I'm excited to share two powerful new features that are here to transform your training experience!

AI Handstand Coach

The AI Handstand Coach understands your current skill level and goals, then creates a workout tailored to you. Whether you're looking to improve your inversion skills, learn how to fall safely, hold your handstand longer, or achieve better form, the AI Handstand Coach has you covered.

The core idea is simple: generate a workout based on your current skill level and goals, get really good at it, and then come back to generate a new workout based on your improved skills and new goals.

This cycle of improvement helps you consistently progress in your handstand journey.

AI Prompt Workouts

Have a workout in mind that's beyond just handstands? The AI Prompt Workout feature allows you to generate any kind of workout based on your own prompts. Whether you want to focus on strength, flexibility, or endurance, simply tell the AI what you're aiming for, and it will create a custom routine just for you.

I hope this new addition helps you with your handstands and overall fitness goals. As usual, feedback is super welcome, please feel free to email me at info@humanquest.net or post a comment on this blog post.

Handstands, a delicate blend of strength, balance, and sheer will, have long captivated fitness enthusiasts and gymnasts alike. For many, mastering the handstand is not just a fitness goal; it's a symbol of dedication, perseverance, and conquering one's fears. But as every handstand enthusiast knows, the journey to a flawless handstand is often a solo one, filled with trial and error, and a lot of falling down!

Enter the Handstand Quest Community Catalog - a platform designed to transform the solitary journey of handstand mastery into a collective adventure.

What is the Handstand Quest Community Catalog?

The Handstand Quest Community Catalog is a collaborative online space created for handstand enthusiasts everywhere. It's a place where you can create, share, and explore handstand workouts. Whether you're just starting out on your handstand journey or have been practicing for years, this platform offers a space for everyone to contribute and learn.

Why Join the Community?

1. Share Your Wisdom: Have a handstand workout routine that's brought you success? Share it with the community and help others on their journey.

2. Discover New Routines: Browse workouts designed by individuals from different backgrounds and expertise. You might just find your next favorite routine!

3. Feature in the Handstand Quest Mobile App: The best part? Workouts that stand out will be featured in the Handstand Quest Mobile App. It's an opportunity to have your routine recognized and used by handstand enthusiasts globally.

Conclusion

The journey to mastering the handstand, while challenging, doesn't have to be taken alone. Join us today and be part of a community that's turning the world upside down, one handstand at a time.

Are your workouts becoming monotonous and repetitive? If you're searching for a fresh way to enhance your fitness routine, you're in the right place. In this blog post, I introduce an AI-based tool designed to generate handstand-focused workouts, as well as other types of exercise routines, customized to your needs and goals.

All you have to do is “say what you want” and the AI Workout Generator will do the rest.

At the moment, the AI Workout Generator features over 200 exercises from the Handstand Quest Exercise Catalog. I'm continually working on expanding this catalog, and I'd love your help! If there's an exercise you'd like to see added, use the "Suggest Exercise" feature to contribute to the growing list of exercises.

As I continue to refine and enhance the AI Workout Generator, your feedback is invaluable. Give the tool a try and let me know what you think – was it helpful? Do you have any recommendations for improvement? Your input is crucial in shaping this fitness tool!

With the AI Workout Generator, it's easier than ever to personalize your fitness journey, especially if you're passionate about handstand training. Give it a try, contribute to the Handstand Quest Exercise Catalog, and share your thoughts as we work together to transform the way we approach fitness.

I’m excited to announce a few free programs that you could use to improve your handstands: https://catalog.handstandquest.com/programs.

And no, I am not going to ask you to login or provide an email to gain access to the programs!

15 Seconds of Handstands

This program is perfect for those who want to learn the fundamentals of handstands and build the strength and balance required to hold a handstand for at least 5 seconds. It includes a mix of exercises that target core, arm, and shoulder strength, as well as flexibility and balance training. It’s the web interactive version of this PDF.

6 Weeks to Handstands

The "6 Weeks to Handstands" program is designed for those who are ready to commit to a more intensive handstand journey. Over the course of six weeks, this program will guide you through progressive workouts, focusing on strength, balance, and technique. By the end of the program, you'll have the skills and confidence to perform a handstand with ease.

Experimental Workouts

In addition to the handstand-focused programs, there are a variety of experimental workouts that cater to different fitness levels, interests, and goals. These workouts are designed to help you discover new exercises and training methods, keeping your routine fresh and exciting.

If you have any suggestions or are not finding what you’re looking for, please let me know.

The User Interface

With the user-friendly interface, it's easy to expand each program and view the individual workouts included. Each workout comes with a detailed description, so you'll know exactly what to expect before you start.

For each exercise within a workout, you can access step-by-step instructions and videos demonstrating proper form and technique. This ensures that you can perform the exercises safely and effectively, maximizing your results.

I hope a lot of people will benefit from those programs and workouts. Enjoy and let me know if have any feedback!

For handstand enthusiasts, finding the right exercises to practice can be a challenge. That's why we've created a new online exercise catalog that aims to make it easier for users to discover a range of exercises related to handstand practice.

The online catalog, available at https://catalog.handstandquest.com, offers a convenient way for users to search and view exercises, including details on how to perform each one, tips to learn it quickly, safely and effectively, and even watch YouTube videos that demonstrate the exercise.

In addition, the catalog allows users to request new exercises. Simply provide a title for the exercise and the web app will use ChatGPT to automatically populate the relevant fields, such as category, subcategory, how-to instructions, intensity, and tips. You can also easily search for and select an image and video to accompany the request. All requests will be added to the web app exercise catalog and the Handstand Quest App.

We hope that this new resource will support the handstand community in their practice and growth. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on how we can continue to improve the online exercise catalog to best serve your needs. Please feel free to share your ideas and suggestions with us.

