Get stronger
This one goes without saying. If you use your body you get stronger, especially if this activity challenges you. I bet you are not aware of all the things that will actually get stronger though!
Your upper body
Your arms, shoulders and hands have to support your entire body. This means your triceps, forearms and scapula elevation muscles will get a decent workout here. Even more so your anterior deltoids and even your biceps will work hard. In every step you have to lift the hand away from the floor, place it in front and then convince your entire body to follow. As your hands are not next to each other you will get uneven weight on your shoulders not just working over all pushing strength but especially stabilizing and anti rotation strength.
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Your core
Your core, your abs and your back muscles connect your hips with your shoulders. In the case of handstand walking the core doesn’t have to do that much. It simply has to stay tight. Unfortunately, this is often harder than one might think. You are constantly transferring your weight from one side to another. On top of that you are upside down! This will absolutely require practice and patience but the results harvested from this hard work will go a long way and transfer to pretty much anything else you will do in life!
Your legs
Yes, even the lower half of your body is receiving a workout when working on your handstand walks. You might not be doing squats, lunges or box jumps but simply holding the legs up and stabilizing them will get you sore. When I first started training handstands more seriously I was already fairly fit and had a strong upper body from gymnastics artistic training. For the first year or two my legs would get the most tired and sore from handstand training.
Improve your
handstand holds
If you train something you will get better at it. Whilst walking might be easier than just holding your regular holds will still improve tremendously from working on your walks. Additionally, shaking the training up will help you break through existing plateaus and your future static handstand workouts will get more efficient.
Get rid of fear
A big part of learning to walk on the hands is learning basic floor acrobatics and practicing different exiting strategies. Getting out of your handstand in a dynamic fashion is basically controlled falling. The more comfortable you get with these key elements and drills the more confidence you will gain in your own body and the more secure you will feel on your hands.
Improve Handstand control
Walking, transferring the weight and taking steps will force you to spend time upside down. If you train something you will get better at it. It is that simple. Working on base technique and static handstand might feel boring to you as progress can be slow from time. Instead of getting discouraged on a small plateau shake your training up and include walking progressions into your handstand training. Often what feels like a plateau is just a moment where you simply have to keep going just a little bit longer. Introducing this new challenge will keep you upside down and will keep your training fresh and exciting.
Disconnect your breathing
Who needs to breathe upside down?! Simply keep your walk shorts or if the competition distance is long just walk faster, right?! Well… Yes, but wouldn’t it be cool if we could learn to walk on our hands whilst breathing? The answer is yes, you can and you will. Whilst not easy at first I will make sure that conditioning exercises are so long that you won’t even have a chance not to breathe. The transferring and stepping of the walking whilst keeping the core stable and the legs controlled will help you understand how to completely disconnect your breathing from your core stability and handstands. Once done with all this you will be able to stand upside down and talk without even sounding winded!
Make being upside down normal
By spending time upside down your arms will get stronger and your mind will get used to being upside down. The more time you spend upside down the more your mind will accept this as the new normal and the less overloaded your nervous system gets whilst training. This is one of the best techniques to get really good at something. Practice, a lot. Malcolm Gladwell said in his bestselling book “to become an expert it takes 10000 hours (or approximately 10 years) of deliberate practice.” I can confidently say I got those in when it comes to handstand training. Working on your walking can be your own first step 😉
Improve your
overall feeling
The ultimate goal of working out and training something new is because of the way you feel. Feeling the eyes of others digging into your back whilst you train handstands might be what excites you, or maybe you love impressing yourself with accomplishments and new skills added to your toolkit, or maybe training gives you an opportunity to forget everything and just life in the moment. No matter what, deep down we all train because it makes us feel a certain way. Learning to handstand walk will make you feel great!
Proof it to yourself
Handstand walking is a precise skill. If you want to learn it there is a somewhat exact finish line. And This is great. Even greater is that this is a skill that is extremely achievable for anyone! No matter where you are right now, I promise, we can get you upside down and walking on your hands! I strongly encourage you to go all out, make a short or long term plan (or use mine) and learn to handstand walk. Proof to yourself that you can set yourself a physical goal. Once you understand that you can conquer one you will understand that you can conquer all and you will start going all out with other aspects of your life as well!
Overcoming fear
New things are scary. Kicking up into a handstand in the open space for the first time is scary. Transferring the weight onto one hand so the other can step towards the front is scary. Your first chest to wall handstand is scary too. Most things are scary when we do them for the first time. The awesome thing is that every time we do them they get a little less scary and in a couple weeks you will look back smiling at yourself about the drills you were worried about.
Trust me. This feeling is amazing! Do this for yourself!
So yes. Handstand walking looks cool and is definitely a head turner in any park or gym but training for handstand walks is really where it is at. It is important to set goals as they will drive you and whilst I do not necessarily love the saying “the journey is the destination” I have had to learn over and over again in the past that especially when training handstands it is more than true.
