The Journey to a free standing handstand hold

The handstand is one of the most fundamental movements in artistic gymnastics and almost every CrossFit athlete dreams about mastering it. It requires strength, mobility, and an enormous amount of coordination. There are so many reasons people want to learn this skill: it can be performed anywhere, it’s a mandatory skill for so many other high skill movements, and of course it looks cool.

I’m sure most of you have found tutorial videos, workouts, and quick guidelines about how to get your handstand in 30 days, or in a week, or even in 30 minutes. We do not promise anything like that. But if you are willing to read on, then I will explain what the real learning process looks like for a CrossFit athlete or anybody who didn’t do gymnastics at a young age.

This article is based on the experience from my own journey to a handstand, the knowledge I gained in the last seven years as a coach and the basic principles we teach at the TGC seminars.

So how long does it take to learn a freestanding handstand? Of course, it depends on so many things, but as a coach I know that athletes want to get an exact answer. I always want to be honest, correct, and a bit cruel so I tell them they can learn it in a couple of years. It sounds bad, but still better than the answer I got from my gymnastics coach when I asked him: “When will I achieve a perfect, gymnastics handstand” he simply said “Never.”. To be fair he still denies that this conversation has ever happened, and I want to believe that I proved him wrong.

But here’s some more scientific data for you to get an idea about how difficult it really is to master a new skill like that. Paul Fitts and Michael Posner (1967) presented a model that describes the three stages of learning every motor skill. The first stage is called cognitive, because most of the movement is controlled consciously, the movement is slow and inefficient. You reach the associative stage when the movement gets more fluid and efficient, at this point some of the movements are performed automatically.

The third stage is what you have to reach for a proper, stable handstand: at this stage your movements will be accurate, consistent and efficient, it will require less cognitive activity and less muscle work. Then imagine how long it takes babies to stand up on their feet, and we know that the same achievement on our hands is way more difficult: the area of support is smaller and due to the extended arms, the distance between the base and the centre of gravity is bigger (Slobounov & Newell, 1996). Nashner and McCollum (1985) also stated that handstand position requires a specific postural coordination, because there are four joints involved (wrists, elbows, shoulders, and hips) while you need to coordinate only your ankles, knees, and hips for standing in an upright position. Besides, for balancing you need to train not only your muscles but your vestibular apparatus, visual system, and proprioception. Sure, all these three systems are limited in a handstand, but studies have proved that fortunately they can be improved by physical exercise and practice.

So, at this point of the article, we made it clear that it will be a difficult task. Now let’s start talking about the basic areas you need to train.

Strength: If you attended one of our seminars then you already know that there’s no such thing as being too strong. Although it is not the tough part in the learning process, you will need a basic level of upper body strength to make the process easier. For the efficient control and to minimize movement in the upper body, you need to generate the biggest torques about the point of contact, at your wrists (Kerwin & Trewartha, 2001).

The next joint you will be using the most during the handstand will be your shoulders (Gauthier et al., 2007), so it is important to prepare your muscles around these joints for the task. Besides, multiple studies have shown that strength training has a positive effect on balance, and balance training can also improve strength. Blackburn et al. (2000) also adds that an activated muscle with its strength helps neuromuscular control, therefore we emphasise active tissue during the seminars. The best way to sum up the role of strength training is to repeat one of the most important lecture notes from TGC: strength is imperative for proper form, and proper form is imperative for body awareness and control.

Zsolt Soti, MSc, CF - L3
The Gymnastics Course Lead Educator, L1 & L2
Birdbox Coaching Development Lead Educator
Owner - CrossFit BBros - Budapest
@zsolt_soti