Thirty Minute Wall Handstand

Wall Handstands are often under-utilized in both handstand development and Gymnastic Strength Training™. Even the best of the best find these a valuable tool. In this photo World and Olympic Champion Chen Yibing is doing one of his twice weekly THIRTY minute wall handstands!

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

Wall Handstands are often under-utilized in both handstand development and Gymnastic Strength Training™. Even the best of the best find these a valuable tool. In this photo World and Olympic Champion Chen Yibing is doing one of his twice weekly THIRTY minute wall handstands!

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

What benefit does doing an exercise this long give?

The Chinese find these longer duration wall handstands therapeutic and to my personal knowledge have been using them for at least 25 years now.

Of course it is important to remember to place these extended wall handstand sets in the context of what level of athlete is performing them.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Interesting and inspiring!

My son had an Hungarian coach that every now and then took them outside and had them walk on their hands for 1 km (1000 meters), of course they did not make it all in one go but it was a real challange mentally. (they wore gloves)

Should we place our hands that wide??? its more than shoulder width. Also should we practice abs to wall handstand in addition to back-to-wall?

He's reading a newspaper too. So cool.

spyro7800 said:

Should we place our hands that wide??? its more than shoulder width. Also should we practice abs to wall handstand in addition to back-to-wall?

I'm curious about this too. My guess is that this particular form is closest to the with of his PBars and thus a more useful training position for him. Can anyone confirm? I'm guessing that for lower-level practitioners like us it would be best to stick with shoulder-width hands, but I'd be curious to hear otherwise though. I've been doing long HS sets lately too (nowhere near 30 minutes yet!) and every time I come down I "punish" myself with a set of 10 wrist pushups... seems to be working great!

I love your guys' enthusiasm and attention to detail.

- His hands are turned out simply because it is more comfortable for the extended duration handstand and, with the wall there as support, he doesn't need to use his hands for balance.

- Remember that this is Chen Yibing; former World and Olympic Still Rings Champion. At his level of GST, the wider stance allows him to pick up some additional brachialis prehab. Plus he needs the wider stance to more comfortably read his newspaper. 8)

- Note also that he is not striving to maximally elevate his shoulders into the handstand; nor is he allowing his shoulders to depress downward. Literally all he is doing is spend some time in a moderately extended wall handstand for the express purposes of wrist, elbow and shoulder girdle prehab.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

His legs are also quite relaxed, with no toe point!

I think it's interesting that he's doing a back-to-wall handstand rather than a stomach-to-wall handstand. I guess it's because it's easier to lean against the wall when he gets tired?

Long duration wall handstands are not used for technical handstand development per se, but rather for therapeutic purposes.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Would this inhibit blood circulation at the hands requiring you to shake your hands from time to time like when hanging on a bar for an extended period of time?

B1214N said:

Would this inhibit blood circulation at the hands requiring you to shake your hands from time to time like when hanging on a bar for an extended period of time?

Possibly, although it may have more to do with simple fatigue than a lack of circulation. Regardless of the reason, I have observed the Chinese athletes occasionally shaking their arms out during extended wall handstands.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I decided to train for this since november 22 of 2012 and today finally i achieved 20 minutes wall handstand

The video maybe is boring, but now i know that 30 minutes is possible for someone who trained for all his life.

Well done

Did you really take and upload a 20 min video of you upside down?

Doesn't youtube have a timelapse filter?

Yes i uploaded complete the video without time lapse i think is better. Maybe is boring to see all the video, but i think is better show this challenge as in real life.

Gssj3, how do you feel it has helped your training?

Well i feel different the muscle activation on all the exercises that involved a handstand and my handstand on rings improved too. Now i will begin another hard challenge for see how help me on exercises that involved handstand too. And i feel that my arms got big a little

That is really inspiring. Today i did 6x 2minutes stands, because I´m not able to hold it longer. I will stick with this 10-15 minutes stand once a week and I´ll try to complete it in less sets as I will improve. Hope to do at least 15 minute in one set one day

For me i followed the same scheme of chen yibing. I only did only one rep twice a week, but trying to really hold my max. When i started to do this, on my first attempt i did a little more than 5 minutes and regularly i saw a progress on each week.

There are some interesting things that happen in the body when it is upside down.

Some good and some not so good, depending upon the indvidual and the duration involved.

Not saying it's of immediate concern however, I might consider investigating this further if you haven't

and you plan to make it a regular staple of your training.

Elite athletes do somethings for their sport which aren't necessarily in best interest of their health

as you know.