Gymnastics Explained
Handspring
A forward movement from the feet onto the hands and over onto the feet again. It's the entry for the simplest family of vaults.
A handspring takes the gymnast forward, onto the hands and over onto the feet, with a push from the hands in the middle. It’s used in forward tumbling on floor, on beam, and above all on vault.
In a handspring vault, the gymnast takes off from the springboard facing forwards, places both hands on the table and rotates over them. The plain handspring is the joint lowest-valued vault in both 2025–2028 Codes — 1.60 for women and 1.2 for men — and everything else in the family is built by adding twists and saltos after the table, up to the women’s Produnova (6.00), a handspring followed by a double front salto.
The Tsukahara family also starts with a handspring, but turns a quarter or half onto the table and finishes with a salto backward. On beam, a handspring forward is one of the B-value acrobatic skills the Code allows to be repeated for connection value.
The backward equivalent is the back handspring.
Sources
- Women's Artistic Gymnastics — 2025-2028 Code of Points — International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) (accessed 31 August 2026)
- Men's Artistic Gymnastics — 2025-2028 Code of Points — International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) (accessed 31 August 2026)