You may be tired of hearing us say this, but the handstand really is the most important skill to perfect in gymnastics. It’s best to master the handstand on the floor first. We’ve given you a handstand workout, handstand drills for beginners, advanced handstand drills and more. Now, let’s talk about how to do a handstand on the beam!
Step 1: Lunge
You want to start in a lunge. Focus on getting into a nice tight lunge with your knee over your ankle and your arms up tight next to your ears. You can check out how to work on your lunges in the 2nd drill in this video.
Step 2: “T”
You want to make a “T” with your body by leaning forward onto your front leg and raising your back leg up to horizontal. The “T” shape is made since the bottom part is your front leg and the top part of the “T” is your leg, back and arms. You want to try not to have any breaking “T”‘s. We love practicing lunge-t-lunge to work on the first two steps of doing a handstand on beam. You can see it in the first drill in this video.
Step 3: Kick to Handstand
Your hands will have to wrap around the beam to grip it well. You’ll angle your arms down to grip the beam while kicking your legs up. You can practice this step in this video at 39 seconds.
Step 4: Find Vertical
You want to get your legs up to vertical 180º so that your feet/ankles are over your knees, your knees are over your hips, your hips are over your shoulders and your body is nice and tight. One of our favorite drills for this is the spiderman handstand, which you can see in this video at 2:11.
Step 5: Return to “T”
Split your legs and bring your back leg down again into a “T” with your arms. Remember to keep a tight body position while you’re returning to the floor from your handstand.
Step 6: Return to Lunge
Finish your handstand in your starting lunge position with your front leg knee over your ankle and your back leg straight. Maintain an upright posture to finish your handstand.
Check out our new Handstand Training Packet:
Remember, it does take practice to get comfortable completing a handstand on beam, especially if you’re just starting out. All of the handstand drills above (except the spiderman handstands) can be completed on the beam. Happy handstanding!
4 Comments
Does anyone have tips on getting over mental blocks for handstands on beam? I have been struggling for over a year and I really need help. My coach tells me to just go for it but I feel scared about falling on the beam and just nervous on doing a handstand on a 4inch piece of wood. please help!!
Yes! If you have a low beam try in on that until ur comfortible and work youre way back up hope this helped!
Hi Alex,
try working up to it from the low beam. I had the same problem with step full turns, it took me a long time but I finally got over my fear. It also might help to brag your self by giving yourself rewards or prizes. And remember, in your handstand you can only fall three ways: foward back down or side ways. Sideways cant hurt because you would twist away from the beam. Falling foward would be scary but try your first handstand on the edge of the beam that way if you fall foward you will not hit the beam.
also check out this article:
https://gymnasticshq.com/5-ways-to-overcome-a-mental-block-in-gymnastics/
Hope this helps!
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