Whatever it is that you are trying to do, having a specific, measurable, and challenging yet attainable goal will significantly help you in achieving the results you are pursuing.

Let's say you're interested in doing a handstand or improving your movement skills. How do you know where to start? How do you check your progress?

Once you have a goal, what are you going to change in your life to make it happen? How will your day or week change? What new habits are you going to form?

Setting Goals

What sets high achievers apart from those who continue in their regular “life is happening to me” routine, is effective goal setting.

Goal-setting typically yields a success rate of 90%. People who write their goals are more likely to achieve their goal than those who don’t by 50%.

Edwin Locke’s goal-setting theory argues that for goal-setting to be successful with desired outcomes, goals must have:

• Clarity: when a goal is vague, it has limited motivational value. Ensure the clarity of the goal by making it specific, measurable, and time-bound.

• Challenge: people are often motivated by achievement, and a goal will be judged based on the significance of the anticipated accomplishment. Choose a goal that is difficult, yet attainable. Goals that are too simple may even cause us to give up. Goals should be challenging enough to motivate us without causing us undue stress.

• Commitment: Do you have a well articulated "why" for pursuing this goal? Have you accepted it and are ready to prioritize it and invest the time in it? How serious and committed are you about it?

• Feedback: You cannot improve that which you cannot measure. By making a goal measurable, it creates a clear feedback mechanism on where you are in terms of achieving it. When a goal is accomplished, it makes us feel good. It gives us a sense of satisfaction. If we don’t get any feedback, this sense of pleasure will quickly go away and the accomplishment may even be meaningless.

• Complexity: Try to keep it simple. Having too much complexity could make it overwhelming to achieve the goal.

Goals not only affect behavior, but they also help mobilize your energy, which leads to a higher effort overall.

Setting Goals in the Handstand Quest App

Ok great, so the above theory about the importance and approach to setting goals makes sense, how can the Handstand Quest app help you? Let’s take a few example goals.

Be able to hold a handstand for an average of 10 seconds.

Alright, this goal is clear and measurable. Depending on where you stand, it might be too challenging or not challenging at all. Pick a number of seconds that is challenging yet attainable.

Within the Handstand Quest app, on the Home tab, in the “Your Goals” section, click “Add” to add a new goal. Select “Exercise”, search for and pick the “handstand” exercise, change Goal Type to “average” and update the Goal Metric to “10 seconds”.

Do a total of 500 push-up reps.

Another specific and measurable goal. For the challenge, you can decide “by when” you want to achieve the timeline, and based on that, set the right habits in place in the app, which we’ll cover in the “Forming Habits” section.

Practice for 30 consecutive days.

Beyond exercise-specific goals, you could create “process” based goals that push you to practice more regularly. This goal is both specific and measurable. It gets you to practice daily for at least 30 consecutive days.

Forming Habits

What are great goals without habits? They offer the destination without the steps to get there.

Atomic Habits

What follows in this article is based on the book Atomic Habits, written by James Clear.

A habit is an automatic response to a specific situation, resulting from a practice done regularly.

Why Tiny Changes Lead to Remarkable Results

If you get 1% better each day, you will become 37% times better in a year. Just like money compounds, small repetitive behavior compounds self-improvement.

Imagine you can do 5 sec handstand today, and you push yourself to improve by 0.1 sec every day, you’ll end up at 41.5 secs by the end of the year.

The concept of overnight success doesn’t exist. Typically, we expect progress to be linear. However, the results of our habits are delayed. Until you reach a critical threshold, your small changes will seem to make no difference. That's why, when you stay motivated and you keep pushing to improve by practicing consistently, you will overcome that threshold, and it will appear like an overnight success.

One thing that helps here is having mechanisms to measure the progress and monitor that 1% improvement one day after the other.

That’s why, when you’re first onboarding on the Handstand Quest app, we give you the heads-up expectations to get in on it for the long run, to make it part of who you are.

Identity: Your Habits Define Who You Are

The word identity was originally derived from two Latin words meaning "repeated beingness".

It all starts with who you want to become. You change your identity by changing your beliefs. Your identity is the core of behavior change. The habits you choose today are not about achieving something, instead, they're about becoming someone. The intrinsic motivation that comes from it will propel you forward to form habits that will help you achieve results, goals and outcomes.

So when it comes to handstand practice, what’s your identity relative to that? Are you a hand-balancer? A gymnast? A movement practitioner? A pole dancer? You decide what that identity looks like, and the chances of forming a handstand practice habit will increase as long as your identity aligns with it.

The Habit Loop

For a habit to form and not get lost, it needs 4 factors to to exist: (1) a cue to remind you, (2) a craving to motivate you, (3) a dopamine response giving your a sense of making progress, and (4) a reward to bring you back to repeat the behavior and over time form the habit.

You would set yourself up to succeed in forming a new good habit by enabling the 4 factors to take place.

From this comes the 4 laws of behavior change that James Clear talks about in his book. Let’s say you want to do 2 minutes of handstand practice every day, how would you apply the 4 laws to increase the odds of forming this habit?

Law #1: Make it obvious.

Make the cue obvious by designing your environment. Get specific about the when and where. This is a concept that James Clear calls “Implementation Intention”.

I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].

For the 2 minute handstand practice habit, what location in the house is best for it? Find a wall with enough space in front of it and make it your practice spot.

Identify when is a good time for you to do it. First thing in the morning after brushing your teeth, before your morning coffee, right before lunch, whatever timing works best for you.

For me personally, location-wise, I put a Handstand Quest decal on the wall where I practice handstands. It’s clearly not a must, but it helps serves as an identity reminder for me (both obvious/cue and attractive/craving).

