Name: Do THIS to learn to handstand FAST
Uploaded: 2025-03-08T20:48:24.000Z
Duration: 5 min 15 s
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Adverbs of manner

If your handstand currently looks like this, or this, and you want it to look a little more like this, then there are actually just three things that you need.

So in this video, I'll explain what those three things are and give you some quick daily drills, which will get you that handstand fast.

So the first thing that you need is maybe quite an obvious one, strength.

It's a simple fact that the stronger you are, the easier it is to hold a handstand.

In a handstand, you are actively pushing the floor away from you, and the two main muscles that do that for us are the serratus anterior and the deltoids.

Your first daily task is scapular shrugs for your serratus anterior strength.

So come onto all fours with shoulders over wrists, push the floor away from you and broaden your shoulder blades as wide as you can.

Then without bending the elbows at all, allow the chest to dip down towards the mat and the shoulder blades to move towards each other.

As you get stronger, you can make this harder by moving the knees further back into let's say a supported plank, eventually even scaling them up into a full plank, and then maybe even going super ninja style and trying them in a chest to wall handstand position where you'd alternate between driving the floor away from you, widening the shoulder blades and bringing your shoulders right up by your ears, and then softening away.

Your second daily strength task is pike pushups for strengthening your deltoids.

In a short down dog position, place a yoga block way out in front of your hands, not between them.

Keep your hips high as you bend the elbows and try to tap the block with your forehead before pressing your way back up.

Bring the block taller if you need to or lower it to make it harder.

Think of your elbows bending back slightly diagonally as if going towards four and eight o'clock on a clock face.

You could also scale this drill by elevating your feet onto a higher surface, but be warned, these are really hard.

Take 10 repetitions or just do as many as you can if 10 isn't quite achievable yet, and work it up over time.

So moving on, the second thing that you need to be able to handstand is flexibility, mainly in the shoulders and in your hamstrings.

If we don't have good shoulder flexibility, we'll struggle to stack our body into a line in a handstand, which will make finding balance much, much harder.

Take yourself a few arm circles to begin with and then do this amazing shoulder stretch.

From tabletop, take your arm across to the opposite side of the mat with the thumb to the sky.

Press the side of the hand into the mat the whole time and then alternate between cat and cow movements with your body, feeling the side body stretch the entire time.

Do these movements for around 30 seconds on each arm.

If you don't have much hamstring flexibility, you start at a big disadvantage in learning to handstand as you can't get your hips very high in your starting position, which means they've got further to travel to get to that sweet spot where you would find balance.

So take yourself through a few walking kicks to start.

Keep the leg as straight as possible as you move and then take this simple half split stretch.

Don't worry about how close your head is to your leg.

Just concentrate on feeling the stretch in the hamstring.

Hold the stretch for about 30 seconds on each leg.

And then the third and final thing that you need to handstand is balance, which is easier said than done for sure, but balance doesn't just happen by coincidence or by magic.

So here are your quick daily drills to help you learn balance.

With your hands on the ground and your feet elevated either onto a surface or the wall, take one leg up into the sky.

Think of your scapular shrugs as before and push the floor away from you the whole time.

Reach up tall for your top toes and then feel your body weight shift more towards your fingers.

Keep pushing the floor away and see if the grounded foot can start to feel a little lighter and maybe even float it off of the surface.

Have space around you to allow you to cartwheel out if you lose your balance.

Return the foot to the surface and repeat 10-ish times.

Rest in between if you need to let your shoulders recover and don't forget to try both legs.

And then finally, you're going to practise your balance with some kicking up.

From a short or small down dog position, find those broad shoulder blades and start pushing the floor away from you already, shoulders up over the wrists.

Lift one leg up, keep it straight and strong and now bring your attention fully to your grounded leg.

Instead of thinking of the top leg pulling you up into the sky, you're going to focus on this bottom leg hopping your hips up and on top of your shoulders.

Did you not give it enough energy and the hips not get high enough?

Or did you give it too much energy and you had to cartwheel out?

Learn from your previous hop and try to adjust your power accordingly.

So take three to five hops before taking a moment to rest and then repeat again.

Don't forget to try both legs to find which one works best for you because just like in our hands, we're usually dominant on one side.

Overall, the most important factor for learning to handstand is consistency.

But if you feel that your flexibility is slow and holding you back, then go check out this video for a flexibility hack with instant results.