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How to Do a Handstand

303 points by kaycebasques 4y ago

n0mad01 4y ago
high risk of injury, no advantages over other exercises.
- arjun_krishna1 4y ago
  its fun though
- polote 4y ago
  Never seen anyone injured himself doing a handstand. But running has a high injury rate and still a lot of people find benefit practicing it
  - n0mad01 4y ago
    i assumed that until you can do a handstand with ease, the risk of injury is high. the load on the shoulder joints in this position is very unfavourable. millions of people run every day, of course there are injuries.
    - str34m 4y ago
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      It’s not the shoulders. It’s the finger, wrist and elbow joints and ligaments (your fingers need to act as toes, your arms are now legs) and not learning how to bail safely (if you flip over and don’t have the reflex to cart wheel out).
      - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
        Handstands definitely work the shoulders. There's a reason why handstand pushups (often done against a wall for muscle-building/strength purposes) are considered an advanced shoulder exercise. It's sort of the calisthenics equivalent of the overhead press.
        2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        I didn’t say they didn’t. But that won’t be the main source of injury. There are smaller and weaker muscles in the chain if you want to achieve a free standing handstand and not just lean on a wall inverted. Do free floating handstands for time and see what hurts more.
  - dymk 4y ago
    I've seen people injure themselves doing a handstand, because they skip the part where they learn to bail out when falling forwards. Learn to pirouette or roll before you try free standing handstands, folks! But if you do it safely, risk of injury is very low. Less than spraining an ankle running on wet grass (which football and soccer players do all the time).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- rpmisms 4y ago
  Yeah, but it's fun.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lgg 4y ago
  I did partner acrobatics (hobbyist level), and could do handstands in the middle of the room for ~20-40 seconds fairly consistently (and on a good day much more than that). Handstands are actually one of the safer things you can do, especially among inversions... it is really easy to injure your neck in a headstand. I could also walk on my hands for a fairly long distance (it turns out once you are comfortable with supporting your weight on your hands it is easier than standing still), and when I had a spotter or was against a wall could do 1 arm hand stands and press up from a tripod headstand to a handstand (which is in fact super dangerous if you don't know what you are doing). It is one hell of an upper body work out though ;-) Unfortunately I have not down any inversions in probably a year now due to the pandemic and other issues, and several months ago I injured my shoulder in unrelated way, so probably not going to be getting back into my old routines any time soon...
dav 4y ago
I was working with a personal trainer on handstands for a couple of years. It’s hard! The training exercises in this article are very close to the program I did with him. Of course it’s more helpful to have 1:1 coaching but, the progression outlined here looks correct to me. Don’t forget the warm up!
throw7 4y ago
Someone from zero cannot do a handstand in 30 days. Period. I think it's a cool goal, but you ain't doing in 30 days.
- mettamage 4y ago
  I remember with PE in high school that I'd just throw myself up the wall until I succeeded. Took me 3 tries and 4.5 hours in total. I was super bad at it due to very bad flexibility (one of the worst in class). However, I wasn't scared of throwing myself up and I knew how to fall well. It can be done.
  - str34m 4y ago
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    What ever you were capable of in school as a child has almost no relevance to your adult self unless you have kept up those skills. Kids also learn physical moves much faster. I only know a couple of adults that have learned how to handstand as adults and even then, they were already fit or had good strength to weight ratios. Still took a long time to get a good looking hold. I’ve seen kids just pick it up and start walking and hopping with control in weeks.
    - mettamage 4y ago
      > What ever you were capable of in school as a child has almost no relevance to your adult self unless you have kept up those skills. I can still do a handstand, with difficulty, but I can do it. To be fair, it was always with difficulty, it takes a few tries. I was 14/15 when I could do it. > Still took a long time to get a good looking hold. You need to get it right for 1 second to call it a handstand IMO
      - lemming 4y ago
        > You need to get it right for 1 second to call it a handstand IMO I don't think many people would call that a handstand. Or at least, if you do then the definition is so wide as to be useless. There's no balance at all involved for 1 sec, just luck.
legerdemain 4y ago
The OP says "if you have room to stand up, you have room to practice handstands." I weight 190 pounds. If I start trying handstands against the wall in my apartment, how likely am I to break through the sheet rock and put a hole in my wall?
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  If you go through the progression they show, very, very unlikely. Especially since once you get to the using the wall part you walk up it, you don't throw your 190lbs into it. Can you lean against the wall now without going through it? Can you do a pushup against the wall without going through it? If so, you'll be fine.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  If you just start out throwing your legs at the wall with no prior preparation, it will be fairly straightforward to either hurt yourself or break something nearby in the process. That's why there's a number of exercises building up to it as a progression, as outlined in the article.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Hopefully at least one of the walls is made of solid brick / concrete / steel. Otherwise you have bigger problems! Granted that wall could be complete covered by kitchen and/or cupboards.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > Hopefully at least one of the walls is made of solid brick / concrete / steel. Otherwise you have bigger problems! Why? In the US it is very common that all your walls are studs for structure with sheetrock for surface.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Europeans are generally not aware that US houses are nothing like European ones, much as USAns are not aware of how much richer and better paid they are than Europeans. Most builders would not be aware. Why would the mass public be?