Time-wise, since I go to an F45 gym almost on a daily basis, I decided to do my handstand practice right after I come from the gym when I get home.

This is a concept that James Clear calls “Habit Stacking”.

After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

Law #2: Make it attractive.

What excites you to improve your handstand? What are the benefits of doing so? Is it the challenge? A celebration of what your body can do? Building strength, balance, and mental focus? This is related to the Identity part we talked about earlier. If you want ideas, check out The Handstand Mindset for top reasons why people choose to do handstands, but at the end of the day, your reason should come from within.

Will getting it done right before drinking your morning coffee or tea make it attractive. Just before that reward that is the first thing you want to do in the morning?

Again, this is another form of “habit stacking”.

[CURRENT HABIT] ==> triggers (cue) ==> [NEW HABIT] ==> that is rewarded by ==> [CURRENT HABIT THAT I LIKE]

One way to sustain attractiveness for a habit is to surround yourself with people who have already made it a part of their life and their identity. Make your personal handstand quest a shared one. Join a local community (hand-balancers, gymnasts, yoga, calisthenics, capoeira, etc…) or an online community. Two online handstand communities I find welcoming:

• YogaSlackers 12 Days of Handstands

• r/handbalancing

Law #3: Make it easy.

Start with something really easy, once it forms as a habit after many repetitions, start making it a little harder.

The more the repetitions (consistency), the more likely it will become an automatic response in your daily life that you don’t have to put any effort to start (i.e. a habit).

For example, depending on your current level, you may choose to practice just two minutes of handstands with this simple routine:

• Wrist Warmups (1 minute)

• Belly to Wall (30 sec)

• Back to Wall (30 sec)

Law #4: Make it satisfying.

Immediate gratification is the reward that makes habits stick. What kind of a reward do you want to give yourself after performing the 2 minute handstand habit?

Tracking progress can be a reward of its own. For example, tracking a streak (consecutive days doing habit) and seeing how far you go? Seeing progress on your ability to hold a handstand over time, etc..

Of course, there are other ways to reward yourself. How about recording a video? Sharing your workout summary on social media or directly with a friend or a group that you’re part of?

Forming Habits in the Handstand Quest App

So how does the Handstand Quest app help you form habits that enable you to improve your movement skills?

Lt’s go back to the 4 laws required for a habit to form: (1) cue (2) craving (3) response (4) reward.

Law #1: Make it obvious.

The Handstand Quest App allows you to create a habit, at a specific time, on a schedule that you prefer.

On the Home Tab, under the “Today’s Habits” section, click “Add” to add a new habit. You’ll notice that you can create two types of habits:

1. Exercise: Focus on improving a specific skill, whether available as part of the 150+ exercises in the catalog, or a custom skill. Learn more about creating custom exercises.

2. Workout: Do a specific sequence of exercises (a workout) that you could follow easily. You can pick one of the many workouts available in the app, or even design the exact specific exercises, time/reps, etc.. Learn more about creating custom workouts.

We’ll cover later the habit configuration for each of the exercises and workouts, but for both, you can specify the time, the schedule as in how many days each week, and you could even enable a reminder with a custom message to give you a cue (make it obvious) when you should do the habit.

Exercise Habit Configuration

For an exercise, you could pick a specific exercise from the catalog or a custom one.

You can then select the practice mode that you want.

• Focused: this mode lets you focus on a specific skill or exercise for a certain number of minutes.

• Prilepin: this mode creates the right level of challenge for you without pushing you too far. It generates the optimal number of reps/sets for you based on your best record.

• Max Effort: in this mode, you focus on trying to beat your previous record.

Workout Habit Configuration

For a workout, it’s simple. You pick the workout from the list of workouts in the app (including custom workouts), or you let the app choose for you a random workout.

There are 3 cues built into the app to help you get right back into the habit.

1. If you have enabled a reminder for your habit, you will get a notification at the time when you’re supposed to do the habit.

2. If you have not worked out for a day or more, a badge will show up on the app with the number of days you have not worked out.

3. The very first thing you will see when you open the app (The Home tab) is the list of your goals and habits.

Law #2: Make it attractive.

The app will help you make a habit attractive through the following features:

• Habit / Task Completion

• Video Gallery on Device

• Workout Activity and Shareable Summary

• Immediate Feedback on Progress via Goals

Habit / Task Completion

After completion of a habit, it will show up as “completed” so you have that sense of achievement.

Video Gallery on Device

Video feature in the app lets you take videos of your exercises and save them in an organized way (by exercise) in the Gallery on the device. Videos are stored in the “Files” app on your device and not in the cloud.

Beyond getting the ability to watch your form and improve it, you can easily share your videos with friends or on social media.

You can also record your exercise videos hands-free (via voice recognition) with an overlay timer. To learn more about using the app with voice, check out our post about Workout using voice commands!

Workout Activity and Shareable Summary

You can view your activity on the calendar, drill down to see the day’s exercises and share on social media.

Immediate Feedback on Progress via Goals

Progress on goals gets automatically updated, so you can see live and instantly, after you complete a habit (exercise or workout), how that’s helping you to improve.

Law #3: Make it easy.

Opening the app and seeing your habits right away will make it easy to jump into the habit and get it started.

Keep the number of habits low. Start with less than three 2-minute habits, then expand and challenge yourself more once the current habits fully form.

Law #4: Make it satisfying.

Adding a “streak” goal can help you stay laser focused on consistency, keeping track of your streak number can be a rewarding mechanism to congratulate yourself for always coming back and keeping up the habit.

Another way the app makes it satisfying is through the stats that show you your progress over time (daily, weekly, monthly) overall or per exercise. You can see how you’re progressing with time spent and best records.

