Handstand press hold test
For an athlete whose sport is their own bodyweight, an overhead press with a barbell answers the wrong question. This one answers the right one.
The handstand or pike press hold is scored as the longest clean hold with locked arms and a stacked line. Elbows soften or the back arches, the clock stops.
Wrists are the limiter more often than shoulders, and they are usually the thing nobody trains.
The point of the test
Overhead pressing robustness and shoulder position at your own bodyweight.
Why it is in the Train Smart battery: Overhead pressing robustness at your own bodyweight.
How to run it
Hold the top position with locked arms and a stacked line. Record the longest clean hold.
- What you need
- A wall, or a spotter · A timer
What is a good score?
We are not going to publish a precise-looking table for this test. Reported ranges vary too much with protocol, equipment, level, age and sex for a single table to be honest, and most of the tables in circulation for it are uncited copies of each other.
The comparison that actually changes your training is against your own last score. That is not a consolation prize — it is what the monitoring literature supports, and it is what Train Smart does: re-test every eight weeks under the same conditions and let the trend, not the percentile, drive the program. The papers behind that are here.
What people get wrong
Most of the variation between two tests is protocol, not fitness. These are the faults that make one score incomparable to the last.
- Arching to hold longer.
- A banana-shaped handstand is a different position under a different load. Stacked line, or the clock stops.
- Bent arms.
- The test is a locked-arm hold. Elbows soften, hold over.
How to actually move the number
Wall holds for time, then away from the wall, plus direct shoulder and wrist strength work. Wrists are the limiter more often than shoulders and are usually the thing nobody trains.
Related tests and guides
Know your number. Now train for it.
Train Smart re-tests you every eight weeks on your sport’s own battery — and the results re-price your training weights and reset your conditioning paces automatically.
One month free, then A$24.99/month. Cancel any time. iPhone and iPad.