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Should I Learn to Handstand Press or Kick Up First?

I get asked this question constantly, and my answer is always the same: learn to kick up first and work on your foundations of a static hold. Before you attempt a handstand press, it’s crucial to build these basics for control and safety.

Here’s why: if you can’t hold a handstand, where are you even pressing to?

Think about it. You train a press-up for months, you finally get your feet off the ground, and then… what? You have no idea where vertical is. You have no strength or stability in the handstand position itself. Your feet lift off, you panic, and you immediately fall over.

You’ve spent all that time and energy developing a skill that deposits you into a position you don’t know how to control.

That’s not progression. That’s putting the cart before the horse.

The Logic: Master the Destination Before the Journey

A press-up is a transitional movement. It’s the journey from standing (or sitting) to a handstand.

But if you don’t know how to be in a handstand (if you can’t hold the position with stability and control), then learning the transition to get there makes no sense.

It’s like spending a year learning to parallel park before you know how to drive. Or training to dive into a pool before you can swim. The skill is impressive, but it’s useless (and potentially dangerous) without the foundational ability it’s meant to connect to.

The kick-up, on the other hand, is simple.

It gets you into a handstand position quickly so you can spend your training time actually learning to hold, balance, and control the handstand itself. That’s where the real skill lives.

What Actually Happens When You Can’t Hold a Handstand

Let’s say you train press-ups as a beginner with no static handstand hold. Here’s the reality of what happens:

Scenario 1: You get your feet off the ground for half a second
Your compression strength allows you to lift your feet, but you have no shoulder stability or balance awareness. You immediately tip over or collapse. You can’t tell if you’re getting closer to a press because you have no reference point for what a controlled handstand even feels like.

Scenario 2: You finally complete a press… once
After months of work, you get lucky and press all the way up. For one second, you’re vertical. Then you fall because you have no idea how to stay there. You can’t repeat it because you don’t understand what you did right.

Scenario 3: You press to the wall every time
You develop the ability to press to a wall, which becomes your crutch. But you’re not learning handstand balance. You’re learning a wall-assisted press. When you try to press freestanding, you realize you still can’t balance, and now you’ve spent months on a skill that doesn’t transfer.

In all three scenarios, you’ve invested massive time and energy into a movement that doesn’t actually make you better at handstands.

Why the Kick-Up Comes First

The kick-up isn’t flashy. It doesn’t look as impressive as a slow, controlled press. But it’s the most efficient way to get into a handstand so you can learn the skill that actually matters: holding the position.

Here’s what the kick-up allows you to do:

Get repetitions in the actual position. You kick up, you’re in a handstand, and now you’re learning to balance, feel your weight distribution, make micro-adjustments, and understand where vertical lives. This is the skill. This is what handstands are about.

Build the prerequisites for everything else. Shoulder stability, core control, wrist conditioning, balance awareness. All of these develop through time spent holding handstands. The kick-up gets you there efficiently so you can start building these qualities.

Create a reference point for progression. When you can hold a handstand for 10, 20, 30 seconds with good form, you now have a destination. When you eventually work on press-ups, you know exactly where you’re trying to go and what it should feel like when you get there.

Practice the entry you’ll actually use. Let’s be honest: even people who can press still kick up most of the time. It’s faster, more practical, and less fatiguing. Learning to kick up with control is a fundamental skill you’ll use for years.

The Right Progression Sequence

Here’s how skill development should actually flow:

Phase 1: Learn to Kick Up and Hold Against a Wall

Build strength, comfort being inverted, and proper alignment. This is your foundation.

Phase 2: Develop Controlled, Repeatable Kick-Ups

Work on entries that are consistent and bring you to vertical without overshooting. This is its own skill worth mastering.

Phase 3: Achieve Freestanding Balance

Get to the point where you can reliably kick up and hold a freestanding handstand for at least 10-15 seconds with good form. Now you know what a handstand is.

Phase 4: Build Endurance and Refinement

Work toward 30, 45, 60-second holds. Clean up your line. Develop consistent balance across different conditions.

Phase 5 (Optional): Explore Press-Ups

Now (and only now) does working on press-ups make sense. You have a stable handstand to press into. You understand balance and weight distribution. You can actually use the skill you’re developing.

Notice that press-ups come last, not first. They’re an advanced variation for people who already have solid handstand fundamentals.

The Press-Up Trap for Beginners

I’ve seen countless students get seduced by the idea of learning a press-up early because it looks more impressive than a kick-up.

They watch videos of people slowly pressing into perfect handstands and think, “That’s what I want to learn.”

So they spend months training compression drills, pike push-ups, and L-sits. They work on pancake flexibility. They do straddle holds until their hip flexors are screaming.

And six months later, they still can’t hold a handstand because they never actually practiced handstands. They practiced the prerequisites for one specific entry method. An entry method that requires an existing handstand to be useful.

This is the trap: focusing on the impressive-looking skill instead of the fundamental one.

Press-ups are impressive because they’re hard and they require significant strength and control. But that doesn’t mean they should be your starting point. Master the fundamentals first, then layer on the impressive variations.

What If You Really Want to Work on Press-Ups?

If you’re dead set on eventually learning press-ups (and they are a beautiful skill worth pursuing), here’s the smart approach:

Build your static handstand first. Get to the point where you can reliably hold 20-30 seconds freestanding with good form. This gives you the destination the press needs to connect to.

Develop the specific prerequisites in parallel. As you’re building your handstand hold, you can work on compression strength, pike flexibility, and shoulder mobility in separate sessions. These qualities support your handstand anyway, so you’re not wasting time. You’re just not making the press your primary focus.

Introduce press work as a supplementary skill. Once you have a solid handstand foundation, start adding press attempts into your training. Now they make sense because you have somewhere to press to.

This approach gives you a functional handstand skill relatively quickly while building toward the press as a long-term goal. You’re not sacrificing months of progress for a single flashy entry method.

The Bottom Line: Function First, Flash Second

Should you learn to press into a handstand or kick up first?

Kick up. Every time.

Build your static hold. Develop balance, strength, and control in the handstand position itself. Master the destination before you obsess over how to get there.

Once you can hold a solid handstand, then explore presses if you want. At that point, you’ll have the foundation that makes learning them both possible and productive.

But if you start with press work as a beginner with no handstand hold? You’re setting yourself up for months of frustration and very little actual progress in the skill that matters.

Learn to hold a handstand first. Everything else becomes easier and makes more sense once you have that foundation.

Ready to Build Your Handstand the Right Way?

If you want to learn handstands with proper progression (kick-ups that lead to solid holds, not press-ups that lead nowhere), I’ve built a complete system for exactly that.

Start with the fundamentals: [Grab my 4 Essential Handstand Elements Course]

This course will set you up for long-term success, including the proper progression sequence that creates results instead of wasted effort.

Build the foundation first. The impressive stuff comes later.

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