Etheryte 4y ago
In this comment section: techies giving confident fitness advice. Exercise is good for you when done right. There is risk of injury when done wrong. Much like any other skill, exercises can be learned, and how fast you learn things varies. If you can, get someone knowledgeable to guide you, it makes the learning process both easier and less frustrating.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > In this comment section: techies giving confident fitness advice Aside from the well earned reputation programmers have for believing they can solve any problem, this is good old bro science. Popular on the Internet. And worth ignoring, or at least being very skeptical about. Bad advice can be pretty dangerous.
  - dymk 4y ago
    What here is "bro science"? It's a standard handstand progression. Basically what you'd teach a kid starting gymnastics. The only things I might change are: - practice methods of bailing out from the start - after wall-walk, rather than taking both legs off the wall with your body facing the wall, kick up so you're facing away from the wall and try to achieve balance
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      It's bro science because this page shows a bunch of already quite fit looking dudes - so already at an advantage - do handstand progressions with the headline "How to Do a Handstand: Get Your First Handstand in 30 Days". And then they try and sell you something at the bottom. I have seen a lot of gym going adults attempt to learn handstands. Vast majority will give up. Teaching even the gym population to hand balance is not easy.
      - smohare 4y ago
        The response to your message is just further proof of the bro science component.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
I've been working on this since the pandemic started, one of 'things I can do from home goals'. It's really hard. I can reliable hold maybe 5sec, and every once and while I can get 10s. It's the balance, I can sort of correct imbalance if leaning too far back-to-ground direction by pushing with my fingers. But if the imbalance is chest-to-ground direction, then I fall because I don't have fingers on the back of my hands. It's been a barrier for me for months. Any handstanders out there with advice please let me know the secret.
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  The trick is to use your shoulders and wrists (and elbows to a less extent) for balance, like your hips, ankles, and knees respectively. Fingers help, but they're not the main contributors to balance. Source: gymnast for over a decade in my younger years Edit: to add, most people don't have the shoulder strength to hold a handstand, so doing workouts to strengthen your shoulders and upper back is going to contribute a lot more than just doing handstands alone.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    I don't think my shoulder strength is that bad. But I have been trying to work on it doing military press, pike pushups and the like. But, I just keep falling over and I don't know what part to move to counter-act it. It's pretty frustrating actually.
    - endgame 4y ago
      My experience is that overhead shoulder mobility is extremely important to correctly stacking the shoulders and body over the balance point. If you don't have that (I don't), then the handstand feels really heavy and hard to hold. This video looks like it might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLOojV9kB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLOojV9kB8
    - nvrspyx 4y ago
      It's tension created from the shoulder muscles, upper back, and pecs. Think about when you're doing a sit up: your hip muscles, lower back, and core help you sit up and slow going back down. It's these same muscles that keep you balanced when you're sitting and standing because managing balance where your center of mass acts upon gravity requires less work than at the extremities. The same principle applies to a handstand, but it is instead your shoulders, pecs, and upper back. I was being a bit broad when I said shoulders, sorry.
bcbrown 4y ago
I was a little bummed that a site called nerdfitness was full of memes and cliches. I was hoping for something more along the lines of defining a model of the world; defining a goal to achieve; explaining how to build a system that applies the model to solve the goal. But the exercises do look useful.
- no_butterscotch 4y ago
  I hit the back button to reply to your comment, at first I thought it'd be a few images, but the GIFs and "memes" are pointless and don't add anything from an information or humor standpoint.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Listen nerd, there are lots of kinds of nerds in the world. Embrace it. The article has a lot of good information, it’s clearly not clickbate. It’s just catering presentation to the audience that’s interested, and that’s good because they’ll probably not hurt themselves and might actually do a handstand.
- thealienthing 4y ago
  NF is not so much nerds in the sense like here in hacker news. Mainly geek culture with comic book fans, movies, books, myths and rpg larp culture. It’s mainly a community where people who are inspired by stories of pop culture get together, craft their own stories and alter egos for self improvement (especially in health) and encourage each other. I’ve been in on it for nearly a year and recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good community to get some encouragement. I’ve made more progress by participating in this group than I’ve ever had in my life and the best part of it is it has helped me get some consistency in my new habits.
- agiacalone 4y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but if you're looking something more hacker-like (not so-called-nerd-like), then I can highly suggest The Hacker's Diet: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet
  - 4y ago
notjes 4y ago
ima try this! thanks
yawnxyz 4y ago
I started taking a class at the local gym called "Calisthenics" and a lot of it's about working up strength and balance to get to a handstand. I had no idea what that word meant before taking it, but I've been doing it for a couple of weeks and can confidently "float" up to a handstand! Can't hold it for very long though, so I'm working on that.
pengaru 4y ago
My days are always better when I start them with some handstand pushups against the wall. It's better than coffee at waking me up and is an excellent source of feedback on body weight status. Also takes very little time. I highly recommend incorporating at least a static hand stand against the wall into your morning routine, then try work up to turning it into full blown handstand pushups just a little bit at a time. Used to just do pushups daily, then my friend's girlfriend who did acrobatics and crap talked me into doing handstands with her one day. Never looked back, material QoL improvement ever since, thanks Stefi!
