A Handstand Journey.
The Beginning
I started working on handstands I believe in college, maybe 2015, and I must say... I wasn't too sure as to what I was doing. Workouts usually looked like a lot of attempts with the occasional moment of...
“okay…I think I held that for 2 seconds" (yes, those days were the best).
But other than those rare moments, progress was relatively slow and I never really saw much progress beyond those random times. I often found myself sore, inconsistently fatigued, and oh-so plateaued toward moving the handstand needle forward. At the time, I only practiced sporadically, didn't prioritize mobility, and didn’t emphasize the wall for the process of warming up.
Te-He
Instead, I would often just train the handstand whenever I felt the urge regardless of the work the happened to come before it. After a long time of taking this approach, I actually did manage to get a few holds in (maybe 5-10 seconds), but they were never really consistent and not very predictable. After some time, I realized I must be doing something wrong as I couldn't improve beyond my current capability. Ultimately, this led me to learn from other hand balancers which finally caused a change in how I felt and most importantly, permormed in the handstand.
Getting Better
After intense research (aka... YouTube), I had to accept that I was just doing too much. At the time, I was in the mindset of making every exercise feel hard as opposed to emphasizing progress and quality work per session. In hindsight, this was probably the biggest detriment to any handstand progress as a skill based movement should be practiced when you’re relatively fresh. Knowing this small bit of information, I began to make some changes in how my workouts were structured.
Firstly, I cut out all the randomness I thought was doing something and included training my handstands at the very beginning of my workouts. I blocked this off as a “skill” portion of the workout which just included 3 sets of handstands facing the wall. At first, I practiced these using my back facing the wall until I noticed that my body line wasn’t very straight. To fix this, I began doing my wall handstands strictly with my front side facing the wall which made things much harder (your hands and fingertips felt more involved).
This small change helped immensely as I got a much better idea of how a straight line (the alignment from your hands up through your toes) should feel while in a handstand. Frequency wise, I did this 3 days a week with one day break in between each session (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). I also would attempt some free handstands after my weight training on these days but realized it was a bit too much to handle for the days I worked out my upper body (I was too tired at this point). However, I did manage to get a few holds in after my lower body days which was something I kept consistent even to this day (more on that below).
Tweaking The Progress
So at this point, I understood a few things: 1. Warming up with the wall was very helpful. 2. Trying to do free handstands after an upper body sessions was not working. And 3. Practicing free handstands after a lower body workout also worked well.
I continued doing this until my free handstands started to stall. My measurement of progress was tracking how hard each hold was compared to my last session, and if I felt I was becoming more efficient (eg, kick up felt easier, was able to lock in a hold on the 2nd attempt compared to the 4th, etc.). I didn’t really time how long I would hold a handstand (a good proxy for handstand improvement) as I was more concerned with the movement feeling easier.
The next change I made was including more practice by adding in more sets during my warm ups. This included 2 attempts with my back facing the wall (in conjunction with the first 3 front facing sets), but at a distance away from the wall to practice actually holding the handstand (the wall is there to catch you as you’re still warming up).
The first 3 sets warmed me up pretty well, and by the 5th set, I would sometimes manage to lock in a hold without my foot even touching the wall. This felt like a game changer as I now found a way to effectively train my balance. I also stopped relying so much on the wall for the first 3 sets (front facing) and tried making a gap between my body and the wall itself. Again, this raised the difficulty and helped me get more comfortable pressing/adjusting the balance with my fingers.
I also ran with the idea to not go for maximum holds on either the wall, or when in a free handstand. As I soon experienced the benefit of managing fatigue throughout a workout, I figured this would also apply to handstands. Therefore, I just focused more on getting in a good position, and stopping the set before any burn/form breakdown occurred. So to summarize, I did a few things that I think made the best progress.
I increased the amount of wall sets I was doing.
I incorperated 2 free handstand in the warm up with my back to the wall.
I started doing this wall work in a 3 days on 1 day off fashion.
I tried not relying on the wall once I was on my hands.
In sum, my weekly routine started to look like this:
Monday: Wall Handstands + Upper-body
Tuesday: Wall Handstands + Lower-body + Free handstands
Wednesday: Off/Mobility Work + Free handstands
Thursday: Wall Handstands + Upper-body
Friday: Wall Handstands + Lower-body + Free handstands
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
This, so far, has stuck with me and has been working extremely well for both progress and not aggravating my hands/wrist. Since you need to factor in all the other exercises that involve gripping and pulling a weight (which is most upper body exercises) this has been a good balance of volume and intensity.
