The handstand challenge: will practice make perfect as deadline nears?
With just one week of training left, health editor Jeanette Wang dives straight into holding the handstand after a quick warm-up and wrist stretches
There's a research-backed theory that if you practise any skill for 10,000 hours, you'll master it. If that's true then it was perhaps unrealistic to set myself the challenge of holding a freestanding handstand for five seconds after four weeks of training.
If I practised for an hour every day, it would take more than 27 years to reach 10,000 hours. That means I'd be pulling off the handstand at age 60 - if my joints still hold up by then.
Nonetheless, I remain optimistic. The goal, after all, is just five seconds. (Flukes happen.) Besides, I'm being guided by a very experienced and encouraging gymnastic movement coach, Amy Ridge of Pure Fitness.
With just one week of training left, we dived straight into holding the handstand after a quick warm-up and wrist stretches.
First up were handstands against a wall for 60 seconds each time. These were done in two ways: facing the wall and back to the wall.
The wall-facing handstand is ideal, Ridge says, because that's when the body is in a straight line. "When you have your back to the wall, you tend to have a bend in the back," she says.