- hit8run 4y ago
  That’s bs and not sustainable. Choose a routine that won’t kill you when you get a little older. I can do muscle ups, headstand, handstands and all these calisthenics things but not that early in the morning without warmup
- mise_en_place 4y ago
  Why not just do incline or decline push-ups? Or weighted pull ups? I feel like handstand push-ups increase your risk of serious arm nerve compression injuries, like ulnar nerve compression at the wrist.
  - l33t2328 4y ago
    As someone with wrist pain, I’ve been doing all manner of pushups on fists instead of hands for years. It feels a lot better(and arguably looks cooler)
    - trentgreene 4y ago
      Same, and to any reader, make the switch to neutral grip on your presses _before_ you have wrist pain.
      - glitcher 4y ago
        Can you elaborate on neutral grip presses? Not sure what that looks like.
dumbfounder 4y ago
I hurt myself doing handstands in college. I was doing them for several weeks, was getting to the point where I could start to walk, maybe take 5 steps. Then I felt a sudden pain in my neck and I crumpled, and that was it. For years after when I sneezed I would feel shooting pain in neck. Never thought, hey I should go to the doctor. Not sure if my experience was a fluke, but I am still tempted to try again (at 47), but it is scary.
- djtango 4y ago
  How did you go about learning how to handstand? I tried figuring it out with no guidance as a carefree 18 year old and managed to have a very unclean handstand. I tried relearning it properly as a 30year old and found out that a decade or computer work left me without the proper shoulder mobility to protract overhead with decent internal rotation. As a result I can get severe neckpain (usually 4-6 weeks to recover) coming from overactive upper traps
  - westoncb 4y ago
    I was in a very similar situation myself, didn't realize how much spending ~8yrs doing computer work caused other muscles to atrophy, had difficulty not overly engaging upper traps + arms for everything when trying a fitness plan. I've slowly gotten to the point where I'm fairly well-rounded as far as being able to use core, pecs, glutes, lats etc. during various exercises, without overly taxing upper traps. If I were to do things over again I'd probably start with a regular yoga practice just to get better mind-body connection and get full body strength to a decent baseline. For handstands specifically you might check out this guy's video which imo is well thought out, thorough, designed for people not already in shape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJ2zR5tE0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJ2zR5tE0I From the same guy, I've been following a full body mobility routine which you may find useful too—seems to hit a lot of spots that get problematic through desk work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2SOrScNbww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2SOrScNbww
    - gknoy 4y ago
      I think this is one of the things I liked most about the article. Even with being full of memes (which I admit I enjoyed, despite them not being useful), the article's progression of stages of mastery in preparation for the handstand was VERY useful. It made it clear that there are going to be multiple stages of growth before doing it, so that we won't hurt ourself once we try it. Sure, I can probably get vertical (with help of a wall), but without that prep I am much more likely to hurt myself because all of my other supporting muscles are not prepared.
zulban 4y ago
This is the most obnoxious post I've ever seen on HN.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Is there a website that teaches the same fitness material but written in the completely opposite tone?
  - dymk 4y ago
    boringhumbugfitness.getofmylawn
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Rippetoe would approve
LouisSayers 4y ago
This is way overcomplicated... Here's how I taught myself: 1) Facing a wall place your hands on the ground a shoulder width apart about a foot away from it. 2) now on your hands and feet, kick one leg up towards the wall, then land it back on the ground. 3) repeat 2, try to get your leg higher and higher, allowing your second leg to also leave the ground. Keep doing this until you go vertical. If you go past vertical your legs will simply touch the wall and you can push off it back onto the ground. Once you get comfortable doing this you'll find you're able to Handstand without touching the wall and can hold it. At this point ensure your head also goes vertical. Practice handstands every day and you should be able to do them in just a few weeks.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  interesting , may have to try that
- Lanzaa 4y ago
  > [From HN Guidelines] Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Your comment feels like a shallow dismissal because it seems oversimplified to me. I am ~90% confident if I followed your suggestion I would be injured. While the article provides advice on how to proceed through each stage fairly safely. In fact, in the tips and tricks section of the article there appears to be a video of someone following your suggestion and injuring themselves.
Svoka 4y ago
Page is 90MB download. I don't judge, just thought it was curious data point (all resources if you scroll to the bottom).
sakerbos 4y ago
Epic guide, definitely going to give it a go, thank you! (Easy on the gifs next time please, it makes it incredibly difficult to read )
zerop 4y ago
If handstand is hard for you another alternate i would suggest is "shoulder stand".. though may not be as beneficial as handstand but still quite good and quite simple
progfix 4y ago
I think a beginner mistake for handstands is not having the head in the right position. Look at a picture of a proper handstand, the head is always in front of the arms. Beginners often keep their head between the arms which makes it much harder to balance your body.
aslushnikov 4y ago
I learned handstands at a circus school and this tutorial indeed looks very similar to what we where doing. The article also suggests a belly-to-wall handstands at some point, which (according to my teachers) is a much better exercise for a proper handstand then a back-to-wall handstands. Two things that help me practice these days: - voice-controlled timer to keep track of handstand time: https://timeless.aslushnikov.com/ https://timeless.aslushnikov.com/ (I didn’t find any readily available so hacked my own) - facebook’s “Handstands Anonymous” group to boost motivation: https://www.facebook.com/groups/handstandsanonymous/?ref=share https://www.facebook.com/groups/handstandsanonymous/?ref=sha...
