Learn the back handspring: the hard prerequisites, the progression from sit-jump to sequence, the typical errors and why spotting here is part of the technique.
The back handspring (Flickflack in German) is a backward handspring over both hands: you jump backwards, land briefly on your hands, whip your legs over your head and come back onto your feet. It is the element most gymnasts respect the most — and rightly so: you are jumping backwards into a direction you cannot see.
The honest answer to "how long does it take?": with a clean round-off, a free handstand and regular gym training, typically several months — not weeks. And the even more honest answer to the second question: no, you do not learn this alone in your garden. The back handspring is the first skill where a spotter is not convenience but part of the technique.
Why so strict? Because during hand contact a multiple of your body weight rests on your hands: in a measurement of twelve gymnasts it was roughly four times (4.1 body weights) for the two-footed back handspring on the beam [1], and lower on the floor. At 75 kilos even three body weights are over 200 kilos your wrists catch for a fraction of a second. The back handspring is the movement in which your full weight is decelerated through your arms — with your wrist maximally extended.
The good news sits in a different measurement: technique seems to lower exactly that peak. Among 7- to 12-year-old gymnasts, the less skilled (level 5, n = 9) absorbed around 3.34 body weights in just 0.025 seconds during a back handspring, the more skilled (level 8, n = 10) 2.78 body weights in 0.034 seconds [2] — less force, spread over more time. Faster than you can blink, it is decided whether your body swallows the impact or passes it into the joint. Learning cleanly does not only look better, it is probably gentler on the joints (a cross-sectional comparison, not a training study).
Stand up, sit back as if onto a high chair behind you — shins stay vertical, torso stays upright — then throw your arms back and up as you jump backwards. Land on a soft mat on your back. Milestone: ten reps in a row without the upper body tipping backwards before take-off.
Bridge, bridge from an elevation, shoulder stretching at the wall. The target is a bridge in which your shoulders sit above your hands and your arms stay straight. Milestone: a 30-second bridge with vertical arms and no elbow collapse.
Backwards off a low box onto a soft mat. The elevation shortens the distance you have to bridge in the air and makes the first hand contact predictable. Milestone: ten repetitions in which your hands land straight and simultaneously.
Two coach hands at your back and thigh guide you through. The support gets lighter over weeks until it is only a touch. Milestone: ten back handsprings after which the spotter says they "barely did anything".
Out of the handstand you whip the legs to the floor, push off through the shoulders and stand up with your arms overhead. Milestone: landing with arms up, body behind your feet, no backward stumble.
Now the drive from the round-off arrives — and with it more speed than you ever had from standing. Start with a spotter, even if both elements have been solid separately for ages. Milestone: round-off to back handspring with no intermediate step, an even rhythm and a landing on your feet.
A systematic review on competitive gymnasts found very different injury rates (0.3 to 3.6 injuries per gymnast) because definitions vary [5]; among 43 French elite gymnasts it was around 1.8 per 1000 hours [6]. What matters is the pattern: 56.5 percent of injuries had a gradual onset, and the elbow was among the most common sites at 11.6 percent [6]. Which is precisely the structure the back handspring loads fully every single time.
An often underrated lever in the back handspring is not the next strength exercise but the picture in your head before the attempt. In a randomised study of 62 male beginners (aged 21–22), seven mental training sessions of about 14 minutes each improved the kinematic coherence of the round-off and the back handspring — and the ability to connect the two [10].
Concretely: run the movement through your head three times in real time, from the inside — with the feel of your palms on the floor, not as a video from outside. Then tumble immediately, without a pause to overthink. Fear does not disappear through persuasion; it disappears once your head already knows the sequence before your body performs it.
With a clean round-off, a free handstand and two or three gym sessions per week, a spotted back handspring typically takes several months, and a free one often a year or more. Skipping the preliminary stages extends that — and probably invites exactly the wrist and elbow problems that are common in gymnastics anyway [3][6].
No. During hand contact a multiple of your body weight rests on your hands (up to roughly four times measured) [1], and the most dangerous moment is the attempt half-aborted out of fear. You need a soft mat and a qualified spotter who can carry you through the movement if needed. Anything else is not courage, it is gambling.
It is not compulsory, but it helps a lot. The back walkover trains exactly the shoulder opening and backward orientation that otherwise sink the back handspring. If your shoulders are very mobile you can enter directly via the sit-jump drill — if you are stiff, the back walkover saves you months.
Not by pushing through, but through progressions and repetition with a spotter. Add mental training: seven sessions measurably improved the execution of the round-off and back handspring in 62 male beginners [10]. In practice: work the progressions, reduce the spot gradually, rehearse every attempt in your head first.
Hard — up to roughly four times your body weight hit the hands on contact in one measurement [1], and more again with outward-turned hands in a very small study [4]. The elbow is among the most common injury sites in elite gymnastics [6]. Hand position, arm extension and a warmed-up wrist are not cosmetics here, they are joint protection.