Press handstand

Hi everybody, this is the first time I'm posting here on the forum.

I have been reading on the forum for a while though. It has been truly helpful and informative

Well, I started up gymnastics training about 2 months ago, coming straight from doing heavy weighttraining / bodybuilding.

One of my gymnast friends challenged me to do a press handstand from the L-sit one day. At first I was thinking that there were simply no way I was ever going to be able to do it, but somehow, I managed! My friend even filmed me, hoping to post my failure online

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So now I would very much like for you guys to comment on my form, because I am not too knowledgeable about the gymnastic's world just yet :roll:

Kind Regards

Marcus

That was actually pretty good, just needed to open your shoulders to stick the handstand.

That was actually quite nice. Was that really the first time you've ever attempted a press handstand? If so that's extremely impressive imo.

The press from the l-sit till you get your feet above your hands is really good, the only advice i have for that part is that you keep working on your active pke flexibility and make sure your knees are really locked with toes pointes as hard as you can.

Once you start to open yout hips about half way through the press you run into a couple issues:

1. Like demus said your shoulders need to continue openng more. Ideally you want your shoulders to be in the same alignment they are in your handstand before you actually finish pressing. This is the reason why you lost your balance at the top of the press; you reached your straight handstand body position but because your shoulders were still leaned forward in front of your hands your center of gravity ended up being in front of your hands as well.

2.Your back begins to arch near the top of the press as you open your hips, at no point during a press should you let your back arch. It could be happening because your handstand alignment is slightly arched to begin with, or just an issue with the way you are weight shifting during the press. I cant tell without seeing you holding a handstand. Whatever the reason, it probably stems from a lack of shoulder flexibility.

Excellent attempt. Work on what it feels like to be in a handstand with your hips turned under (pelvic tilt).

Simply doing presses against the wall and then opening up to a free HS would be good.

So 2 months ago you had never done any handstand stuff??

FML. What am I doing wrong?? Good job dude.

I am 19 years of age now, and have been doing bodybuilding for about 2 years before starting gymnastics.

I should say however, that when I was a kid I did gymnastics as well, ending up with being transferred to a team for up-and-coming talents here in Denmark. I did quite well actually, ending up with winning a talent award in my club, and also doing quite well at a national championship. I stopped doing gymnastics at around 10 years of age, because I felt it was getting too competetive for my liking, at the time.

Prior to completing the handstand press in the video, I did 3 weeks of static handstand holds against a wall and 3 weeks of handstand wall runs.

But I guess that my training as a kid helped me quite a bit. I also felt that my strength work with weights helped me alot! I could hold a wall handstand for 3 minutes when I first tested it about two months ago, and that was only due to my weight training. The thing that helped me the most, however, was definetely this forum and the BtGB books progressions

I just started with the easiest progressions of some of the FBE's, and worked my way up.

Thanks for all the comments, they are truly useful! Reading the comments and seeing the video again just made everything seem much clearer to me

Aha, where in Denmark are you from?

Having done gym as a kid helps explain why you pretty much owned me after 2 months, but very very nice anyways!!

Razz said:

Aha, where in Denmark are you from?

Having done gym as a kid helps explain why you pretty much owned me after 2 months, but very very nice anyways!!

Seconded. That was a really good pike press, definitely unexpected. I'd love to see more of your skills

Razz, did you not train gymnastics as a kid? When did you start?

Thanks for telling us you did gymnastics as a kid. I almost committed suicide thinking you did that with no training.

Yeah I did, but in the beginning it was just playing until I was 7, then it was mini trampoline and some tumbling like round offs and stuff.. never got past a backflick until 16. In the standard Danish gymnastics teams nobody and I mean nobody can do more than a 10s HS without walking and a press HS is an unimaginable skill. I'm making up for all the 'wasted' years now that I'm finally in a team

Haha, I'm glad I saved some lives by posting the story of my early childhood training

I live in a small town around 20km's north of Copenhagen Razz

But you shouldn't feel owned, I can see you're doing an iron cross on the rings on your avatar, I can't do that yet

And @yuri, I am really not that skilled yet :oops:

The coolest element I can perform at this time is probably the double back flip dismount from still rings, and I don't even perform it that well :roll:

Man i'm so glad to hear that too! Its funny i've seen some people who've done gymnastics as children and it just never seems to leave the system. I've got a 40 year old lady who was a gymnast as a kid and its so obvious from how she moves, and how insanely strong her core is, she's my strongest student by far, including the youngsters.

Take home lesson - parents enroll your kids in gymnastics!

That was impressive, anyway the most impressive handstand press i,ve seen is to my nephew who has never done gymnastics and without flexibility at all ( he cant touch his feet with his hands and locked knees, in fact i would say he cant reach the anckels) did a ( straddled) press to handstand ( in fact more a planche to handstand) at first try. Arms stright of course. Anyway he could hold an advanced tucked planche and then going to handstand also the first time i told him about planches.

his sport background was just tennis.

With that i mean that there are over there gifted people with a great ratio weight/ strength without any specific training for this, which is not my case ( in fact im thinking that in my genetic code someone forgot to include the muscles to press to hqndstand :?

That's pretty incredible. :shock: Good job

MarcusD said:

Haha, I'm glad I saved some lives by posting the story of my early childhood training

I live in a small town around 20km's north of Copenhagen Razz

But you shouldn't feel owned, I can see you're doing an iron cross on the rings on your avatar, I can't do that yet

And @yuri, I am really not that skilled yet :oops:

The coolest element I can perform at this time is probably the double back flip dismount from still rings, and I don't even perform it that well :roll:

Well the avatar is with shorter rings, although long rings is somewhat solid now. I'm still amazed by that press though, I have to work harder! Double backflip from rings..damn same as me and you're only 2 months in.. guess I'll have to go for double layout

edit: would've been cool if you were closer to aalborg, could've met up for some training

Psh, your country is tiny. I am sure you could walk it in about an hour, lol