praptak 4y ago
My progression to handstand: 1. Do it against a wall 2. Do it without a wall. If you are reasonably fit, 1. is a matter of a few tries. Source: in primary school it got one PE lesson to get all of the class to do it. I also showed this to a few people as an adult and they just did it after like 3 attempts. Getting from 2. to 1. is just practice. Don't do it on a hard floor. Maybe I view it as too easy because I learned it as a child.
- oska 4y ago
  > Maybe I view it as too easy because I learned it as a child. This is my experience with headstands. Never lost the ability to do them (gained as a child). I was surprised when they were treated as a big deal in yoga classes.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Hey! My progression for other activities as well.
jjcm 4y ago
Handstands resulted in one of my worst injuries, but I would still recommend them! While training for them I felt absolutely great fitness level wise, and they also helped me a lot with the classic "programmers neck". My advice - take them slowly and don't be overconfident. Get yourself to the point where you can do an overhead press with at least 70% of your bodyweight first. For those curious about the potential injuries, I was doing a handstand on a raised platform, fell, and had my right elbow get pressed to my left shoulder behind my head. This resulted in a tear of my teres minor and my subscapularis, as well as some nerve damage in my abdomen. Ended up needing surgery to restore functionality in the shoulder. I've got about 85% return of functionality. I don't regret my time doing them, and would likely still be doing them if I could (I no longer have the flexibility in the right shoulder to bone stack effectively).
- marliechiller 4y ago
  I dont think 70% overhead press is necessary for a handstand - its a much more balance oriented exercise than strength. Obviously strength is needed too, but 70% OHP will be unachievable for most people. I can handstand but only OHP about 40% of my body weight so I'm sure others can do the same
jacksonkmarley 4y ago
This article had 2 very noticeable features. 1) It was incredibly full of fluff. The actual content was actually not unuseful, it made me want to start practicing handstands, but the whole thing could have been quite brief without all the memes and marketing. 2) The gifs of the exercises (not the memes) were far superior for a reader compared with embedding, or worse linking, youtube videos. They did both here but I was already in skimming mode from all the fluff. I've read a lot of articles on gym stuff lately and it's pretty annoying having to repeatedly scan through 20 min videos for a 5 second demonstration.
- jacobjuul 4y ago
  Immediate turn off to be honest
- larusso 4y ago
  I’m interested in the topic and also found the memes quite cool but yes the other stuff and too much off topic text is a huge downer.
- samb1729 4y ago
  I couldn’t agree more. Why the author would want their long-form writing to resemble a concatenated tweet thread is beyond me; do they assume a short attention span in their audience?
  - blowski 4y ago
    > do they assume a short attention span in their audience Yes. It’s probably a valid assumption. We are not necessarily their target market.
    - skrebbel 4y ago
      > We are not necessarily their target market. I wonder who your "we" refers to? I mean the site is called "Nerd Fitness", seems to me like we, the average HN reader, are exactly their target market :-)
- 4y ago
machiaweliczny 4y ago
The non-obvious tip I can give is to keep point feet. This help to stiffen whole body. Other good exercise is curling on floor in “hollow body”position. Or if you are like me and trained chest all the time and can’t keep blocked elbows due to that then raising arms while in prayer position is helpful. And probably for most of people here “dead bug” exercise is needed to learn how to activate core (due to sitting all days) Edit: I will use this post to promote acroyoga. Check it out guys as lots of techies seem to enjoy it.
jdthedisciple 4y ago
I just achieved my personal record of 35 seconds long free handstand two days ago and I just wanna say this: DO NOT try the handstand without PROPERLY warming up, else you can and will seriously and very badly injure yourself (speaking from experience).
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  For inactive people, it's probably also best to start with easier exercises that don't involve as much balance or strength. Your tendons and joints take time to adapt to exercise, in fact they take longer than muscles to adapt. For example, some pushup regression (e.g. pushup with your knees on the floor) followed by regular pushups builds arm and shoulder strength/stability. This would make learning the handstand much easier and safer later on.
- waveymaus 4y ago
  came here to say just this. number one lesson from handstanding is the value of warming up and being kind to your wrists.
leksak 4y ago
I thought the shoulder warmup was woefully inadequate. This is better, not perfect https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1YHIV4a81Os https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1YHIV4a81Os Personally I use the one above and a few other and rotate through them between sessions
AzzieElbab 4y ago
I am so jealous of anyone able to read a single paragraph of that article. I could not need keep focus on letters because of all the gifs
- dymk 4y ago
  Vyvanse helped me with that
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    For that site, more like anti-seizure meds
einpoklum 4y ago
The main take-away you should have from that page: Most of your practice and progress is _not_ the hand-stand. It's all of the lead-up. It's like that story about "stone soup": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup The handstand is the stone soup. You'll actually do a bunch of exercising with no magic handstand at all, and once you're good enough at all of that stuff, you'll get the hand-stand as a bonus. Just like the stone soup is only ready once a regular soup is made without the stone.
amelius 4y ago
Instead of doing handstands, do dead-hangs; they are good for a lot of things, including your back and shoulders. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/dead-hang#benefits https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/dead-hang...
atom-morgan 4y ago
Shameless self promotion but who cares, everyone keeps addressing how much fluff there is in this article. I have a solid handstand and I covered my exact process in 40 seconds: https://www.instagram.com/p/CeGzIrEDyTb/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CeGzIrEDyTb/ A few people on Instagram and TikTok have commented saying this video was all they needed to close the final gap in their balance.