The Sorites Paradox

The Sorites Paradox is an ancient Greek parable that talks about the effect one small action can have when repeated enough times.

The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. Small habits don’t just add up, they compound.

In fact, this is literally the story of the Handstand Quest App. With a very demanding full time job and family/life demands, I still managed to get it to where it is today with small tiny changes compounded over the last 3+ years.

In the context of your handstand practice, once new habits form or goals are achieved, make sure to update your goals and habits to challenge you enough so you’re always making improvements.

Keep It Challenging Yet Attainable

The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.

Don't make it too easy but also don't make it too hard.

The Prilepin capability in the app will do magic for you on this front. Based on your best record on a certain exercise, it will generate a number of sets/reps that is right in the Goldilocks zone!

That’s why I’ve decided to plug it in multiple places in the app for easier discovery.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing to take away from this whole article, I would recommend to keep it simple, and initially, minimize the number of goals and habits, so you stay focused and also set yourself up to actually form a habit.

For me, I’ve decided to set my habits up as follows:

• A workout habit, with a custom workout for wrist warmup, including 4 wrist warmup exercises, 30 seconds each.

• A “Prilepin” exercise habit for “Chest to Wall” to keep pushing me day over day to comfortably increase my time upside down.

• A “Max Effort” exercise habit for “Handstand” where I keep challenging myself to beat my record from the previous day.

For my goals, I’ve also decided to keep it simple with only two goals.

• Handstand average of 15 secs

• Chest to Wall average of 1 minute

I’m really excited to see how the new Goals and Habits capabilities will be leveraged to help people get better at handstands or some other skills/exercises.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment on this post or get in touch with me directly at info@humanquest.net.

Remember, tiny changes for remarkable results!

Although the Handstand Quest App provides more detailed “per exercise” stats, the Apple Health app is a secure place to store your health data from all apps combined, so it can give you a holistic view on Health and fitness. If you happen to use an Apple Watch, it will power up the Apple Health app with tons of useful data like energy burned, heart rate, VO2 Max, etc…

We have gone ahead and integrated with Apple Health, so our app now:

I hope you make good use of this integration. This feature was built based on a suggestion from our users to our public roadmap, so don’t hesitate to send some feedback my way (or email info@humanquest.net directly) or add feature suggestions to the public roadmap.

Enjoy!

Now you can do it all with voice, including opening up the Handstand Quest App and turning on voice commands! All ou need to say is: Hey Siri, let’s handstand!

Then you can start right away with tracking exercises by saying “start” to start tracking an exercise and “stop” to end tracking. There is a lot more that you can do, check out our post on working out with voice commands if you’d like to learn more.

If you don’t see the shortcut in your Siri shortcuts app, try first manually enabling voice in the app, then all future times you should be able to use the shortcut.

While you’re here, I also wanted to let you know about another new feature where you can now have multiple “words” or options to start or stop an exercise using your voice.

I hope you make good use of these features. They were built because users of the app asked for it, so don’t hesitate to send some feedback my way (or email info@humanquest.net directly) or add feature suggestions to the public roadmap.

Enjoy!

Meditation is a workout for the mind. It reduces anxiety, creates mindfulness and helps us respond to things more wisely rather than react blindly. We are more than a head and a body dragging itself behind it, and meditation is a way to get out of our head and into our body!

If meditation is such a good habit for us, why don’t more and more people meditate regularly?

There’s a lot that goes into adding new habits into our lives. It has to be low friction, and we need to be committed to do it consistently.

I think the key to make this a habit is to set a very easy goal. Do you think you can try to practice meditation for one minute a day and be OK with missing a day or two in a week?

Practice one minute meditation daily(ish)

Did you know that the Handstand Quest App can be a very simple and effective way to make sure you are meditating regularly?

Select the Meditation exercise from the exercise catalog.

Then simply press play to start tracking your meditation.

That’s it. To check your daily progress, open the exercise catalog, click “View Details” then “Stats”.

Over time, as you use the app for body and mind exercise, you can check the “Me” / Stats tab, to see distribution of exercise by category.

You can also use the app’s voice features to track your meditation. For example, you could say “count to 90” to do a quick 90 second meditation.

Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below! If you’re new to the Handstand Quest app, feel free to download it here from your iPhone. We haven’t managed to build the Android version yet, so if you’re interested, join the waitlist and we’ll get in touch with you when it’s ready.

The product capabilities available in the Handstand Quest app go beyond working out for just handstands. In the interest to see what other types of workouts our users like, and to have more content, we’ve introduced a new experimental “workout” titled “Pranayama Meditation”.

It’s mainly composed of two Pranayama breathing techniques, followed by meditation.

That’s two out of the eight limbs of yoga:

1. Yyama (ethical standards)

2. Niyama (self-discipline)

3. Asana (physical postures)

4. Pranayama (breathing)

5. Pratyahara (sensory transcendence)

6. Dharana (concentration)

7. Dhyana (meditation)

8. Samadhi (enlightenment)

The two Pranayama breathing techniques used are “Breaths of Fire” and “Alternating Nostril breathing”.

Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below! If you’re new to the Handstand Quest app, feel free to download it here from your iPhone. We haven’t managed to build the Android version yet, so if you’re interested, join the waitlist and we’ll get in touch with you when it’s ready.

The product capabilities available in the Handstand Quest app go beyond working out for just handstands. In the interest to see what other types of workouts our users like, and to have more content, we’ve introduced a new experimental workout based on the very well known “7 Minutes Workout”.

It's a high-intensity circuit training that strategically incorporates strength training to work all of the major muscle groups in as little time as possible. The moves are all familiar and accessible, from jumping jacks to planks, squats and high knees. Each movement is done for 30 seconds, with few seconds of rest in between.

Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below! If you’re new to the Handstand Quest app, feel free to download it here from your iPhone. We haven’t managed to build the Android version yet, so if you’re interested, join the waitlist and we’ll get in touch with you when it’s ready.

Introduction

One of the major features that differentiate the Handstand Quest app from most fitness apps in the market is the capability to direct the app to do things for you through your voice.

What makes this functionality even more special is the fact that you do not have to say “Hey Siri” before every voice command you need to make!

Here are some of the things you can do:

• Time your exercises with precision. For example, you could say “select handstand” to select the Handstand exercise. Then once you go into the handstand, you could say “start” and the app will start tracking your exercise. When you get out of your handstand, all you have to say is “stop” and the tracking will end for your exercise. This can help you make so many repetitions of handstands while getting them measured with almost no effort. You could also, say “count to 30” to get yourself to do an exercise for 30 seconds or 30 reps!

• Freestyle Fitness. This is basically the idea of doing whatever exercises you want without following a structured workout. Best of all, the app will measure everything that you’re doing based on your voice signals, so when you’re done with your freestyle workout, you could actually see the level of effort you actually put in. Here is how you would do this: (1) “select plank” to select a plank, “start” to start tracking then “stop” to be done. (2) You can select another exercise from 100’s of available exercises in the app, or you can create your very own custom exercises that you can select with your specified voice command. (3) You could say “next”, “previous” to navigate exercises within the same category.

• Workout Efficiency. Even if you’re following a structured workout, you could efficiently customize it based on your current energy. For example, let’s say you’re resting before the next exercise and there are 3 seconds remaining. You need another 20 seconds because you’re tired and you want to do the next exercise with good form, then you could say “Extend” the rest time will get extended! When you have extra energy, you say “skip” to skip the resting and jump right into the next exercise in the workout. Finally, if there is an exercise you do not like doing, you simply say “next” to jump to the next exercise.

• Video Recording. While working out, if you say “camera”, the app will open the camera. Now, when you track your exercise, the app will also record a video of you with a timer overlay on top of the video showing the time spent.

Below are a few screenshots to guide you to using some of the features in the app.

In case you are interested, below is the full voice command guide, which is also available within the app. If you got the gist of this feature, you may jump to the conclusion of this article and check out the guide anytime later.

Conclusion

I hope you will benefit from the above features. Honestly, all of this does not mean much to me if there aren’t people making good use of it, so please don’t hesitate to send some feedback my way (or email info@humanquest.net directly), it’ll make a lot of difference, and I will take action based on your input.

If you have suggestions for new features, please add them on the public roadmap.

Most of all, enjoy your practice and keep improving that balance, in your handstands and in your life!

One of the pain points that many users have reported is the limited number of exercises in the app (around 100). I built a new feature, called custom exercises, so anyone can track and include in their workouts any exercise they want!

To create a custom exercise, open the exercise catalog by clicking on the large circle in the Track screen. Click the + button to add a new custom exercise.

In the custom exercise editor, you can customize the exercise title, how-instructions, sub-category, exercise image, demo video, how-to video, exercise type, sound interval, countdown seconds, tips, and even voice commands!

Click on the images below to learn more about the different features of custom exercises.

I hope you will benefit from the above features. Honestly, all of this does not mean much to me if there aren’t people making good use of it, so please don’t hesitate to send some feedback my way (or email info@humanquest.net directly), it’ll make a lot of difference, and I will take action based on your input.

If you have suggestions for new features, please add them on our public roadmap.

Happy Hand Standing!

Introduction

One of our goals is to bring together a community of hand balancers, at different levels of skill, to learn and benefit from each other.

If you can hold a handstand for 5 seconds or more, there’s someone out there who can learn from you! And one of the best ways to learn and improve your handstands is to teach others!

If you have established a program for doing handstands that works great for you, we’d like to help you share it with everyone else. If you want to practice more deliberately by creating a workout or program specific to your own needs, we want to be there for you. 

Anyone can leverage the Handstand Quest App to create workouts, then publish them, free or paid, for others to benefit from your skills! 

In fact, this is how we’ve built the 15 Seconds Handstand Program into the app, and we’d like to show you how quickly and easily you can do the same, right from your phone.

Creating a Workout

Using the workout editor in the app, you can create a workout, customize each exercise exactly as you want, add a demo video of what the exercise should look like, and optionally a video with instructions on how to do an exercise.

Workout Structure

First, think about the name and description of your workout.

• Example Workout Name: Wrist Mobility

• Example Workout Description:  We all know that warming up before exercise is crucial to avoid injury, right? Spend time working on your wrist mobility. Done consistently over time, this will help reduce the risk of injury when putting our entire body weight on our hands.

Second, we recommend you put a general structure of your workout in a spreadsheet.

Once you do that, go to the Workout tab in the app, in the “My workouts” section, click the menu to create a new workout.

Structure the sections in the workout. In our example, we have two sections.

Next, start adding the exercises that you would like to include in your workout.

After adding desired exercises in each section, give the workout a name, description and upload an image with a 16:9 aspect ratio (width almost double height). Click save and now your workout will show up in your “My Workouts” section in the Workout tab. Tap over the newly added workout and hold, a menu will show, select “edit” in order to continue making customizations to it.

Exercise Settings

Depending on the kind of an exercise, you can either specify the number of reps or duration. For reps, you can choose how many seconds each rep should be. For time-based exercises, you can choose the time interval at which point the app would make a sound.

You can also specify:

• How many seconds to count down before starting the exercise

• How many seconds to rest after completing the exercise

• How many sets to do

• Whether to do both sides and/or both directions.

