This is a message I received from a professional acrobat named Jonathan Ferland-Valois I got awhile back. I intended to post it but then left it as a draft for too long. I’m frequently asked what is the handstand record time. There is no definite answer but this guy could be the one holding it!
Hi Logan! I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the circus guy and ex-gymnast who sent you the story about the Chinese hand balancing master who was slapping a guy who went to see him while being in one arm handstand. I got two more cool examples of crazy Chinese acrobats excelling in the art of hand balancing. You don’t have to publish them, I just want to share them with you because I think they’re crazy.
Last week, I had a conversation with a guy I’m on a show with. He is a base for hand to hand, and he’ve been taught by a Chinese hand balancing expert. This expert is just badass. To teach him, he told him to hold him in his hands while he does a handstand, with his (the base’s) hands at shoulder height. My friend went in position to hold his teacher, and his teacher jumped into a handstand position. After a few seconds, my friend was getting tired. He told the Chinese master (he called him the greatest hand balancer ever, which is questionable, but is probably enough to say he’s a master) he couldn’t hold him anymore, and the master told him not to give up, and to hold him one more minute. My friend started panicking, saying he couldn’t do it, and tried to push the master off of him. Be he couldn’t. The master, still doing a handstand in my friend’s hands, started slapping him in the same time, while saying: “Keep holding it! Don’t stop!” My friend tried to make him get down during one full minute! And you know what? Once it made one minute, the master simply went down by himself, and said: “Rest a bit, we’ll do more sets.” My friend told me that to graduate from his school, his teacher had to succeed to do something nobody else ever did in the school. So, he chose to hold a handstand for a longer time than any other hand balancer from his school ever did. My friend isn’t sure anymore if it was two or four hours. But the fact is that he held it for more than an hour for sure!
So if you’re only holding a handstand for a few seconds or even minutes, you’ve got a long way to go. Come back tomorrow when we have what may be an even more amazing story for you.