303 points by kaycebasques 4y ago

n0mad01 4y ago

high risk of injury, no advantages over other exercises.

arjun_krishna1 4y ago
its fun though
polote 4y ago
Never seen anyone injured himself doing a handstand. But running has a high injury rate and still a lot of people find benefit practicing it
- n0mad01 4y ago
  i assumed that until you can do a handstand with ease, the risk of injury is high. the load on the shoulder joints in this position is very unfavourable. millions of people run every day, of course there are injuries.
  - str34m 4y ago
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    It’s not the shoulders. It’s the finger, wrist and elbow joints and ligaments (your fingers need to act as toes, your arms are now legs) and not learning how to bail safely (if you flip over and don’t have the reflex to cart wheel out).
    - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
      Handstands definitely work the shoulders. There's a reason why handstand pushups (often done against a wall for muscle-building/strength purposes) are considered an advanced shoulder exercise. It's sort of the calisthenics equivalent of the overhead press.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        I didn’t say they didn’t. But that won’t be the main source of injury. There are smaller and weaker muscles in the chain if you want to achieve a free standing handstand and not just lean on a wall inverted. Do free floating handstands for time and see what hurts more.
- dymk 4y ago
  I've seen people injure themselves doing a handstand, because they skip the part where they learn to bail out when falling forwards. Learn to pirouette or roll before you try free standing handstands, folks! But if you do it safely, risk of injury is very low. Less than spraining an ankle running on wet grass (which football and soccer players do all the time).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rpmisms 4y ago
Yeah, but it's fun.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lgg 4y ago
I did partner acrobatics (hobbyist level), and could do handstands in the middle of the room for ~20-40 seconds fairly consistently (and on a good day much more than that). Handstands are actually one of the safer things you can do, especially among inversions... it is really easy to injure your neck in a headstand. I could also walk on my hands for a fairly long distance (it turns out once you are comfortable with supporting your weight on your hands it is easier than standing still), and when I had a spotter or was against a wall could do 1 arm hand stands and press up from a tripod headstand to a handstand (which is in fact super dangerous if you don't know what you are doing). It is one hell of an upper body work out though ;-) Unfortunately I have not down any inversions in probably a year now due to the pandemic and other issues, and several months ago I injured my shoulder in unrelated way, so probably not going to be getting back into my old routines any time soon...

dav 4y ago

I was working with a personal trainer on handstands for a couple of years. It’s hard! The training exercises in this article are very close to the program I did with him. Of course it’s more helpful to have 1:1 coaching but, the progression outlined here looks correct to me. Don’t forget the warm up!

throw7 4y ago

Someone from zero cannot do a handstand in 30 days. Period. I think it's a cool goal, but you ain't doing in 30 days.

mettamage 4y ago
I remember with PE in high school that I'd just throw myself up the wall until I succeeded. Took me 3 tries and 4.5 hours in total. I was super bad at it due to very bad flexibility (one of the worst in class). However, I wasn't scared of throwing myself up and I knew how to fall well. It can be done.
- str34m 4y ago
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  What ever you were capable of in school as a child has almost no relevance to your adult self unless you have kept up those skills. Kids also learn physical moves much faster. I only know a couple of adults that have learned how to handstand as adults and even then, they were already fit or had good strength to weight ratios. Still took a long time to get a good looking hold. I’ve seen kids just pick it up and start walking and hopping with control in weeks.
  - mettamage 4y ago
    > What ever you were capable of in school as a child has almost no relevance to your adult self unless you have kept up those skills. I can still do a handstand, with difficulty, but I can do it. To be fair, it was always with difficulty, it takes a few tries. I was 14/15 when I could do it. > Still took a long time to get a good looking hold. You need to get it right for 1 second to call it a handstand IMO
    - lemming 4y ago
      > You need to get it right for 1 second to call it a handstand IMO I don't think many people would call that a handstand. Or at least, if you do then the definition is so wide as to be useless. There's no balance at all involved for 1 sec, just luck.

legerdemain 4y ago

The OP says "if you have room to stand up, you have room to practice handstands." I weight 190 pounds. If I start trying handstands against the wall in my apartment, how likely am I to break through the sheet rock and put a hole in my wall?

Jtsummers 4y ago
If you go through the progression they show, very, very unlikely. Especially since once you get to the using the wall part you walk up it, you don't throw your 190lbs into it. Can you lean against the wall now without going through it? Can you do a pushup against the wall without going through it? If so, you'll be fine.
Etheryte 4y ago
If you just start out throwing your legs at the wall with no prior preparation, it will be fairly straightforward to either hurt yourself or break something nearby in the process. That's why there's a number of exercises building up to it as a progression, as outlined in the article.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Hopefully at least one of the walls is made of solid brick / concrete / steel. Otherwise you have bigger problems! Granted that wall could be complete covered by kitchen and/or cupboards.
- jefftk 4y ago
  > Hopefully at least one of the walls is made of solid brick / concrete / steel. Otherwise you have bigger problems! Why? In the US it is very common that all your walls are studs for structure with sheetrock for surface.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Europeans are generally not aware that US houses are nothing like European ones, much as USAns are not aware of how much richer and better paid they are than Europeans. Most builders would not be aware. Why would the mass public be?