Optional Exercise Information & Tips

Per each exercise, you can modify the title, how-to instructions, demo video, how-to video and tips to match your style as a coach, or you could leave them as is. 

Although it might be a bit confusing, when you modify this exercise data in one workout, the modifications get saved across workouts so you don’t have to repeat your change for each exercise in every workout.

Tips

You can add multiple tips for each exercise, and they will show up before doing each set of the exercise when a user is working out.

For example, for “Wrist Extension Stretch”, you could configure three tips as shown below.

Optional Exercise Evaluation

After the completion of an exercise, you can choose to show the user a question with multiple choice answers to help them evaluate how they’re doing a specific exercise.

Custom Exercises

In case you would like to add exercises to your workout that are not available in the exercise catalog, then you can leverage custom exercises.

To create a custom exercise, open the exercise catalog by clicking on the large circle in the Track screen. Click the + button to add a new custom exercise.

In the custom exercise editor, you can customize the exercise title, how-instructions, sub-category, exercise image, demo video, how-to video, exercise type, sound interval, countdown seconds, tips, and even voice commands.

Sharing a Workout or Program

Once it’s ready for sharing, you can publish your workout right from within the app. Tap and hold on your workout then click the “publish” option to get it published.

Coach Profile

From the workout, users can discover the coach who created the workout, and from there learn more about you, your website and any social profiles like Instagram.

Conclusion

If you’re good at handstands and you have something to teach others, you can put your program out there within hours, right from the Handstand Quest iOS app. No need for professional video production or having to pay an expensive subscription or huge down payment! It seriously is all free and you could choose to make your own money from it!

We suck at marketing and genuinely do not believe we should grow by throwing money at ads. If you’ve read this post and you’re a handstand coach, we promise you, we will do everything that we can to build the platform you need to help you coach others and make a living out of it!

We’re a small startup building a fitness app. In fact, we’re not even a startup. Handstand Quest has been for 3 years and still is a side project, a hobby, that I spend my free time on.

Thousands of hours spent, hundreds of setbacks and failures, and only 119 weekly active users since the app was launched late 2019.

So what keeps me going? Besides enjoying the work I am doing, I am on a mission; a quest!

In this post, I’ll tell you all about the meaning of my quest. Let’s start first with the definition of what a mission statement is.

What is a Mission Statement?

A mission statement represents the goals and values a company cares about. It centers around the number one thing teams want to achieve. It helps people clarify who they are to their customers and potential employees, as well as differentiate them from competitors.

Some example mission statements from companies we know:

• Google: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

• Apple: to bring the best user experience to customers through innovative hardware, software, and services.

• Microsoft: to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

• Intuit: to power prosperity around the world.

The Search For Meaning

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl explains that a human’s deepest desire is to find meaning in life, and once they find that meaning, they can survive anything. While our destiny in life is affected by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we are ultimately free to choose our own path. Frankl claims that one of the three ways of finding meaning in life is through work.

So how do I find that meaning working on Handstand Quest?

The Mission of Handstand Quest

On the surface, my mission is weird and not very relevant to a lot of people. 

Why Prioritize Health and Fun?

We have become very busy, bombarded with information and things to do, and having anxieties that stem from a nagging sense that we might be wasting what little time we have. Missing out is basically guaranteed in life, the inevitable consequence of one path chosen over another (source: Four Thousand Weeks).

With everything else that is important to us in life, we should prioritize fun AND health.

I have a strong opinion on what path we should keep our eyes on. We have some crystal clear gaps in how we’re evolving, and most of us see it. Top two of those gaps are: fun and health. 

I don’t think anyone disagrees that fitness (or movement) is very important. It has become a need to maintain mental and physical health. I also don’t think that anyone disagrees that fun (or playing) moments are one of the most memorable and meaningful moments one can have in life, especially with other people.

What bar do we hold for ourselves when it comes to fitness? Do we want it to be a lifestyle that we enjoy and makes our life meaningful and more fun, or just a necessity to stay healthy. 

Why Handstands?

I chose my current quest to be about handstands. As we evolve as a species, with a balanced view of what’s important, imagine every single one of us trained in schools to do handstands by the age of 9, and using it as an ongoing method later in life to recalibrate and restore balance. 

So many people around the world are pursuing handstands because they are hard, challenging and help them overcome gravity and the fear of falling. They require practicing consistently and deliberately, working patiently towards mastery of strength, flexibility, balance, and mental focus. 

Handstands can be done and learned anywhere without needing any equipment. They might be the perfect recipe for you to make fitness and playing a lifestyle, and when movement becomes a lifestyle, you actually start to prioritize fun and health with everything else. 

If you’re interested to learn more about “why handstands”, check out my other post around The Handstand Mindset.

What keeps me going?

Finally, although we can achieve handstands on our own, I think it’s a lot more meaningful and achievable when we do it with others. The mission of Handstand Quest is to:

This is the mission that keeps me going, regardless of failures and low financial ROI. After all, the journey always begins with a hero who hears a calling to a quest. 

What’s a mission without impact?

How do I know that I’m actually making progress? Measurement is critical to see impact. 

Since Handstand Quest launched late 2019, I have seen 163 users improve their handstands using the app. On average, they improved their handstands by 38 seconds, practiced actively for 22 days, and broke their best records about 9 times! 

Every time I question my mission, I will come back and look at: How many people was Handstand Quest able to help get better?

And if you’re reading this article, I look forward to hearing from you that this mission of mine has made some difference in your handstand journey, because that will keep me going! Whatever mission you’re on, I hope this will inspire you too!

We’ve been studying handstands for some time, and based on our lessons learned, we have put together a program that should help any beginner achieve the freestanding handstand.

The program is based on Handstand Mechanics, takes into consideration overcoming the fear of falling, and helps you stay intentional with your practice by providing guided tips while performing each exercise.

By providing mechanisms to evaluate exercises, the program helps you build awareness of your abilities and measure your progress. Click below to download the program.

We're excited to share that all the exercises featured in our program can be found in our Exercise Catalog! Here, you'll find helpful tips and videos to make learning these exercises a breeze. Enjoy exploring and have fun working out!

Whether you’ve been doing handstands or have just started, it helps to understand the physics of the handstand, in order to do it with maximum efficiency and prevent injuries.

The Hands

First, we humans are not used to “standing” on our hands. Remember how long it took you to learn how to stand on your feet? Well, maybe not, but you get the point.

The table below shows the general weight of Human Body Parts as percentages of total body weight.

The weight of hands/arms are ⅓ proportionally to feet/legs. 

Geometrically, the foot can easily form a 90 degrees angle with the leg, which means we don’t have to put a lot of effort to stay balanced when we’re standing. Healthy wrists can usually go downward (flex) 90 degrees and upwards (extend) 70 degrees. 

So when we’re upside down standing on the hands, we need those extra 20 degrees of extension to be at a natural geometric form, where the arms meet the palms at a 90 degrees angle.

Because of the weight proportions, angles and the fact that your hands are not used to carrying your whole body weight, it’s important to warm the wrists up before doing a handstand, in order to prevent injury. In the long run, to be able to hold the handstand for longer, it’s important to create that mobility in the wrist and get to 90 degrees extension.

Doing wrist warm up exercises, planks and downward dogs are a good first step to gain awareness of your wrists, get a sense how much weight they can take, and also get a feel on what it’s like to be inverted. For example, by holding a downdog for as long as you can, you will get an idea/baseline about what you can do with 60-75% of your weight on your hands.

Balancing on the Hands (Cambered Hands)

Just as we can balance between toes and heels, we can do the same in our hands with our fingertips and palms. Putting your hand in a form where you can balance between the fingertips and palms is called the Cambered Hand technique.

This reinforces what we’ve talked about already: in order to stay balanced in a handstand, you will need the flexibility in your wrists in order to bounce in between your fingertips and palms. Most people don’t do this, but it’s critical to do regular work on your wrists to prevent injury and have the natural structure to hold handstands longer.

The Shoulders

When inverted in a handstand, the body will stack up on your wrists and shoulders, so the more you push away from the ground with your shoulders, the better you will be able to hold the handstand position. For that reason, it’s very important to build strong shoulders.

A healthy shoulder flexes upwards at 180 degrees angle, but because of so many modern activities sitting on chairs and couches looking at screens, our shoulders are becoming tighter. When the shoulders are tight, it’s hard to keep the body in a straight line when inverted upside down, which makes holding a handstand harder. Work on the flexibility of your shoulders to remove inefficiencies and be able to hold handstands longer. 

The Elbows

In climbing, one of the first things to learn is to keep the elbows locked most of the time and only move them when transitioning from one place to another. Over time, you get used to it and your tendons build enough strength and won’t tire quickly. The reason this is important is because the bones and tendons are a lot more effective than muscles at carrying weight and won’t require as much effort to stay in position.

Flip it upside down, locking the elbows is even more critical in handstands. Not only will it make balancing easier (straight line), but your much stronger bones will contribute to taking on your weight instead of having your muscles do most of the work. 

The Core

In a handstand, your upper body is basically carrying your lower body. The core connects everything together and is critical to stay balanced. Imagine a pencil with a gum at the center, will it hold together in a straight line if the gum does not fully harden like concrete?

Your core is what’s guiding and carrying your hips to line up above your shoulders in a straight line. Without a strong engaged core, it’s impossible to hold a handstand.

The Legs

Yes, it’s possible to hold a handstand without strong legs. However, think about swimming and the role kicking the feet plays in helping you move faster. Squeezing your glutes and pointing your toes will help you truly form that straight line and hold the handstands a lot longer. 

Conclusion

Holding a handstand requires whole body strength and upper body flexibility. That’s why it’s such an impressive movement that has become a practice of its own (hand balancing), in addition to being popular across many sports that focus on mastery of the whole body.

If you’re interested in practicing handstands regularly, check out our app, currently available on iOS, and let us know if you’re interested in an Android version.

We've also got a super friendly web app called Exercise Catalog, where you can dive into all sorts of exercises. Discover helpful videos and handy tips to make sure you're performing each exercise safely and efficiently.

Prilepin charts help in structuring how many sets and reps (or how much time to hold) to do a certain exercise, based on intensity or level of effort.

As I was trying this method on Crow Pose, I noticed a few times I went back to find the table to manually look up what my hold times should look like. It's not easy (at least for me) to memorize a table, so I ended up building that capability into the app.

There’s now a section in the Workouts tab that lets you add exercises you want to do in Prilepin mode. When you open an exercise in Prilepin mode, you are asked to do a “Max Effort” on it. Once you do that, a workout will be generated for you, focused on the specific exercise, so you can keep getting challenged to grow your strength without injury or tiring too quickly.

Hope you find this useful and Enjoy!

If you found your way to this article, chances are you’re intrigued by handstands. With determination and the right mindset, you will see tangible progress in your ability to hold a freestanding handstand. Here is how we think about handstands.

What: it’s a quest

Most people assume they will be able to achieve the perfect free-standing handstand with two weeks of hard work.

When they start with that assumption, they usually end up quitting.

When instead, they approach it as a 6-month “quest” of daily practice, even if just for 5 minutes a day, they end up seeing tangible improvements in their handstand holds.

