How to Do a Handstand: Steps, Drills and Common Mistakes

A handstand is a balance upside down on straight arms, with your body in one straight line from your hands to your toes. You get there from a lunge: reach to the floor, kick one leg up, push off the other, and bring both legs together over your hands.

Contents

The Handstand at a Glance
Before You Try a Handstand
How to Do a Handstand, Step by Step
Drills That Build a Better Handstand
Common Handstand Mistakes and How to Fix Them
How to Hold a Handstand Longer
How Judges Score a Handstand
Where the Handstand Appears in USA Gymnastics Levels
What Comes After the Handstand
Common Questions
Final Takeaway
Main Sources

Almost every gymnastics skill passes through a handstand, from the cartwheel to the back handspring, which is why it is taught from the very first level. This guide covers the whole path for a beginner: what to work on first, the steps, the drills, the mistakes judges deduct for, and how to come down safely. Each stage links to our more detailed guide on it.

The Handstand at a Glance

Stage	What you practice	Go deeper
1. Prepare	Straight-arm strength, a tight hollow body, warm wrists	Ab exercises for gymnasts
2. The wall	Holding the straight line with the wall’s help	Learning handstands at the wall, including chest-to-wall vs. back-to-wall
3. The kick-up	Getting up without the wall, legs meeting over the hands	Handstand kick-up guide
4. Other entries	Stepping, jumping or pressing up instead of kicking	Handstand entries, entering without a kick
5. Holding it	Balancing with the fingers and shoulders	How to hold a handstand longer, below
6. On beam	The same shape on a 4-inch surface	Handstand on balance beam

Before You Try a Handstand

A handstand puts your whole weight on your hands and shoulders, so build up to it. Bear crawls, plank holds and wall walks teach you to hold your weight on straight arms. A hollow body hold, lying on your back with the lower back pressed into the floor and the shoulders and legs lifted, teaches the tight, slightly rounded shape that keeps a handstand from sagging. Circle and press your wrists gently before you start.

Practice on a soft, flat surface with space in front and to the sides, and keep furniture, walls you are not using and other people out of the way. Children learn best in a class, where a coach can spot the first attempts and catch a bad habit before it sets in.

How to Do a Handstand, Step by Step

Stand in a lunge. Step one foot forward with the knee bent and the back leg straight, and reach both arms straight up so they cover your ears.
Reach to the floor. Tip forward as one long line and place your hands on the floor shoulder-width apart, fingers spread and pointing forward, a little in front of your front foot.
Kick and push. Kick the straight back leg up while you push off the front foot. Keep your arms straight.
Bring the legs together over your hands. Let the second leg join the first as they reach the top, so your hips stack over your shoulders and your shoulders over your hands.
Push tall and squeeze. Push the floor away through your shoulders, keep your head between your arms with the eyes on the floor between your hands, and squeeze your legs together with pointed toes.
Come down. Bring one leg down at a time to step back into the lunge you started from. If you go past vertical, turn out of it or step out sideways rather than falling flat.

USA Gymnastics describes the same pattern in its Level 1 teaching progressions: from a half kneel, the arms swing forward to place the hands shoulder-width apart, the back leg kicks up, and the gymnast opens the shoulders quickly to “block” against the floor while the body stays tight and straight, the legs join as they approach vertical, the hips are extended and the head stays neutral.

Our Gymnastics Moves library has a drawing of the finished shape and two short videos, including USA Gymnastics University’s handstand drills.

Drills That Build a Better Handstand

Chest-to-wall handstand

Walk your feet up the wall while your hands walk in, until your chest faces the wall and your body is nearly vertical. Because you can’t arch to save the balance, this drill teaches the straight line and open shoulders. Start with short holds and walk down the way you came. Our guide to chest-to-wall vs. back-to-wall handstands explains what each version teaches.

Kick-up to lunge

Kick up only partway, about a three-quarter handstand, and come straight back down into your lunge. Repeating it teaches a strong kick with straight arms without the fear of going over. The kick-up guide builds from here to a full handstand.

Handstand hops

This is one of USA Gymnastics’ Level 1 teaching drills: kick to a handstand, block through the shoulders and let the hands hop off the floor for a moment. It trains the quick shoulder push used later in round-offs and handsprings. Practice it with a coach.

Hollow body hold

Lying on your back, press the lower back into the floor and lift the arms, shoulders and legs a few inches. If your lower back pops off the floor, raise the legs higher. This is the shape a good handstand keeps upside down.

