A walkover is a gymnastics skill where you move from standing, through a handstand, and back to standing by “walking” your legs through the air one at a time. Unlike a cartwheel, which travels sideways, a walkover moves forward or backward with your legs splitting apart as they pass over your head. It’s one of the foundational acrobatic skills in gymnastics, appearing in floor routines, beam routines, and as a building block for more advanced movements.
Front Walkover vs. Back Walkover
Walkovers come in two main varieties. A front walkover starts with you stepping forward, placing your hands on the ground, passing through a split handstand, and landing on your feet one at a time. A back walkover reverses the direction: you arch backward from standing, place your hands behind you, pass through that same split handstand, and kick over to land on your feet.
The two versions feel quite different. In a front walkover, you can see where your hands are going, which makes it psychologically easier for many beginners. A back walkover requires you to arch blindly backward until your hands reach the floor, which demands more trust in your technique and more flexibility through the shoulders and upper back.
What Makes It Different From a Handspring
Walkovers and handsprings look similar at first glance, but the key difference is speed and flight. In a walkover, your feet land one at a time and there’s a smooth, controlled rotation with no moment where you’re completely airborne. A handspring generates enough power to include a flight phase, and both feet typically land together. Think of a walkover as the slow, flexible version and a handspring as the explosive, powerful version.
On floor, a front handspring has flight after the handstand phase, between the hands leaving the ground and the feet landing. A walkover stays grounded through the whole movement, with at least one hand or foot in contact with the floor at nearly all times. This makes walkovers more about flexibility and control than raw power.
Key Technique in a Back Walkover
The back walkover is the more commonly taught version in early training, and its technique breaks down into a few critical pieces. Before you even begin arching backward, one leg should already be lifted off the ground. This does two things: it ensures you lead with your shoulders and upper back rather than just bending at the lower spine, and it gets your top leg closer to vertical by the time your hands reach the floor.
Hand placement matters enormously. Your hands should land directly under your shoulders. If your shoulders don’t reach far enough back and your hands land too far from your body, you’ll need much more effort to push through the handstand, and you may not make it over at all. Once your hands are down, your lead leg should be straight and driving toward vertical. A bent or lagging lead leg makes the kickover harder and slower. A straight, fast-moving leg pulls you through the skill smoothly, which is also what judges want to see in competition.
Skills You Learn Before a Walkover
Gymnasts don’t jump straight into walkovers. The progression typically starts with a solid bridge (arching up from the floor with hands and feet planted). From there, the next milestone is a bridge kickover, where you push from a bridge position and kick your legs over to standing. This teaches the feeling of going over your head backward and building the shoulder and core strength to support the movement.
On beam, coaches often break the progression down further. Gymnasts first practice bridging on the beam to get comfortable being upside down with their hands close together on a narrow surface. Then they practice placing their hands on the beam in a controlled way, sometimes using a padded “gummy” beam. The final step before a full back walkover on beam is a back bend on one leg, which builds the control needed to place your hands precisely while balancing. If a gymnast can do that confidently, the full walkover typically comes together quickly.
Prerequisites include sufficient shoulder flexibility (your arms need to reach fully overhead and then some) and hip flexibility for the split position. A common drill is holding a shoulder opener position for 30 seconds at a time, arms by the ears with ribs pulled in, to build the range of motion needed.
Where Walkovers Appear in Competition
Walkovers are staples of both floor exercise and balance beam routines. On floor, they often serve as connecting elements between tumbling passes or as part of a choreographic sequence. On beam, a back walkover is one of the earlier acrobatic skills gymnasts perform in competition, and it remains common even at elite levels as a connection element.
The skill has been part of competitive gymnastics for decades. Vera Čáslavská included a back walkover in her floor routine at the 1968 Olympics. By 1972, Olga Korbut was performing an aerial walkover (a walkover done without the hands ever touching the ground), showing how quickly the skill evolved once it became standard. Today, aerial walkovers are themselves common at higher levels, treated as a natural extension of the basic walkover.
Protecting the Spine
Because walkovers require significant arching of the back, they put repetitive stress on the lower spine. This is one of the most important health considerations for young gymnasts who practice these skills frequently. Repetitive hyperextension can cause stress fractures at a specific point in the lumbar vertebrae, a condition that shows up regularly in gymnasts who do high volumes of walkovers and similar arching skills.
Poor posture, rounded shoulders, limited shoulder flexibility, and tight hip flexors all increase the load on the lower spine during walkovers. When the shoulders can’t open fully, the body compensates by arching more aggressively through the lower back, which is where injuries develop. This is why coaches and sports medicine professionals emphasize limiting unnecessary lumbar arching and building genuine shoulder flexibility before progressing to walkovers. The goal is for the arch to be distributed across the upper back and shoulders rather than concentrated in the lower spine.