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What are progressions?

Calisthenics isn’t as straightforward as weightlifting in terms of progressing.

In weight lifting, after getting stronger and reaching the higher limit of the rep range, you just simply have to add more weights to the same exercise. You’ll use the same movement and the same tempo, the same technique.

In calisthenics, you’re working only with your body weight (let’s not include weight calisthenics for now). This means you’re going to work with the same amount of weight. So in order to progress, we have to use progressions.

Progression are set of exercises designed to help you reach a specific exercise you want to learn. For each calisthenics fundamental and more advanced movements, there are specific progressions to help you reach each goal.

In a progressions, exercises intensity and exercise goals are adjusted thanks to manipulating the body. We treat our body as a lever and by changing body angles and positions, we get to increase or decrease the difficulty of an exercise.

Read more here: 📍Progressive Calisthenics ​

Why are they divided into four sections?

In The Movement Athete app, we categorized the progressions into four main elements.

• • Strength – This focus on building general or specific strength through exercises that require high effort. Low volume is needed to maximize recovery.
  • Skill – All exercises require proper technique and form. This element focuses on improving your technique for the main movement. 
  • Muscle – Bigger muscles increase the potential of strength. 
  • Endurance – Especially for advanced exercises, we need a higher working capacity to sustain our level of training safely while maximizing gains.

Why are there many progressions?

Don’t worry. The number of exercises looks a lot but you will probably breeze through it over time.

In addition, we each exercise progression is crucial for progress and safety. Progressions break up the skill into simpler elements so you can work on each element separately before combing them all together. This way, we make better use of our time and we don’t get frustrated getting nowhere with our training. 

Where is the Mobility and Flexibility?

A proper press to handstand seem like an amazing display of strength. However, it’s not only about getting strong enough.

Press to handstands, if you want to perform them efficiently as possible and look cool, also demand mobility and flexibility primarily from your shoulders and lower body.

If you’re looking for the mobility and flexibility component, we’ve separated most of them from the main progressions.

In the TMA app, we’ve integrated most of the mobility and flexibility work in the warm-up and cooldown sections. However, there are also certain exercises tha are included in the main progression as well.

You can read more on mobility for this skill here: The Best Mobility Exercises for Press to Handstand.

Strength

The strength element generally covers the specific shoulder strength requirement. Our shoulders cannot produce much force at such angles when arms raised required for a press to handstand. For this reason, we need to strengthen our shoulders specifically for this position.

These progressions below gradually build up the strength required for the full press to handstand. In addition, the exercises below will improve your core strength to make press to handstand a lot easier.

Keep in mind that a base level of strength is crucial. While you can get away with less mobility and use strength to perform press to handstands, you cannot compensate with mobility for your lack of baseline strength.

So this element should always be included if you want to reach press to handstands.

1. Push-up on tuck slides

Tuck slides are actually part of the tuck planche progression. With this exercise, you get to gradually load your anterior shoulders and wrist as your slide your legs towards your chest. While sliding, you need to simultaneously lean forward to maintain balance and add the loading properly.

Take note that you should have a slipper surface or at least having something underneath your feet such as sliders or a piece of cloth to help you glide a lot smoother.

How to Perform:

1. Begin in a regular push-up position.
2. Point your toes to lessen the point of contact on the floor with your lower body.
3. Slide your feet towards your mid section and drive your knees towards your chest. At the same time, lean forward with your upper body to increase the loading unto your arms.
4. Reverse the motion to get back into the push-up position.
5. Repeat for repetitions.

Coaching Pointers:

• Remove most weight from your legs to easily slide and better hit the targeted muscles
• Shoulders depressed and scapula protracted
• Hollow body form
• Full body tension

Push-up to pike slides

This exercise has a general motion with the prior progression but with a two distinct differences. Firstly, the legs are maintained straight similar to a press to handstand. Secondly, hips are compressed and raised towards above your wrists. This will prepare you for the initial stage of pressing

How to Perform:

1. Begin in a regular push-up position.
2. Point your toes to lessen the point of contact on the floor with your lower body.
3. Pull your feet closer to your hands as you simultaneously raise your hips and push your arms overhead.
4. Brief pause at the top position.
5. Slowly reverse the motion.
6. Repeat for repetitions.

