How long it took you to get to where you are in your HS?

As above any HS, non in particular.

I have been practicing for a solid year and have consistant 10 second plus holds. Just this past month I have been starting to hit the 20 second mark.

1 year?

wow okay, at least I know my body is not retarded or something.

Yep, handstands take a long time to develop properly, I have been able to do a dirty arched handstand for about 2 years and have just recently fixed it up (over the past year) so I can actually move forward with my handbalancing. Just try and practice every day if your body can take that kind of frequency.

I have been doing handstands for about 10 months and can hold a free standing one for almost a minute. Last month I achieved a press to HS from frogstand and bent arm tuck planche.

Use to practice every day for 5 to 10 minutes when I was only able to hold myself in a HS for a couple of seconds. Now its more about developing strength and flexibility to progress further, so now I work more on conditioning.

When you first learned how to stand, as a toddler, how much time did you devote to training it?

All the time. Almost every waking hour during that period in your childhood you spend perfecting this skill.

Standing on your hands is not different. One should spend a lot of time to perfect it. Dont expect from 10 min three times a week to reach complete mastery of this skill.

When training in france with equilibre master Claude Victoria, I spent 8 hours a day training handstands only....

As I often say - open up your work capacity and then use it!

wow 8 hours.

What do you do within that 8 hours may i ask?

Maybe I can form some idea on how to come up with a program until coach comes out with his book.

I have detailed my stay with Master Claude Victoria in my blog:

http://idoportal.blogspot.com/2009/02/second-day-training-at-claude-victorias.html

Ido.