HS

[Ian Legrow]

hEY YA'LL,

I am curious. I have been practicing my handstands and i amg etting better. But how long is to be expected until can balance perfectly.

[Ryan Verma]

Took me a total of 5-6 months. First month was building endurance in the shoulder muscles with handstand wall runs - I already was pretty strong. I used the second and third months only to build shoulder flexibility in an attempt to get a good straight body line. Over the following three months, I developed the ability to maintain consistent 20-30s handstands when I push off a wall (stomach to wall). If I kick up into it, I only manage to actually get into a handstand about 20% of the time, and I can only hold it for about 15s because I wasted energy on kicking up repeatedly. When I kick up, my body line is also quite bowed, and any attempts to straighten usually causes me to lose my balance.

When I finally started getting good at it, I practiced way too much and I've had to back off because I fatigued my wrist joints. In the first month, I did HSWRs about 3 times a week for a total of 15 minutes (not counting rests). I did probably 20-25 mins of HSWR in the following 2 months while I worked on my shoulder flexibility. After that I practiced handstands 3 times a week for about 10 minutes per session (including rests). In the final month when I started getting 10s + holds, I started practicing every day for 10 mins or more a day. That turned out to be a bad idea, as I already mentioned. Now I'm back down to 30 mins a week and I plan to build up slowly from there as my joints feel stronger.

I have no idea if this is the optimal approach, but it worked for me, so hopefully there's something in here that's useful to you.