Coaching Pointers:

• Remove most weight from your legs to easily slide and better hit the targeted muscles
• Shoulders depressed and scapula protracted
• Hollow body form
• Full body tension
• Don’t get discourage if you are unable to stack your hips on top of your wrists. Build the range of motion over tim
• Straight lock out arms
• Hinge at the hips
• Straight legs as much as possible but you can slightly bend if your mobility is limiting you

Straddle stand walks

You can get massive benefits from straddle stand walks as a beginner even to an advanced state. In his exercise, you will mimic the starting position of the standing straddle press by leaning forward from a straddle until you can lift your feet off the ground briefly and placing them closer towards the hands. You can also reverse the motion for more challenge.

How to perform

1. From a standing position, slightly straddle your legs apart.
2. Bend over forward while maintaining straight legs until your arms planted firmly on the ground.
3. Shift your weight forward until your feet feels weightless.
4. Move both feet closer once you feel weightlessness to make 1 step.
5. Plant your feet on the ground to reset.
6. Move your hands forward.
7. Repeat the motion to starting “walking”.
8. After some reps, reverse the motion by first moving the hands first closer to your feet.
9. Lean forward to feel weightlessness with your legs.
10. Move your feet backward.
11. Repeat the motion.

Coaching Pointers

• Maintain straight lock out arms
• You can add a small hops to initiate the walks when first learning the motion. As you grow stronger, rely on the forward lean to move your feet
• Push through your shoulders and hands
• Shoulder fully elevated
• The wider the straddle, the lighter the load, but the further away your hips need to travel to find the balancing “sweet spot”
• Aim to move as slow as possible

Box wall weight shift tuck

This exercise will help you strengthen the upper range of motion of press to handstand while improving your upper body endurance. It primarily targets the core for controlling the upper range but still works your shoulders and wrists.

How to perform

1. Set up an elevated surface near the wall. 
2. Go into a pike handstand with your feet supported by the elevated surface.
3. Once you find balance, pull your lower back against the wall while maintaining the tuck position.
4. Hold for a brief moment.
5. Move your legs back unto the elevated surface.
6. Repeat the motion for reps.

Coaching Pointers

• Lockout arms
• Your quads/hamstrings should be around parallel to the floor at the top position
• Move your hands further away from the wall to make the exercise a bit easier
• Move your hands closer to the wall to make the exercise harder (More shoulder flexion)
• Full body tension

Box wall weight shift straddle

Similar to the exercise above, this progression is done with legs in a straddle position for added lever; meaning, added challenge. The same concept applies. The idea is to control your legs by properly engaging your core and hips.

How to perform

1. Set up an elevated surface near the wall. 
2. Go into a pike handstand with your feet supported by the elevated surface.
3. Once you find balance, pull your lower back against the wall while maintaining a straddle position.
4. Hold for a brief moment.
5. Move your legs back unto the elevated surface.
6. Repeat the motion for reps.

Coaching Pointers

• Lockout arms
• Your quads/hamstrings should be around parallel to the floor at the top position
• Move your hands further away from the wall to make the exercise a bit easier
• Move your hands closer to the wall to make the exercise harder (More shoulder flexion)
• Full body tension
• Expect quad cramping if you have limited mobility

Handstand straddle down wall

📌Takeaway

The press to handstand progression is quite extensive because of the elements you need to breakdown for more efficient and safer learning progress.

The journey to mastering this skill can take some time, especially if you haven’t mastered your foundations yet. However, following this progression will provide you a solid path towards press to handstand.

For even faster progress, you can work on mobility and flexibility as well. This make pressing more efficient to require less energy for the movement.

As mentioned earlier, these are developed from the exercises above as well as specialized work in the warm-up and cooldown section.

Know the best exercises for improving your range of motion for the press in this article: Best Mobility Exercises for Press to Handstand.