How I went from 0 to 40 seconds Handstand Hold in 12 Months

east81

New member
I know my progress is really slow and not impressive at all compared to others. But I put in hard work like many others, just not as smart. I have made many stupid mistakes and used ineffective training methods. Yet it also means I could share these mistakes with you guys so hopefully nobody will be repeating them. I made a video (link:
) documenting my progress over the past year where I have gone from not being able to do a handstand at all to being able to do (1) 40 seconds of handstand hold, (2) 1 rep of handstand pushup and (3) press to handstand.

I'm sure there are many handstand experts out there giving advice on how beginners should learn a handstand but some of them are simply too advanced for beginners to comprehend and incorporate into their trainings. So I want to share the advice that has worked for me at least as a person who has gone through the whole process:

1. Don't try your luck

In the first three months of my journey, I relentlessly did handstand kick ups, hoping I could all of a sudden miraculously hold a handstand. But it simply doesn't work that way. My wrist flexors weren't strong enough and I simply didn't know what to do with the rest of my body (i.e. Abs, legs, lower back etc). Even if I could succeed holding for a few seconds at the top, there's no guarantee that I could do the same thing the next day. It's really frustrating and stupid to train handstand that way.

2. Maximise upside down time

I like to think that the golden rule for training handstand is to maximise the time you spend upside down. That's the only way you could develop neuromuscular control over your body and not feel weird and out of control once you start doing a few seconds of free handstand. You could maximise your upside down time by doing 3 sets of at least 30 seconds of handstand hold against wall every workout. I recommend the chest to wall version and I still do it every single session.

3. Divide and conquer

Handstand is a really complex move that involves coordination of various muscle groups. I find the yoga progression for handstand very reliable and it should be used as a reference for training handstand. This means doing a lot of frog stand and headstand. Training frog stand will help develop your wrist flexors' strength, range of motion and balance. Training headstand will make you become more aware of what to do with your lower body and abs. Doing these accessory work will help you fix your weak links in isolation and eventually develop the body awareness necessary to hold a handstand.

4. Train press to handstand as soon as you could hold a handstand for 10 seconds.

If you would like to hold a handstand every time, you should learn different ways of entry into a handstand. Compared to a handstand kick up, pressing into a handstand gives you a higher success rate because you could enter into a handstand slow and controlled. I started training press to handstand after I was able to do 10 seconds of handstand hold and that is around six months into training handstand (as you can see in in my video) and it has significantly increased my success rate since then.

The timeline for my handstand journey is something like this:

I have hyperlinked the milestones and matched them with my video for the sake of convenience.

1-2 months: Fail/0 second (0:11 to 1:28)

3-4 months: 5 seconds (1:38)

4-6 months: 5-15 seconds (1:52 to 2:44)

6-8 months: Press to handstand against wall, free press to handstand attempts (2:52 to 4:00)

9-11 months: Press to handstand (4:00 to 4:15)

11-12 months: Free handstand pushup (4:11); 7 handstand pushups (against wall) (4:35); handstand press by the pool (5:05); 40 seconds handstand hold (5:18)

Below are all the exercises I have done to train my handstand:
  1. Frog stand
  2. Headstand
  3. Handstand hold against wall (chest to wall)
  4. Handstand hold against wall (back to wall)
  5. Assisted handstand pushup (chest to wall)
  6. Press to handstand
  7. Handstand hold
  8. Hollow body hold
  9. Downward facing dog
Disclaimer: I am no professional street workout athlete so the above tips are just what have worked for me. Do correct me if I am wrong.

Check out my latest handstand progress on my instagram (@jme_cal). I will also share on my Instagram some thoughts on discipline, bodyweight training and philosophy in general!
 
@east81 12 months is not slow progress in my opinion. Do not be so harsh on yourself. You did very great actually!

The thing with handstands as far as my experience goes is that you can not expect any standard progress over a period of time. It is not like other exercises like pullups, squats etc. in which you can expect linear progression. Even if you think that you have mastered the handstand, there would be days when something feels off. It is an ever-evolving practice which has no end point. That is what I like about handstands!

A big salute to handbalancers!
 
@cbsmel Yea spot on bro. It's not a strength move so it couldn't be done with the strength building way. It involves balance, coordination and mobility. That's why maximising upside down time is so important cos only by doing that, u have time to focus on building mind muscle connection.

Happy trainings bro:)
 
@cbsmel
12 months is not slow progress in my opinion.

Agreed, it’s actually pretty great – don’t play this down OP, a handstand within 12 months takes a serious amount of training, passion, and dedication!
 
@east81 Bro this is beautiful... I’m 6’3” 194 lbs. semi athletic build. I want to get into strong body weight exercises that test true strength, dexterity, and coordination like muscle ups and this. It’ll be a long road, but more and more i find myself wanting to start a program that can help me progress to the end goal. Thanks for the motivation.
 
@pjdykeman Bro have faith. Just remember you might not be able to do those moves now, but once you could do them, people will find them more impressive given your weight and height. There are a lot of heavyweight calisthenics athletes out there like fitnessfaq and dominik sky, if they can do it, you can do it :)
 
@east81 former gymnast here... as someone who thinks of handstands as second nature this is very impressive.

all of this is great advice! i’m trying to teach my brother (28) how to do it and this helps bc i don’t even know where to start teaching it

a tip to add from experience: for those struggling with their press handstand still try starting with your feet elevated (on a bed, stairs, box at the gym) and hands on the ground then as you accomplish the skill at that height, progressively lower the elevation from which you start until you get to the ground.
 
@korokim As someone who thinks of handstands as second nature too. The biggest thing to help my handstands was to try and handstand walk everywhere. This builds strength fast and it's easy and fun to do. You still will need to work on holding still balance though.
 
@dawn16 Yes I do wrist prep every time. It's a must if you want to your handstand to sustain a wider range of motion. Stretch your wrist flexors in particular.
 
@east81 Nice work, from my point of view 12 months isn't really slow...

How did you practice for the press to handstand? I'm struggling to get up from frog pose :-D
 
@scottz66 I saw this guy on who posted the other day saying he did 1 minute handstand in 3 months...that kinda put things into perspective. But mate, ur right. We are in the same game just different levels, same hell just different devils.

I did a lot of handstand press against wall. Do plenty of pike stretch bro, that will help build hip flexor compression strength and loosen up your hamstrings so you could bring ur hips as high as possible. The higher the hips, the easier the press!
 
@cbsmel I studied political and legal philosophy when I was at uni. I focused particularly on perfectionism, ancient Chinese thoughts and liberalism. But the books that influenced me most are Nietszche's Genealogy of Morals and Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
 
@east81 Yeah, hip flexor strength and hamstring flexibility is an issue I just started to work on.
Will try handstand presses against a wall and hopefully not failing to hard :-D
 
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