How to Handstand a Beginner Guide: 5 Easy Steps & Benefits

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August 2, 2022

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A fit yoga practitioner doing a perfect handstand is what every beginner is envious of. Not only does the handstand pose look good but it also has a ton of mental and physical benefits. That being said, it takes patience and the right guidance to learn how to do a handstand. Your focus, strength, and balance have to be aligned to get into the perfect handstand pose. Otherwise, you will not get a complete weightless feeling while doing this pose. In this guide on handstand for beginners, we are going to cover the benefits of handstand, how to do hand stand, tips to get the best out of this pose, and much more. Read on.

Warm-Up Poses

Handstand stretches your muscles considerably and hence you first need to prepare your body with some warm-up poses. The main body parts that are needed to be warmed up are wrists, shoulders, hamstrings, back, and core. Here is a list of some warm-up poses that you need to do before starting the handstand pose:

Downward Dog with knees bent
Figure-eights
Shoulder CARS
Planks
Mountain Climbers
Cat-Cow

Steps To Do A Handstand

Here is a step-by-step guide that will help you practice the handstand pose:

Step 1

Sit down on the ground with your face towards the wall. Press your feet into the wall and flip over your place. Put the palms on exactly the place where your butt was placed. At this point, your hands should be at a shoulder-wide distance apart from each other. Spread your finger rotated outwards and practice putting your weight on the front side of your feet until you are completely on your toe tips.

Step 2

Now, bend your legs and start walking your feet up on the wall. Activate your core, upper chest, shoulders, arms while walking up. Keep walking as high as possible and distribute the weight equally on your hands.

Step 3

Do not hyperextend your elbows as putting weight on straight arms can impact the arm joints. If you keep a slight bend, it helps in preventing your arms from caving in. Engage your core muscles, pull in the abdomen, and try to stabilize your entire body. If your shoulders are coming to the ear, you can prevent that from happening by lifting from the belly. Keep walking until you make a 90 degrees angle to the ground with your knees slightly bent.

Step 4

Rotate your legs slightly inward and lift your legs up one by one. This step will aid in keeping your spine’s position vertical. Your feet should be activated all the time to engage your body. In this pose, you can point your feet, flex them, or do both.

Step 5

After moving one leg off the wall, move the other one too. Stretch both legs long while your toes can rest against the wall. Hold this pose for as long as you are comfortable. Once you are ready, kick off the wall, bend your knees, gracefully fall out of the pose.

Benefits Of Handstand

Here is a list of some health benefits that you get practicing the handstand pose:

• Strengthens Your Upper Body

To stay upside down for a long time, your upper body including the arms, upper back, and shoulders need to have a lot of strength. When you practice handstand, you essentially train your muscles to hold the whole of your body against gravity. That is exactly why the bodies of beginners start to shake when they hold the handstand.

• Increases Your Balance

Strength is not the only thing required by your body to hold the handstand. You also need body balance to master the handstand pose. Especially, to do the freestanding handstand, you need to have impeccable control over your muscles. The longer you practice the handstand pose, the more you will increase your body balance.

• Boosts Your Mood

More blood flows to your brain and when your body is upside down in the handstand pose. A high amount of blood and oxygen reaching your brain will make it energized and leave calming effects. If you feel stressed out, you should practice the handstand pose regularly.

• Builds Core Strength

A lesser-known benefit of the handstand pose is that it also helps in building core strength. To stay in the pose, you have to constantly engage your abs and other major muscle groups like lower back muscles, hamstrings, hips flexors, and so on.

Tips On Doing A Handstand

The following tips will help you do the pose easily and get the best out of it:

Squeeze your butt throughout the entire pose as it makes staying in the freestanding handstand much easier.
Just like squeezing the butts, you should also tighten your abs while doing the pose. It will help you in keeping your body upright and your back from arching.
The most common reason for falling while doing the handstand pose is not pushing enough through the shoulders. So, to prevent that from happening, you should push through the shoulder as soon as you start lifting your body.
Keep your arms glued to the ears as it will help you make a straight line from the floor to your foot. An upright position body is easy to hold in a handstand as compared to an arched body.
Instead of leaving your legs sloppy, keep them close together and tight.
Point your toes upwards or your feet will be flopping around during the handstand pose.
People tend to look down when they are in the handstand position. Instead of that, you should try to look behind you as looking down might throw off your balance.

Conclusion

Doing a handstand is not as hard as it seems to beginners. The key to mastering the perfect handstand lies in the details. Before starting the pose, you should first prepare your body with warm-up poses, and then follow the how-to-do guide along with keeping tips in mind. Soon, you will master the handstand pose.

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