Etheryte 4y ago

In this comment section: techies giving confident fitness advice. Exercise is good for you when done right. There is risk of injury when done wrong. Much like any other skill, exercises can be learned, and how fast you learn things varies. If you can, get someone knowledgeable to guide you, it makes the learning process both easier and less frustrating.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> In this comment section: techies giving confident fitness advice Aside from the well earned reputation programmers have for believing they can solve any problem, this is good old bro science. Popular on the Internet. And worth ignoring, or at least being very skeptical about. Bad advice can be pretty dangerous.
- dymk 4y ago
  What here is "bro science"? It's a standard handstand progression. Basically what you'd teach a kid starting gymnastics. The only things I might change are: - practice methods of bailing out from the start - after wall-walk, rather than taking both legs off the wall with your body facing the wall, kick up so you're facing away from the wall and try to achieve balance
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    It's bro science because this page shows a bunch of already quite fit looking dudes - so already at an advantage - do handstand progressions with the headline "How to Do a Handstand: Get Your First Handstand in 30 Days". And then they try and sell you something at the bottom. I have seen a lot of gym going adults attempt to learn handstands. Vast majority will give up. Teaching even the gym population to hand balance is not easy.
    - smohare 4y ago
      The response to your message is just further proof of the bro science component.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

I've been working on this since the pandemic started, one of 'things I can do from home goals'. It's really hard. I can reliable hold maybe 5sec, and every once and while I can get 10s. It's the balance, I can sort of correct imbalance if leaning too far back-to-ground direction by pushing with my fingers. But if the imbalance is chest-to-ground direction, then I fall because I don't have fingers on the back of my hands. It's been a barrier for me for months. Any handstanders out there with advice please let me know the secret.

nvrspyx 4y ago
The trick is to use your shoulders and wrists (and elbows to a less extent) for balance, like your hips, ankles, and knees respectively. Fingers help, but they're not the main contributors to balance. Source: gymnast for over a decade in my younger years Edit: to add, most people don't have the shoulder strength to hold a handstand, so doing workouts to strengthen your shoulders and upper back is going to contribute a lot more than just doing handstands alone.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  I don't think my shoulder strength is that bad. But I have been trying to work on it doing military press, pike pushups and the like. But, I just keep falling over and I don't know what part to move to counter-act it. It's pretty frustrating actually.
  - endgame 4y ago
    My experience is that overhead shoulder mobility is extremely important to correctly stacking the shoulders and body over the balance point. If you don't have that (I don't), then the handstand feels really heavy and hard to hold. This video looks like it might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLOojV9kB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLOojV9kB8
  - nvrspyx 4y ago
    It's tension created from the shoulder muscles, upper back, and pecs. Think about when you're doing a sit up: your hip muscles, lower back, and core help you sit up and slow going back down. It's these same muscles that keep you balanced when you're sitting and standing because managing balance where your center of mass acts upon gravity requires less work than at the extremities. The same principle applies to a handstand, but it is instead your shoulders, pecs, and upper back. I was being a bit broad when I said shoulders, sorry.

bcbrown 4y ago

I was a little bummed that a site called nerdfitness was full of memes and cliches. I was hoping for something more along the lines of defining a model of the world; defining a goal to achieve; explaining how to build a system that applies the model to solve the goal. But the exercises do look useful.

no_butterscotch 4y ago
I hit the back button to reply to your comment, at first I thought it'd be a few images, but the GIFs and "memes" are pointless and don't add anything from an information or humor standpoint.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Listen nerd, there are lots of kinds of nerds in the world. Embrace it. The article has a lot of good information, it’s clearly not clickbate. It’s just catering presentation to the audience that’s interested, and that’s good because they’ll probably not hurt themselves and might actually do a handstand.
thealienthing 4y ago
NF is not so much nerds in the sense like here in hacker news. Mainly geek culture with comic book fans, movies, books, myths and rpg larp culture. It’s mainly a community where people who are inspired by stories of pop culture get together, craft their own stories and alter egos for self improvement (especially in health) and encourage each other. I’ve been in on it for nearly a year and recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good community to get some encouragement. I’ve made more progress by participating in this group than I’ve ever had in my life and the best part of it is it has helped me get some consistency in my new habits.
agiacalone 4y ago
Slightly off-topic, but if you're looking something more hacker-like (not so-called-nerd-like), then I can highly suggest The Hacker's Diet: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet
- 4y ago

notjes 4y ago

ima try this! thanks

yawnxyz 4y ago

I started taking a class at the local gym called "Calisthenics" and a lot of it's about working up strength and balance to get to a handstand. I had no idea what that word meant before taking it, but I've been doing it for a couple of weeks and can confidently "float" up to a handstand! Can't hold it for very long though, so I'm working on that.

pengaru 4y ago

My days are always better when I start them with some handstand pushups against the wall. It's better than coffee at waking me up and is an excellent source of feedback on body weight status. Also takes very little time. I highly recommend incorporating at least a static hand stand against the wall into your morning routine, then try work up to turning it into full blown handstand pushups just a little bit at a time. Used to just do pushups daily, then my friend's girlfriend who did acrobatics and crap talked me into doing handstands with her one day. Never looked back, material QoL improvement ever since, thanks Stefi!

