To open this article I should say that not everyone who comes to us for training wants to learn a handstand and that's fine if you don't want to go there but for those that do (if even for the simple reason of remembering what fun they were when you were a six year old) we do programme them and teach them safely in the gym. 

In this article I am summarising some of the key learnings from a Handstand workshop we ran recently with Emmet Louis as teacher.

1. We started with the most important concept to grasp with the handstand which is to get the structure to take the weight so there is no need to overly focus on getting super tight. This might be needed in the beginning to get you into the right position for you e.g. pelvic tilt, but in time you should get to the point where the handstand is the starting position to do cool stuff from.
2. We then worked on the difference between the hollow position and the dish position. The important distinction is to put your body in a shape that starts from dish position to upside down, put you into a handstand and it looks like a good line. The problem with the hollow hold (generally hands and feet are far higher) is that it doesn’t reflect the same shape that will happen in a handstand.

3. We then worked on some wrist mobility and he recommended that we don’t over work these and the most neglected area for 99% of wrist work is the good ol’ wrist curl and reverse wrist curls which you can do with a barbell or dumbbell.

4. We did some standard kick up handstand holds against the wall and he was big on stressing the importance of not trying to rush the wall work before going to freestanding. We got things rolling with holding a handstand against the wall and hit some heel pulls where we focused on grabbing or gripping the floor with the fingers so the toes naturally come off the wall and allowed us to feel the control of the handstand through the hands.

5. A further drill which is really helpful forsomeone with tight shoulders – kick up into handstand against the wall and try to put your chin on your chest, this really helps get into a better shoulder position and feel more stacked.

A final drill which is excellent drill to help strengthen the rhomboids in the shoulders where you start in a wall facing handstand (little further away from the wall than you would typically be) and keeping the feet together you pull knees to chest and then press back up again, I found this far harder than it looked and highlighted how weak my rhomboids really are. Try it and you will see how helpful this can be.

The Handstand is a great achievement and if you would like to work towards one as part of your training then feel free to contact me for further information on our training options.