Let’s be honest—many of us would love to be able to do a handstand. Not only is the handstand a game-changing pose to level up your Instagram feed, it's also a full-body exercise that challenges your strength, mobility and balance, which eventually helps improve body alignment, awareness and focus as you work on holding your body upside down.

An essential movement in the realm of gymnastics, CrossFit and yoga, the handstand requires consistent practice, not to mention the idea of inverting can be intimidating at the beginning. That said, keeping in mind a step-by-step progression and variations can make training less frustrating while building your confidence.

In this week’s Monday Motivation, we teamed up with movement specialist Steven Hightower from Coastal Fitness to help you build a strong foundation with balance and positional drills that you can progress through to achieve a freestanding handstand: