Yuval Ayalon 40 Rep Handstand Set *Update* 10 Minute Set

Remember Yuval Ayalon and his 20 rep Handstand Complex?

He set himself the goal to do 40 consecutive reps consisting of:

• 10x Stalder Presses
• 10x HeSPU
• 10x Pike Presses
• 10x Straddle Presses

Pure Madness. I can’t even hold a 4 minute Handstand these days.

Update 04.09.2014: Yuval built up to a 10 minute Handstand Balancing Set

OK back to my personal challenge.
As you recall, my approach was to break those 10 minutes into 3-4 segments and slowly decrease the resting time in between. For the last couple of months I have been doing these sessions 2-3 times per week in the end of practice and have been slowly been increasing the length of my holds and also decreasing the resting periods in between. My Endurance sessions looked and progressed as follows:

4 x 2:30 (60 sec rest in between sets)
4 x 2:30 (30 sec rest)
3 x 3:20 (60 sec rest)
3 x 3:30 (40 sec rest)
5:00 (1 min rest) + 2 x 2:30 (30 sec rest)
6:00 (1 min rest) + 2 x 2:00 (30 sec rest)

*I also added long holds against the wall inspired by John Sapinosso and the Ido portal team, and reached a 20 min wall assisted hold which was a great addition to my preparation.

So this is where I was last week before a random chat with Sascha Bachman, who basically told me to forget a little about the progressions…, “Just go for it” and approach it more as a psychological /mental challenge rather than a physical one.

Today happened to be a nice day so I went outside to practice. I was a little short on time, so I decided to go for some technique work and then an endurance session… Although I had the 10 min on the back of my mind, I still didn’t really decide to go for it… 6 minutes into it I started to think, why not…, one minute at a time, one arm handstand at a time… And there I was, at the 10 minutes mark with some fatigue but not something to write home about…

So what’s next? Time will tell…