Mastery: The Art of Sticking With Things for the Long Haul

“What are you training right now?”

This is probably the most common question I get asked by my fitness-loving friends.

My answer is almost always the same: “I’m training handstands. Yes, still.”

I first started dabbling in handstands back in 2013. I took a few adult gymnastics classes and was immediately hooked. How could something so seemingly simple — standing upside down on your hands — be so hard in practice?

As a late-blooming athlete, I didn’t do my first push-ups until my early twenties (and my first decent push-ups years after that). It took me even longer to be able to do other basic bodyweight skills like pull-ups and single leg squats. By the time I enrolled in that gymnastics class, however, I’d built up a reasonable amount of strength and stamina through years of HIIT and bodyweight workouts. Yet my dream of holding a handstand without a wall for longer than it takes to snap a photo for Instagram still seemed lightyears away.

I pressed my gymnastics instructor for advice. He didn’t have much, other than telling me that learning to balance in a handstand is incredibly difficult and most people will never learn [[(I only later realized he was a punk kid that barely knew more than I did about handstands) >> I like the humor here, but…