Hi All,

Today I’m going to share even more ideas (and one old one) to helping your gymnasts handstand get all the way up on beam. When gymnasts don’t get to handstand it’s usually because of 1 of 2 things: fear, or lack of awareness.

This first video is a replica of a quick tip I did a couple months ago. Like I said, it’s one of my favorite drills. A couple things to watch for that I didn’t talk about in the original post. When you have gymnasts in a pike handstand there is a tendency for them to duck their heads, I want their heads in the same position it would be for a normal handstand. Also, this is something you may want to spot for a while, just because the vertical position may still be a little foreign and you want to make sure they understand EXACTLY where it is.

Photo from Quick Tip:This second video is another great one from Jason Mortimer (JAOVideos). It highlights another really good batch of drills. The other one in this video that I use most commonly is handstand forward rolls. That’s because the fear of falling over is what is most scary for most gymnasts, so if you teach them that they can roll and/or turn that fear is reduced substantially. I have to say that when I teach these I always use a beam pad or 4″ thrown over the beam. Sometimes they come down a little hard and it can bruise their shoulders and I would rather them just use a pad.

Train hard!