hit8run 4y ago
That’s bs and not sustainable. Choose a routine that won’t kill you when you get a little older. I can do muscle ups, headstand, handstands and all these calisthenics things but not that early in the morning without warmup
mise_en_place 4y ago
Why not just do incline or decline push-ups? Or weighted pull ups? I feel like handstand push-ups increase your risk of serious arm nerve compression injuries, like ulnar nerve compression at the wrist.
- l33t2328 4y ago
  As someone with wrist pain, I’ve been doing all manner of pushups on fists instead of hands for years. It feels a lot better(and arguably looks cooler)
  - trentgreene 4y ago
    Same, and to any reader, make the switch to neutral grip on your presses _before_ you have wrist pain.
    - glitcher 4y ago
      Can you elaborate on neutral grip presses? Not sure what that looks like.

dumbfounder 4y ago

I hurt myself doing handstands in college. I was doing them for several weeks, was getting to the point where I could start to walk, maybe take 5 steps. Then I felt a sudden pain in my neck and I crumpled, and that was it. For years after when I sneezed I would feel shooting pain in neck. Never thought, hey I should go to the doctor. Not sure if my experience was a fluke, but I am still tempted to try again (at 47), but it is scary.

djtango 4y ago
How did you go about learning how to handstand? I tried figuring it out with no guidance as a carefree 18 year old and managed to have a very unclean handstand. I tried relearning it properly as a 30year old and found out that a decade or computer work left me without the proper shoulder mobility to protract overhead with decent internal rotation. As a result I can get severe neckpain (usually 4-6 weeks to recover) coming from overactive upper traps
- westoncb 4y ago
  I was in a very similar situation myself, didn't realize how much spending ~8yrs doing computer work caused other muscles to atrophy, had difficulty not overly engaging upper traps + arms for everything when trying a fitness plan. I've slowly gotten to the point where I'm fairly well-rounded as far as being able to use core, pecs, glutes, lats etc. during various exercises, without overly taxing upper traps. If I were to do things over again I'd probably start with a regular yoga practice just to get better mind-body connection and get full body strength to a decent baseline. For handstands specifically you might check out this guy's video which imo is well thought out, thorough, designed for people not already in shape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJ2zR5tE0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJ2zR5tE0I From the same guy, I've been following a full body mobility routine which you may find useful too—seems to hit a lot of spots that get problematic through desk work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2SOrScNbww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2SOrScNbww
  - gknoy 4y ago
    I think this is one of the things I liked most about the article. Even with being full of memes (which I admit I enjoyed, despite them not being useful), the article's progression of stages of mastery in preparation for the handstand was VERY useful. It made it clear that there are going to be multiple stages of growth before doing it, so that we won't hurt ourself once we try it. Sure, I can probably get vertical (with help of a wall), but without that prep I am much more likely to hurt myself because all of my other supporting muscles are not prepared.

zulban 4y ago

This is the most obnoxious post I've ever seen on HN.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Is there a website that teaches the same fitness material but written in the completely opposite tone?
- dymk 4y ago
  boringhumbugfitness.getofmylawn
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Rippetoe would approve

LouisSayers 4y ago

This is way overcomplicated... Here's how I taught myself: 1) Facing a wall place your hands on the ground a shoulder width apart about a foot away from it. 2) now on your hands and feet, kick one leg up towards the wall, then land it back on the ground. 3) repeat 2, try to get your leg higher and higher, allowing your second leg to also leave the ground. Keep doing this until you go vertical. If you go past vertical your legs will simply touch the wall and you can push off it back onto the ground. Once you get comfortable doing this you'll find you're able to Handstand without touching the wall and can hold it. At this point ensure your head also goes vertical. Practice handstands every day and you should be able to do them in just a few weeks.

paulpauper 4y ago
interesting , may have to try that
Lanzaa 4y ago
> [From HN Guidelines] Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Your comment feels like a shallow dismissal because it seems oversimplified to me. I am ~90% confident if I followed your suggestion I would be injured. While the article provides advice on how to proceed through each stage fairly safely. In fact, in the tips and tricks section of the article there appears to be a video of someone following your suggestion and injuring themselves.

Svoka 4y ago

Page is 90MB download. I don't judge, just thought it was curious data point (all resources if you scroll to the bottom).

sakerbos 4y ago

Epic guide, definitely going to give it a go, thank you! (Easy on the gifs next time please, it makes it incredibly difficult to read )

zerop 4y ago

If handstand is hard for you another alternate i would suggest is "shoulder stand".. though may not be as beneficial as handstand but still quite good and quite simple

progfix 4y ago

I think a beginner mistake for handstands is not having the head in the right position. Look at a picture of a proper handstand, the head is always in front of the arms. Beginners often keep their head between the arms which makes it much harder to balance your body.

aslushnikov 4y ago

I learned handstands at a circus school and this tutorial indeed looks very similar to what we where doing. The article also suggests a belly-to-wall handstands at some point, which (according to my teachers) is a much better exercise for a proper handstand then a back-to-wall handstands. Two things that help me practice these days: - voice-controlled timer to keep track of handstand time: https://timeless.aslushnikov.com/ https://timeless.aslushnikov.com/ (I didn’t find any readily available so hacked my own) - facebook’s “Handstands Anonymous” group to boost motivation: https://www.facebook.com/groups/handstandsanonymous/?ref=share https://www.facebook.com/groups/handstandsanonymous/?ref=sha...