Common Handstand Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Mistake	What it looks like	How to fix it
Arched back (“banana”)	Stomach and ribs push forward, legs fall past the hands	Hollow body holds; chest-to-wall handstands
Bent arms	Elbows give and the head sinks toward the floor	Wall walks and plank holds; push tall through the shoulders
Closed shoulders	Arms angled forward instead of straight over the head	Reach the arms by the ears from the start; push the floor away
Piked hips	Hips bent, legs stopping short of vertical	A stronger kick and push; the kick-up-to-lunge drill
Head out of line	Chin tucked to the chest, or the head craned up to look forward	Look at the floor between the hands, head between the arms
Walking on the hands	Extra steps on the hands to stay up	Fingers and shoulders do the balancing; see how to hold it longer, below

How to Hold a Handstand Longer

Once you can kick up to a straight handstand, staying up comes from small corrections through your hands while the rest of your body stays tight and still. In a small biomechanics study of handstand balance, the steadiest handstands were controlled mainly through the wrists and shoulders, with little work at the hips; corrections at the hips played a bigger part in the balances that didn’t hold.

If you feel this	Do this
Falling over, with your legs going past your hands	Press your fingertips into the floor
Sinking back the way you came	Ease off your fingers and press through the heels of your hands
Sinking into your shoulders	Lock your arms and push the floor away
Wobbling at the hips or legs	Squeeze your legs together, hold the hollow shape and let your hands do the correcting

Practice many short holds in a good shape rather than a few long, wobbly ones. With your back to a wall, kick up and ease your heels off it for a moment at a time. On hands and knees, rock your weight between your fingertips and the heels of your hands to feel the pressure change. Filming from the side shows whether your line is straight, and the strength from the drills above makes every hold easier.

How long is a long hold? In USA Gymnastics’ TOPS testing, which screens 8- to 10-year-old girls for the elite path, 8-year-olds are scored on a handstand hold of up to 30 seconds and 9- and 10-year-olds on up to 60 seconds. They may not walk on their hands, and testers deduct for an arched or piked body, the head out of line, bent arms or legs, poor shoulder alignment and feet apart. Those are elite-track standards, not targets for a beginner.

How Judges Score a Handstand

In the USA Gymnastics compulsory levels, each skill has a set value and judges take deductions for faults. The clearest list for the handstand itself is on Level 1 vault, where gymnasts kick to a handstand on a stack of mats and fall to lie flat on their back. In the current compulsory routines (effective through July 2029, revised July 2025), the handstand faults are:

Fault	Deduction
Arms bent	Up to 0.50
Body piked	Up to 0.50
Body arched	Up to 0.30
Shoulder angle less than 180° (closed shoulders)	Up to 0.30
Head not neutral	Up to 0.30
Legs bent	Up to 0.30
Legs apart	Up to 0.20
Extra hand placements (steps or hops on the hands)	0.10 each, up to 0.30
Feet flexed or sickled	Up to 0.10
Each extra kick to get up	0.50

Bent arms and a piked body cost the most, which matches what coaches drill first: straight arms and a straight line. On Level 1 vault, judges also deduct up to 0.20 if the arms don’t cover the ears on the way into the handstand.

Where the Handstand Appears in USA Gymnastics Levels

Level	Event	Skill
Level 1	Floor	Three-quarter handstand
Level 1	Vault	Handstand on the mat stack, fall to straight lying
Level 2	Floor	Handstand
Level 2	Vault	Jump to handstand on a raised mat, fall to straight lying
Level 3	Beam	Cross handstand
Level 3	Floor	Handstand forward roll

The handstand also sits inside many later skills: the cartwheel, the round-off, the back walkover and the backward roll to handstand all pass through it. To see a level’s full list on every event, read our guide to Level 1 gymnastics skills.

What Comes After the Handstand

A steady handstand opens the door to the cartwheel, the bridge and back walkover, the handstand forward roll and the handstand on beam. Once you can kick up reliably, the next goal is time, using the finger and shoulder corrections described above.

Common Questions

How long does it take to learn a handstand?

There is no set time. It depends on age, strength and how often you practice. Most people can hold a handstand against a wall well before they can balance one freestanding, so the wall is the usual first goal.

Should I learn against a wall?

Yes. The wall takes away the fear of falling over and lets you practice the straight line for longer. Chest-to-wall teaches the best shape; back-to-wall is easier to get into. Our guide to learning handstands at the wall walks through both.

How do you come down from a handstand safely?

Step down one leg at a time into a lunge. If you overbalance, turn sideways and step out, or cartwheel out. Coaches teach a forward roll out of the handstand as well, but learn that with a coach rather than on your own.

Why do I keep falling over?

Usually an arched back or closed shoulders: the legs pass the hands and pull you over. Push tall through the shoulders, keep the head between the arms and squeeze into a hollow shape. Pressing the fingertips into the floor helps catch a fall forward.

Can adults learn a handstand?

Yes. Start at the wall, build wrist and shoulder strength gradually, and stop if your wrists or shoulders hurt rather than ache.

Final Takeaway

To do a handstand, start in a lunge with your arms by your ears, reach to the floor with straight arms, kick one leg up and push off the other, and bring both legs together over your hands in one straight line.

Judges and coaches look for the same things: straight arms, open shoulders, a straight body without an arch or a pike, and the head between the arms. Learn the shape at the wall, then work on the kick-up and the hold.