Handstand Academy - Start Here

The press handstand is one of the most sought-after advanced skills.

Many don’t care about flagging or one-arming, but most dream from day 1 of this floating, gravity-defying ability that allows you feet to hover off the floor seemingly effortlessly.

Like most things in handstands, it is poorly understood, poorly taught and poorly adapted to the individual.

This is the most thorough guide you’ll ever find on the subject.

What is a press?

Trust me: Defining what we are trying to achieve is essential to not lose yourself in the web of dogmatic advice out there.

A press isn’t “core” and “compression” and “centre of mass”.

A press is the ability to take off the floor with no momentum and align yourself into a handstand.

The main difference between a regular handstand and a press handstand is that you don’t have the kick-up to generate momentum and reach your desired position.

Allow me to insist a bit further, because it is the lack of understanding around this concept that leads people to pick the wrong drills and never get their press.

If your position on the floor was point A, your starting point on a journey, and the handstand was point B, your destination.

When you kick-up into a handstand, you simply hop onto your car, drive to your destination, push on the brakes to stop the car in the desired parking spot - et voila, you have arrived.

When you press into a handstand, your car was stolen from you. You’re gonna have to commute and hitchhike your way to destination to make-up for the lack of car (momentum).

To get safely there, you need to understand the different bouts of your journey - we’ll call them the stages of your press.

Not only the drills we find out there zoom on some bouts (stages) at the expense of others, but they fail to address the sequence in which they have to be performed and to help you assess which are your strong suits, and which need more work.

This leads to you repeating the same exercises over and over again (say, getting very good at the planching and abduction parts of the journey) without ever improving your restacking… and therefore plateauing.

A few important definitions

Compression

Planching

Simply put, compression in handstands is your ability to bring your legs closer to your chest, usually without allowing the shoulders to change position. To see how compressed your position is, we’ll look at the space between torso and knees.

Planching refers to a forward motion of your shoulders over your hands.

Compression is a product of flexibility and strength.

Importantly:

the more compressed you are in your press starting position, the closer you are to the final, destination position, the shorter and more efficient the journey, the less you will have to planche.

This is why people (usually, flexible people 👀) beat the drum of flexibility - for the more flexible you are here (in the relevant areas) and the easier the press becomes, strength-wise.

The less flexible, the more planche you will need

The more flexible, the less planche you will need

The limiting / facilitating factors of a press

You’re not a factory robot, but a unique individual.

This has always called for a tailored approach in your training in the way we teach handstands… and the press will be no different!

Looking at dozens and dozens of different individuals performing their press, we can percolate the pith of the press - a recipe that works for everyone.

This recipe (the stages of the press) will be somewhat influenced by 4 individual factors, which will greatly influence how you will learn your press, how it will look initially and the stages of the press that will need more work from you:

Segment lengths: because we have no momentum to press up, we start with our hands already on the floor, in a position that:

is a close as possible to the final destination, ie the closer the pelvis is to being aligned over the shoulders, the better, WHILE however

makes it possible for you to take-off without using any momentum

This is absolutely critical. A lot of the advice you’ll find only emphasises the first part, however a more compressed position (we’ll define that in a second), with the pelvis as high as possible in the air, and your feet as close as possible to your feet… isn’t always the one that will make the take-off possible!

I call the initial set-up, starting position: the triangle, drawing three lines from the hands to the pelvis to the feet back to the hands.

The shape of this triangle will obviously be affected if you have short legs and long arms, or long legs and short arms, or something in between.

Not much you can do about it, but it begs remind everyone that we can not look the same as our favorite handbalancer on instagram even if you work a lifetime to achieve the same skill level.

Flexibility:

Your hamstring flexibility dictates how close to your hands you can bring your feet. Which influences:

→ how high the pelvis is up from the get-go, therefore

→ how much planching will be needed,

→ how close or far from the end position you are

your wrist flexibility will also dictates how far forward you can lean.

Strength:

Your upper body strength will be a key component of your press. You will need to be strong enough to fight gravity and take your feet off the floor with no momentum, and to restack your shoulders at the end of the movement.

Simply put, the further from your shoulders your pelvis is, the more you’ll need to planche, using upper body strength to perform the press.

The level of strength required will depend on your flexibility (the less flexible your press, the more strength-based it will be), your segment lengths (dictating the start position, and in particular the initial pelvis position) and your ability level (the more efficient you are the less you’ll find yourself planching).

Ability level:

The more skilled you become at performing the journey with its different bouts from your starting position (the triangle) to the destination (usually a straddle at first), and the more efficient you will be.

This will change how long you stay in each stage, will allow you to skip some stages altogether (more on this later), to rely less on your planche even if you didn’t become anymore flexible.

Do not overthink this for now.

Simply acknowledge your flexibility, anatomy and strength levels and how these will help or hinder progress along the press journey (we’ll assume your ability level is low for now).

Most people come to me at the beginning of their press journey blaming their lack of strength or flexibility… instead of simply acknowledging that such are the cards they’re currently dealt with.

In the majority of cases, there is NO need to insist on flexibility training to get your press. We can work with what you have, grow your strength level to the level required by your starting position, get you your press and refine it into something prettier later.

Stretching till you have a belly on floor pancake is a waste of time if your goal is simply to press, and even if you want a perfect-looking press, it’d be an inefficient way to train.

The Different Stages

Back to our travelling analogy, the press will be comprised of different key stages (the bouts of our journey):

The take-off

The unravelling

The re-stacking

Because they will involve very different motor patterns and training priorities, we will distinguish them by the height between the feet and the floor:

The take-off: low, close to floor

The unravelling: mid-air

The re-stacking: high-up, close to final position

Understanding the press

What is a press?

A few important definitions

The limiting / facilitating factors of a press

The Different Stages

1) The Take-off