5 handstand push-up mistakes everyone makes

Aug 25

Introduction To Handstand Push-up

In this tutorial we are going to talk about 5 of the most common mistakes that most people do when learning the handstand push-up (HSPU) - A handstand push-up (HSPU) tutorial of sorts.

For this particular handstand push-up (HSPU) tutorial we're going to focus on the most common mistakes I see people making when approaching this bodyweight strength skill. Make sure you don't do these and you'll be repping handstand push-ups (HSPU) in no time and enriching your journey towards bodyweight strength and calisthenics mastery!

This Handstand Push-Up tutorial is also available on my YouTube channel

A note about handstand push-up form

There is a lot of different opinions about the form of a handstand push-up, with lots of people claiming that there is only one way to do it right. For many people, this is what they call the strict handstand push-up, where your body is hollow and straight and your head goes far in front of your hands. While it is true that this is cleanest way of doing the handstand push-up, it's definitely not the easiest way of doing it. And as long as the HSPU is performed without risking injury, i will always promote learning to do it the easiest way first. This is much less frustrating as it will teach you to do the HSPU much quicker. When you can already perform the handstand push-up, it is much easier to work on improving the form and developing relevant strdength.

Form functions

I would would consider the strict handstand push-up a progression of the handstand push-up (HSPU). For me, the handstand push-up (HSPU) is a simple exercise (in terms of what qualifies as a HSPU) that consists of 3 steps:

standing on your hands
lowering your head to floor
and getting up again.
I guess there is a world of bodyweight strength, hand balancing and calisthenics gurus that would tell you otherwise, but everyone's entitled to their own opinions. In my opinion, form has four different functions.

The most important function is preventing injury.
The next function is to make the exercise look cooler or prettier or better it's basically aesthetics.
The third reason is efficiency, it makes a move more efficient or easier, which in many cases is important.
The fourth and final function is to make an exercise or move harder. Why would you want to do this? Well, for the strength training, of course! Once you are able to do them so that you can progress further in your training, then it's time to make them harder.

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Check out the handstand push-up program in my app which will take you from scratch all the way to the handstand push-up

Injury prevention and efficiency of the handstand push-up

Regarding injury prevention and efficiency, I recommend that the athlete place their elbows close to their body and lean slightly forward, as they lower the head down to the ground, so that they are in a stable triangle of support. So down to a headstand position, basically before you go up again. This will not only make it easier for them balance-wise, but will also make it much less likely that they will enter a non beneficial position, in terms of shoulder rotation.

So these are the main two from cues you should follow for handstand push-up in order to make it as simple as possible and in order to keep you from injuring yourself.

But, as long as you are strong in a position, and we talked about form also being a means to make an exercise harder, you can do a handstand push-up in many different ways and only creativity can put a limit to how to perform a cool looking HSPU. Just check out the following variation from my instagram account:

Se dette innlegget på Instagram

Et innlegg delt av Sondre J.K Berg (@sondre_berg)

The hollow back handstand push-up is not the easiest way to do a standard push-up, but despite being harder, it does look pretty cool. In this instance, you turn your elbows outwards and put your head right in the middle of your hands so it's the straight opposite now. It is still a variation of handstand push-up.

1: Not strong enough for the handstand push-up

The handstand push-up is a difficult exercise that requires a lot of strength and technique. To many, it would make sense that if you could do a freestanding handstand and a wall supported handstand push-up, you could merge them together into a freestanding handstand push-up.

This is however usually not the case. Due to the balancing and coordination required for the exercise, so you're usually going to need excess strength when you first learn the move as it will take time to develop an efficient technique for the handstand push-up.

Based on experience from myself as well as students I have coached through the HSPU, you will need about five or ten wall assisted handstand push-ups before you can expect a freestanding HSPU.

2. You can’t handstand

The next reason is quite obvious as well. If you can't handstand, how can you expect to do a handstand push-up? You could be lucky and kick up to an unstable handstand and immediately go down into a headstand and push yourself up before losing balance.

Holding the handstand position for a few seconds is not enough to be able to perform a handstand push-up. You need to have enough strength and control in order to think about all the technical aspects of the exercise while staying firmly on your feet.

3. Being a form geek!

The third mistake that we have already discussed is that you're obsessed with perfection. You're so hung up on whether or not your first handstand push-up will be a strict handstand push-up, that you end up wasting valuable time and motivation on this obsession. My dip: Don't worry about the strictness in the early phases.

Just worry about doing the handstand push-up first, and then you can make it better, make it cooler, make it harder, do whatever you want with it, but first just learn it, okay.

4. Only using facing the wall for handstand push-up training

The fourth common mistake I see is that people only do wall-assisted handstand push-ups facing the wall, because there are lots of people out there claiming this is the best way of approaching it.

iIt is true that this is a very good way of approaching the HDPU, and a very helpful exercise, but I think that the wall assisted handstand push up with your back against the wall, can be equally as good, perhaps even better for learning to actually balance the whole range of motion.

If you're doing a handstand push-up facing the wall, you always get help from the same direction. This can result in getting reliant on getting help from the wall in this direction. When you're pushing down, or pushing up, you typically end up falling down on your feet.

I recommend using both facing the wall and back against the wall variations of the handstand push-up. They work well together and they complement each other very nicely.

5. Not using technical handstand push-up progressions

The fifth mistake that I often see when people are training for the handstand push-up is that they don't train the technique and just use wall-assisted handstand push-ups to get stronger. But this will not magically merge into a handstand push-up.

While this could be true if you practice a lot, and give it a lot of attempts, in the long run, a much more efficient way of approaching it, is to actually introduce technical exercises.

In addition to being very heavy, the handstand push-up is a technical exercise that you will need to work your way to in a stepwise manner. There are a tons of different exercises in various progressions that can help teach you balance and technique. You can see some of them in this YouTube video, or get a huge collection of progressions and a workout to structure them in my APP. Examples are the crow press, bent arm press, crow to headless etc.

Introducing drills such as these will not only get you the HSPU faster, it will make your workouts much more fun as well :)

Sondre Berg - bent arm press — **Sondre Berg** - bent arm press

Before you go - Check out my APP - The Movement Trybe

I just want to mention that I have a handstand push-up workout (amongst many others) in my app, that will approach the handstand push-up from three different directions.

The technical aspect
Building up a strong facing-the-wall handstand push-up
Building up a strong back-against-the-wall handstand push-up

Check out my APP

So you can check my app out, if you want to check out for yourself how i would approach and program this awesome skill.

Thank you guys so much for visiting my blog and watching my video, I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial, leave a comment and like the video if you enjoyed it. Please remember to also subscribe to my YouTube Channel.