Considerations & Other Thoughts
I should also add that stretching and increasing my mobility, I feel, has helped a lot with my handstands. As there are a lot of joints involved in the movement, becoming stronger in deeper ranges of motion (in both the upper body and lower body) has seemed to carry over well to the movement overtime. Therefore, I started making it an effort to go as deep as possible (with maximum tension on the muscle) during any press, pull, lunge, squat, and hip-hinge.
How To Get Started Yourself
Now, getting started on your handstand journey, I think there are a few great ways to go about it. Because although there are many ways to skin a cat, I think there is a lot of value in starting slow while making gradual process when appropriate. Doing too much too soon can regress your progress while doing too little from the start may not lead to any. Either way, I think these points can help guide you in the right direction.
Prepare Your Joints
If you have never trained a handstand before, make it an effort to get your shoulders, elbows, and wrists ready to handle the weight of your body during the movement. By doing this, you‘ll be able to prevent any aches and pains that might arise from doing the movement on day one. They’re likely to pop-up, mind you, but completing a throughout warm up consistently can really help reduce the initial discomfort associated with the movement. To start, include warm ups like wrist rolls, perhaps squeezing a tennis or stress ball, and moving your torso around while in a pushup position (elbows locked out). This shouldn't take you too long to perform, but perform just enough to feel more warm and mobile. Other dynamic movements like leg swings, hip swivels, and Cossack squats (if you can perform) might also help.
Get Up Against The Wall
So before even attempting a free handstand, spend a few weeks/months just using the wall. As I mentioned earlier, the wall will help in many areas including: improving your alignment, allowing you to become more comfortable using your hands and fingers, and it will also allow you to spend more time in the handstand which is an important component for getting stronger. Not using the wall consistently can potentially make progress harder in the beginning as holding a handstand tends to be too difficult at this point.
Add In Free Handstands Slowly
So once the wall is starting to feel good, slowly add in a few free handstands with your back facing the wall at the top of the movement. As you're able to use your leg to catch yourself in this variation, you can now practice your kick up and adjust yourself to stand more freely. As you start to rely less on the wall, go ahead and move to an open space to now practice. It's going to feel awkward knowing the wall isn't there, but you've now established some form of memory for how the transition should feel onto your hands. When it comes to free-handstands in open space, keep in mind that you'll need to fight to maintain your balance. Meaning, that when you do kick up and transition the weight onto your hands, you're going to need to push and make adjustments in order to hold that position.
Slowly Add Volume
As you notice your handstands improve (either against the wall or freely), slowly add in more attempts or more sessions per week. For example, I've found overtime that 4 days per week of handstand practice has worked really well for me. However, I originally started with 3 days per week of only 3 sets against the wall. As I noticed the improvements weren't coming any more, I then increased the number of sets to 4 and then eventually 5 while also adding an extra 4th day of practice shortly after. If I would have tried the later volume in the beginning, I don't think I would've made the same progress (it would've been too much volume to handle). Therefore, start with the minimum effective dose and build up from here as you adapt.
Don't Stay Discouraged
With handstands, consistency is really important and those first few weeks can feel a bit rocky. However, although your training is going to feel rough at the start, it will likely improve the more consistent you become. You’re going to fall, not look straight initially, and hey, you‘re going to have days when your handstands feel worse. But if you continue to stay on track and adjust your volume accordingly, these moments become much less frequent. Always keep at it.
12 Week Sample Plan
Tieing everything together, here is a 12-week plan that might work well for someone looking to get started with handstands. Not included here is a thorough warm up, but completing one before your handstand work is advised (especially since this is your first movement prior to any weight training). In bold, you'll see a "planned exercise session" which, as the name implies, will be the workout you typically do on those days if applicable.
In the later weeks where free handstands are now included, feel free to try them after your lower body workouts and workouts that aren't heavy on pushing/pressing. I personally do free handstands after my lower body workouts as mentioned, but my intensity on these Lower-body days isn't very high. Therefore, you'll have to experiment and see what works for you. If you plan on doing free handstands in the beginning as shown, find a good warm up routine prior to make those sets more smooth. Focus on quality attempts, stay away from failure (or attempts where you're holding the handstand until exhaustion), and pay attention to your hands as you get accustomed to the movement.
