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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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

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

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.

As to general shoulder health and for something different. I found TGU (Turkish Getups) to be fantastic !

Ive always tried to limit the amount of weight I do with these and do it at most every other day, vs say everyday !

Is definitely (weirdly so) one the exercises that always made me "feel good and strong". Its generally considered a "slow lift" and it can become quite meditative !

Probably just a muscle spasm. This has happened to me a lot when I start a new exercise or restart an exercise after a long layoff, particularly handstand push-ups and to a lesser extent other exercises targeting the neck or upper back. It’s actually interesting you had the same experience, it’s not it’s me.

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