Difficulty: Hard

Safety Warning: Work within your own limits – you can injure yourself if you push too hard. It takes time to build up flexibility!

Rowan talks you through some handstand conditioning moves! Flexibility and strength are both really important for handstands, but also for lots of other circus skills. You can use these handstand conditioning moves even if you’re not practicing for handstands!

First, you’ll be doing pike and straddle holds to work your quads.

Then, Rowan shows you elephant walks to strengthen your hands, arms and shoulders.

Next, you’ll hold a horizontal handstand position for 30 seconds. This will help you perfect your straight line shape on the floor.

You can also try an inverted horizontal handstand position, face up on the floor. Again, this will engage your ribs, shoulders, and everything else you need to perfect your handstand.

Rowan then shows you how to improve your shoulder flexibility with a shoulder stretch.

To learn how to open your shoulders, you can practice kneeling lifts to practice that transition into a handstand. You can add a jump to make this a bit more of a stretch, and work towards arriving in your full handstand.

You can see all our videos and activities here.