To achieve high standards, we need to have realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be.
 — Jeff Bezos

Who: it’s for everyone

As we evolve as a species, with a balanced view of what’s important, imagine every single one of us trained in schools to do handstands by the age of 9, and using it as an ongoing method later in life to recalibrate and restore balance. 

Fine, let’s be real and have a look at what kind of a person cares about handstands in today’s reality. 

It’s in more sports than you think

Sports that put a lot of focus on handstands: yoga, gymnastics, calisthenics, breakdance, acrobatics, Crossfit, capoeira, bodyweight fitness, pole dancing, parkour, Olympic diving, cheerleading, martial arts, skateboarding, etc…

We asked a group of people that are interested in handstands what their top 3 sports are, and here is what they told us. We learned that climbers are also naturally interesting in handstands.

By and large, life will give you what you deserve. It is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things. 
― Ray Dalio

Why: like all hard things, it’s good for you

Whoever you are, if you’re interested in the art of movement, handstands will be there on your list of great things to achieve. You want to do it so you can improve, evolve, and conquer yourself!

Beyond the sense of achievement, handstands have direct short term benefits on the body and the mind:

• Improve Metabolism

• Boost your mood

• Perfect your core and balance

• Strengthen your bones and muscles

We asked a group of people why they do handstands, and here is what they told us:

Our top 10 inspiring why’s:

1. It’s a celebration of what my body can do

2. Because I think it is a great overall feat of strength and balance.

3. The challenge, because I can, because it's hard.

4. To be functionally strong as I enter middle age (for the first time in my life) and a good role model of such to my kids.

5. It requires a lot of discipline to practice enough to get there. Strengthening my arms and core. Can't deny it looks cool and it would be awesome to be able to do it

6. .Mastery of yoga pose. Equates to a level of strength, balance, and mental focus.

7. In Capoeira we challenge each other with handstands.

8. Personal challenge, advancing in my skills, it gives me a chance to do other arm postures

9. I just like doing calisthenics and find that I'm getting results mentally and physically from doing it.

10. To overcome my fear of inversions and to be able to do something I never thought I'd be able to do

We’d love to know your reasons for why you care about doing handstands. Let us know by filling this short survey.

All important things are hard
― Toni Morrison

When: it’s about balance, and it takes grit

Handstands are the ultimate test of physical balance. Clearly, people who have dedicated their lives to sports, have a higher chance of doing handstands, but that does not mean you can’t get there while keeping the rest of your life balanced. Here is the secret:

Practice your handstands for 5 minutes or more, every single damn day.

It’s not about getting an incredible dose of inspiration. It’s about building the daily habits that allow you to stick to a schedule and overcome challenges and distractions over and over and over again. It’s about doing the things you know you’re supposed to do on a more consistent basis.

Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare. Consistency of effort over the long run is everything.
— Angela Duckworth

How: Leverage Tools

You “can” achieve much more with the same effort and the right tools.

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the Earth.
— Archimedes

In fact, we think we’ve built the best tool, an iOS mobile app, to help you on this journey. Here is a preview of what onboarding looks like, in dark mode:

Alright, so let’s talk about how you can make the most fro this tool to help you achieve your handstand goal.

What is your goal?

Depending on the current level, the general theme amongst people for handstand’s goal is to hold it in proper form from 10 seconds to 5 minutes. More advanced athletes get interested in mastering the one-arm handstand.

Identify a realistic goal, write it down. Set your goal in the app on how many seconds you would like to hold a freestanding handstand.

Set a daily goal

Great, so you have a goal, but how are you going to achieve it? You will need to have a plan and execute it. Regardless of what the plan is, you will need to practice consistently to achieve your goal.

The app can be really handy in helping you stay motivated to achieve your daily goal of practice. In addition to guiding you towards completing your daily minutes, the app shows you how you are doing day over day, a month from now, you have clarity on why you did not (or did) make progress. It will also remind you, at your preferred time of the day, that it’s time to practice your handstands, even for just 5 minutes, even if simply meditating about handstands.

Make sure to warmup

To avoid any injuries, it’s super important to warm up. Leverage the app to keep your warmups in check. There is a multitude of different exercises the app guides you to do in order to warmup.

Track and Measure

How do you know you are improving if you cannot track and measure your progress? How were you doing last month compared to this month?

Thankfully, the app makes it very easy to track your handstand, using your voice. Not only will it help you with tracking your handstands, but also many other exercises that help you strengthen and build progression towards a better handstand.

You can also tell how you’re doing on other exercises and if, for example, you are warming up enough.

Share and Stay Motivated

Get your friends to hold you accountable. It’s a great way to get feedback on your development and that nudge when you need it. One way the app can help you here is via the share feature.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and learned something new. If there’s only one learning we’d like you to seriously take away, it would be this:

If it’s important, do it every day.

What is it?

A mobile app that lets you time your handstands by using your voice.

It all started when…

I was trying to find ways to motivate myself to do handstands daily and improve the time I can hold a handstand.

The search

To do so, I started looking for a mechanism that can help me track the length of handstand holds, with minimal effort, so I can focus on practicing rather than log keeping. Clearly, the key was that the tracking needed to happen hands free.

Gyroscope on the phone was my first idea, but then I realized it’s not that practical. I considered using a chip that attaches to the foot, but then again, it is yet another device that needs to be charged, worn, and put somewhere so it won’t get lost.

The solution

When I thought I ran out of options, I realized that using voice could be promising. It’s hands free, doesn’t require any setup, and does not force me to attach something to my body. I also wanted something without that tax of having to say “Hey Siri/Google, start my app X” every time. And voilà, I think that resulted in the first fitness app of its kind that leverages voice commands to guide a workout, one exercise at a time.

The Very First MVP

Want to give it a try?

If you have an iPhone, click here from your phone. Let us know if you’re interested in the Android version.