When it comes to learning how to do a handstand, there are different approaches, different styles and methodologies. But in my experience, some of them are long, tedious and frustrating, and others get results much faster and more consistently. In this article I would like to explain 10 tips that will speed up your learning process of this movement a lot and will prevent you from getting frustrated or feeling like you can't do it.

When a person starts their journey in Calisthenics training, one of their key goals is usually to master the handstand, among others. But our sport has the characteristic that you can always keep moving forward and learning new movements, andwhen you get the handstand you usually set the goal of going for the handstand push-ups. In this article we are going to review how to get the handstand in the first place, in case you still don't master it and then we are going to see how to get the handstand push-ups, as well as some other extra advice that will be very useful for this and other movements.

Apart from the obvious benefits of calisthenics as a sport, such as improved fitness, health, body composition and increased strength,there is also a psychological aspect that is not often talked about and that is very important. Performing physical activity has an immediate effect on ourmood, a short-term effect on ourbody perception and our self-esteem. But specifically in the case of calisthenics the benefits are even greater:

Calisthenics training is not usually used to maximize muscle mass gain, since it is usually considered that the optimal option in this case is bodybuilding. This is largely true, although it could be questioned and analyzed in more detail, but what is clear is thatCalisthenics training has unique characteristics that give it a series of obvious advantages: It requires less time

I have always been a supporter of the idea that there are no exercises that are inherently harmful, that it is something that depends on many factors, butthere are cases that are so clear and have caused so much damage that it is difficult to deny the evidence. You see, there is a concept in training to talk about whether an exercise is harmful or not that is summed up with the phrase “the dose is the poison.” For example, deadlifts are often classified as harmful exercises, but if a moderately trained person were to do deadlifts with very light weight and with correct technique, say for example with 40 kilos (80 lbs), it would be almost impossible for them to get injured. Because their body can perfectly handle the load and no structure is compromised.

Since calisthenics became popular as a sport and training method, one of the aspects that attracted the most attention was itshighly difficult static exercises: planche, front lever, back lever, human flag… To the point that many people wanted to train Calisthenics just to master these elements. Over the years, many people have wondered, and have asked me, if these static exercises also serve to gain muscle mass, since perhaps they would like to get the planche, the front and so on but they would not mind gaining muscle mass in the process, so let's see.

During my experience training calisthenics, training all types of people and helping many of you improve your results, there has always been something that has caught my attention and that I have tried to correct when we speak in person. Something that I think usually goes unnoticed but is very important. Something that has a greater effect than you may think and that could increase your results very significantly. I meanhow you talk to yourself. You see, for me it is a common experience to ask someone to do an exercise that I know they can do, or a number of repetitions that I am sure they can achieve and that the first thing he tells me, almost instantly, is“I can't”or something similar.

If you have ever researched which exercise is best for a certain muscle, which variant is most effective or which muscle is the main one involved in a trick or movement, it is likely that you have come across people who answer this question based on readings of electromyography,devices with electrodes that measure the electrical impulse received by a certain muscle. At first it may seem like a fairly accurate and logical method to resolve this type of issue and, many times,it is presented as the definitive test to know muscle activationbut… is it really such a reliable method? After seeing some quite dubious or controversial statements about some exercises using this method I decided to investigate the subject in depth and today I am going to show you what weak points electromyography has, what it can really be used for, what other methods we can use to know the muscles involved in an exercise and much more.

When we do strict pull-upsthere is a small sway, a minimum swingthat may barely be perceptible, but which is much more important than it might seem, because if we do not manage it well, it can become something that prevents us from progressing. However, if we know how to control it well, it can help us get more and better repetitions. Poor balance coordination in pull-ups is one of the most common mistakesand the one I have never seen the least talked about, being a mistake that lowers your performance, preventing you from performing all the repetitions you could, making the execution less clean. and, if you do it with weight, making your lift poorly executed and therefore being able to lift less weight.

After a few decades of scientific research regarding training and muscle mass gain, in which many efforts have been made and the focus has been placed on aspects that have later turned out to be not relevant, it seems that finallythe evidence is converging on two key aspects that are proving clearly relevant and effective.(References at the end of the article) What does this mean? That after much confusing research that did not seem to be entirely useful in practice,a mass of scientific studies are now being formed that show that there are two training patterns that give better results for muscle mass gain than the alternatives.What are these two guidelines? Let's see it:

The average testosterone levels of today's Western population are falling little by little, year after year, sothe average levels of young people between 20 and 40 years old today are lower than those of their grandparents in their 50s.I recently publishedan articletalking about this topic, in which I explain what is the main and determining reason for this drop and how to solve it to have optimal levels. And in passing I mentioned, obviously, the issue ofhaving a healthy diet that favors your hormonal levels.Well, people commented telling me to talk in more detail about the diet with respect to testosterone, and I thought it was very interesting to do an articleanalyzing some studies so that we can see what is the best diet to optimize your testosterone, according to science, which is the best way we have to know the truth. Also, I think the results will surprise you because they may not be what you expect.

Since my beginnings in the world of calisthenics, social media, YouTube and more, I have always been a faithful advocate of performing exercises at full range, which, by definition, involve locking the elbows. In general, I think that most people over the years have agreed with me, although many have really struggled to understand what it means to lock their elbows, as I explained in another article. But well, leaving that aside, I have always received support on this issue. BUT, it is also true that always, whenever I talk about elbow locking, there are some comments saying that it is harmful, RIP elbows, that it is dangerous for the joint, etc. and some others saying that this reduces muscle tension and that if you want to gain mass it is better not to lock.