praptak 4y ago

My progression to handstand: 1. Do it against a wall 2. Do it without a wall. If you are reasonably fit, 1. is a matter of a few tries. Source: in primary school it got one PE lesson to get all of the class to do it. I also showed this to a few people as an adult and they just did it after like 3 attempts. Getting from 2. to 1. is just practice. Don't do it on a hard floor. Maybe I view it as too easy because I learned it as a child.

oska 4y ago
> Maybe I view it as too easy because I learned it as a child. This is my experience with headstands. Never lost the ability to do them (gained as a child). I was surprised when they were treated as a big deal in yoga classes.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Hey! My progression for other activities as well.

jjcm 4y ago

Handstands resulted in one of my worst injuries, but I would still recommend them! While training for them I felt absolutely great fitness level wise, and they also helped me a lot with the classic "programmers neck". My advice - take them slowly and don't be overconfident. Get yourself to the point where you can do an overhead press with at least 70% of your bodyweight first. For those curious about the potential injuries, I was doing a handstand on a raised platform, fell, and had my right elbow get pressed to my left shoulder behind my head. This resulted in a tear of my teres minor and my subscapularis, as well as some nerve damage in my abdomen. Ended up needing surgery to restore functionality in the shoulder. I've got about 85% return of functionality. I don't regret my time doing them, and would likely still be doing them if I could (I no longer have the flexibility in the right shoulder to bone stack effectively).

marliechiller 4y ago
I dont think 70% overhead press is necessary for a handstand - its a much more balance oriented exercise than strength. Obviously strength is needed too, but 70% OHP will be unachievable for most people. I can handstand but only OHP about 40% of my body weight so I'm sure others can do the same

jacksonkmarley 4y ago

This article had 2 very noticeable features. 1) It was incredibly full of fluff. The actual content was actually not unuseful, it made me want to start practicing handstands, but the whole thing could have been quite brief without all the memes and marketing. 2) The gifs of the exercises (not the memes) were far superior for a reader compared with embedding, or worse linking, youtube videos. They did both here but I was already in skimming mode from all the fluff. I've read a lot of articles on gym stuff lately and it's pretty annoying having to repeatedly scan through 20 min videos for a 5 second demonstration.

jacobjuul 4y ago
Immediate turn off to be honest
larusso 4y ago
I’m interested in the topic and also found the memes quite cool but yes the other stuff and too much off topic text is a huge downer.
samb1729 4y ago
I couldn’t agree more. Why the author would want their long-form writing to resemble a concatenated tweet thread is beyond me; do they assume a short attention span in their audience?
- blowski 4y ago
  > do they assume a short attention span in their audience Yes. It’s probably a valid assumption. We are not necessarily their target market.
  - skrebbel 4y ago
    > We are not necessarily their target market. I wonder who your "we" refers to? I mean the site is called "Nerd Fitness", seems to me like we, the average HN reader, are exactly their target market :-)
4y ago

machiaweliczny 4y ago

The non-obvious tip I can give is to keep point feet. This help to stiffen whole body. Other good exercise is curling on floor in “hollow body”position. Or if you are like me and trained chest all the time and can’t keep blocked elbows due to that then raising arms while in prayer position is helpful. And probably for most of people here “dead bug” exercise is needed to learn how to activate core (due to sitting all days) Edit: I will use this post to promote acroyoga. Check it out guys as lots of techies seem to enjoy it.

jdthedisciple 4y ago

I just achieved my personal record of 35 seconds long free handstand two days ago and I just wanna say this: DO NOT try the handstand without PROPERLY warming up, else you can and will seriously and very badly injure yourself (speaking from experience).

FartyMcFarter 4y ago
For inactive people, it's probably also best to start with easier exercises that don't involve as much balance or strength. Your tendons and joints take time to adapt to exercise, in fact they take longer than muscles to adapt. For example, some pushup regression (e.g. pushup with your knees on the floor) followed by regular pushups builds arm and shoulder strength/stability. This would make learning the handstand much easier and safer later on.
waveymaus 4y ago
came here to say just this. number one lesson from handstanding is the value of warming up and being kind to your wrists.

leksak 4y ago

I thought the shoulder warmup was woefully inadequate. This is better, not perfect https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1YHIV4a81Os https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1YHIV4a81Os Personally I use the one above and a few other and rotate through them between sessions

AzzieElbab 4y ago

I am so jealous of anyone able to read a single paragraph of that article. I could not need keep focus on letters because of all the gifs

dymk 4y ago
Vyvanse helped me with that
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  For that site, more like anti-seizure meds

einpoklum 4y ago

The main take-away you should have from that page: Most of your practice and progress is _not_ the hand-stand. It's all of the lead-up. It's like that story about "stone soup": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup The handstand is the stone soup. You'll actually do a bunch of exercising with no magic handstand at all, and once you're good enough at all of that stuff, you'll get the hand-stand as a bonus. Just like the stone soup is only ready once a regular soup is made without the stone.

amelius 4y ago

Instead of doing handstands, do dead-hangs; they are good for a lot of things, including your back and shoulders. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/dead-hang#benefits https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/dead-hang...

atom-morgan 4y ago

Shameless self promotion but who cares, everyone keeps addressing how much fluff there is in this article. I have a solid handstand and I covered my exact process in 40 seconds: https://www.instagram.com/p/CeGzIrEDyTb/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CeGzIrEDyTb/ A few people on Instagram and TikTok have commented saying this video was all they needed to close the final gap in their balance.