Add FUN to your training IMMEDIATELY with these Band Assisted Inversion Exercises

Strength training can be boring. Doing the same bread and butter exercises like pullups and pushups and squats are necessary to get stronger, but sprinkling in a little bit of skill work in the form of inversions can spice up your training, add a lot of fun by allowing you to develop the movement patterns and control for things that are currently out of reach. These are not just strength gains, but neuromuscular gains which are confidence inspiring!
Watch this video to see how it’s done
So, if you get a thick, looped resistance band and loop it through a sturdy pullup bar, you can then put your body through the loop, around your hips and practice going upside down with the basic crow pose. If that’s easy for you, you could try perfecting your form with the single leg crow pose by seeing how well you could raise your back leg to be in line with your torso. And the funnest thing is to practice doing a bent-arm handstand press.
The 3 exercises mentioned in this video, from easier to harder:
- Band-assisted frog stand (crow pose)
- Band-assisted single leg frog-stand (crow pose)
- Band assisted handstand presses
How does this speed up your gains?
If your goal is to gain the strength to perform a handstand push-up or a press to handstand (or even the simple crow pose), you’ve likely read the importance of getting really good at pike pushups to build the strength. Well, that’s true… but the process is so long and arduous just to increase the strength portion while the movement pattern is never practiced, so no matter what, it’s going to feel very demoralizing that no new skill has yet to come out of it. Adding these band-assisted exercises as a supplemental addition will not only speed up your progress to perform these harder movements but also add the FUN to your training.
What bands to get?

Rubberbanditz has a great set of 3 thick, looped resistance bands that are perfect for utilizing these exercises.
If you are over 200lbs (90kg), opt for this 4-band set so you have access to a thicker band and more variety to combine different resistances.
Still Too Difficult With a Band?
At first these exercises will feel extra hard, so I recommend you start with looping TWO OR THREE bands together as it will provide the most assistance. When you can perform the movement with max assistance, reduce it. Overtime it is very rewarding to perform the exercises with less bands or thinner bands. Each time you reduce the assistance it’s almost like starting all over again but at least you have the movement pattern down. And you’ll get to build it back up even faster.
Tip: Hand Placement Must Not Be Under The Bar
As I mention in the video above, the main thing to be aware of when setting up for this is to make sure you walk your hands back so the band pulls your hips forward in the proper trajectory for assistance. Don’t place your hands directly under the bar.
Balancing Tip: Send The Shoulders Forward
In all the exercises, focus on trusting the band to hold you as you try to send the shoulders forward and keep them forward. As the exercises get harder, you have to do that more. For example, in the frog-stand (crow pose), if you want to extend one leg back, you MUST send the shoulders MORE FORWARD to balance out the center of gravity (since your extended leg is bringing weight backwards.)
Warning: For Doorway Bars
If you have a doorway bar that hooks over the molding (such as the classic “iron gym” or the like) make sure your hands are setting up in a direction that isn’t pulling the bar off the wall. If it’s pulling in the right direction, it will firmly keep it in place.
How to Include This in a Full Training Session
Treat these band-assisted inversion exercises as Skill Work. The meaning of skill work is that it’s going to be something that’s not going to take a tremendous amount of strength, but require frequent repetition to refine the movement pattern. And skill work should be done after your warm-up but before your strength exercises.
Warm Up -> Skill Work -> Strength Work
For the warm up, if your wrists are finicky, do the wrist mobility warm-up from this page. It’s also nice to do a set of 10 shoulder rolls in downward dog to activate the shoulders properly for these exercises.
Afterwards, try to do 5 sets of 5 repetitions of one of these band-assisted exercises of your choice, focusing on perfecting the form:
- Band-assisted frog stand (crow pose)
- Band-assisted single leg frog-stand (crow pose)
- Band assisted handstand presses
You want to focus on quality, not quantity.
Limit yourself to 5 attempts per set and then rest a few minutes. Keep repeating the practice, focusing on quality. Once you feel that your form is degrading no matter what you do, stop and move onto strength training. This will add 10-15 minutes to your training but add a tremendous amount of joy and play and learning to your workout.
Handstand Press Tips
In the handstand press, keep the shoulders forward while trying to press up and straighten your arms. (If you flare the elbows and bring your shoulders backwards you won’t be able to get to or balance in the handstand even with the band.)
At first, focus on performing a tucked, handstand press. The sequence goes like this: After you place your hands back so the band is pulling on your hips sufficiently in a downward-dog position, walk the feet forward, send your shoulders forward and bend the arms, then tuck your knees in (so your feet are floating in the air) and then straighten your legs and hands simultaneously up into a handstand.
In the first session (or likely longer) you may not be able to straighten the legs, nor the arms. Don’t worry! It’s a very complex movement. Much more complex than you ever expected, and you need to practice this a bunch to get better at even understanding what to do.
After you can press up in a tuck (after several sessions of perfecting the form), you can either move to a thinner band or try to do it with straight legs the entire time instead of a tuck, to replicate a bent-arm pike press handstand.
In conclusion…
Adding these to the start of your workout will add a tremendous amount of fun to your workout, help you get comfortable with getting inverted, and practicing movement patterns and balance for things that are currently out of reach. If you have ANY questions, contact me here.
And read this next if you want to master the crow pose.