never know when you get use for it. It’s not useless to know how to do the technique both ways is it?

Step 4: Single vs Double

Just as walking down stairs with double steps – After a second thought, maybe normal steps, depends how you look at it – you can walk up stairs with doubles, although this requires more strength and more control. I haven’t seen or heard of anyone who starts with the doubles right away, so I guess that the single is the most common one used. I’ll explain the both anyways.

Single Step
First timers always tend to use the single step technique. You move one arm to the next step, and bring the other arm to the same step, then repeat with the same arm that you used last, or the other. Anyways, you are only moving one step at the time. If you were doing this on your feet, you would be limping your way up one step at a time.

Double Step
This is much what the name suggest, you move your arms like you would do when you normally walk up stairs. It’s quite hard to do this technique without using torso rotation, It’s still possible, but it’s much harder. The trick here is to move your hand double as high as you would and place it in front of you on the next step, in stead of leveling out as you would’ve done at the single step technique. Because of this you need to be able to hold and balance your weight on one arm for a longer period of time, and you also need a greater shoulder and triceps strength because of the height your staring in. When that’s said I should also mention that this technique gain you much more speed up the stairs and, when done correctly, can be less energy consuming.

Step 5: Don’t fall until you have to

Easier said than done isn’t it? A useful tip nevertheless is to fight the falls in every way you can. This means that I doesn’t count as a fall before your feet touches the ground, so basically everything is aloud. The reason why I’m advising you to do this is simple, the more time you use on hands, and in stairs, the more endurance and the better technique you will get eventually. So fight the falls, and always remember that you haven’t failed before your legs hit the ground!

Remember that this is perfectly good excuse to train planche to pressup, every time you fall, try to tuck yourself in a planche, and press yourself up again. And if you get tired of just trying to walk up, combine it with walking down stairs first, turn 180 degrees and walk up again. That simple.

Happy Handstand
Tor