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, and when 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.

5 steps to get the handstand push-up

First of all, we are going to see a quick review of how you can get the handstand, before moving on to the push-ups.

The first thing you should do is make sure you know how to land by rotating your hip. To do this, practice by making small attempts at handstands and turning quickly, they don't have to be very powerful attempts, if you are scared you can make very gentle attempts until you gain confidence.

The key is that if you try a handstand and fall backwards, you know how to fall this way and avoid falling on your back at all costs, as it can be very dangerous.

If you have mini parallel bars, you can practice on them as well, alternating with the floor.

Here I make an aside for the topic of mini parallel bars. What I recommend is that, if you have them, you practice equally on both the floor and the parallel bars, because if you get used to only one of the two, it will be very difficult for you to change and you will feel frustrated, so save yourself that process and practice combining from the beginning.

Now let's move on to the second step, once we control the possible falls, what you should do is try a handstand. Personally, I recommend doing them without the wall, since you know how to fall and there is no danger in that sense, not having the support of the wall will force you to learn to control your balance without any help, and it will be a more direct and quick way to learn.

I recommend that you stay at this step until you are able to do long handstands for at least 10 seconds frequently. The frequency is important, because if you can do a handstand only 1 out of 5 or 6 times, it will be very tedious to practice push-ups. It should be more like getting 4 out of 5 attempts right.

Now that you know how to do a handstand, the third step would be to start trying push-ups, but with a very short range of motion. At first, it will be enough to be able to slightly bend your elbows and then extend them again. In this way, you will adapt your balance control to the requirements of the push-up.

Fourth, try to gradually increase the range of motion, controlling your balance and trying, over time, to go down a little more each time.

In this way, you will progressively reach the fifth and final step, which would be to do the full-range handstand push-up, until your forehead or nose touches the ground. At this point, you may notice that you lack strength, so pay attention to the next section, in which we will see what complementary exercises to do.

Strengthening exercises

In order to carry out this movement, it will be very useful to train the strength of your shoulders with a specific push routine for handstands. To do this, I recommend doing push-ups, pike push-ups, short range assisted handstand push-ups, and full assisted handstand push-ups.

Use these exercises adapted to your level and try to advance in repetitions and difficulty.

In our Calisteniapp application you have example routines that you can use and specific training programs for handstand.

Training programming

As for the weekly programming, I recommend doing the main part, the handstand or handstand push-up attempts depending on your level, about 4 or 5 times a week. Even if you have to train something else on a particular day, you can do 10 or 15 minutes of handstand attempts at the beginning, before your routine.

Regarding strengthening exercises, I recommend doing them two or three times a week.

I hope it helps you,

Yerai Alonso