Stalder can require less strength
If you are significantly more flexible than strong learning the stalder press first makes a lot of sense. Your legs are slightly open in a pancake position during the first half of the press allowing you to fold significantly more than you would be able in an L Sit. Additionally. You do not have to lift through the L Handstand at the end with the legs parallel to the floor. Instead you straddle around using your middle split flexibility. You are basically able to shave off a couple corners providing mechanical advantages making things physically easier.
This is only true if you have a good middle split and a beyond flat pancake. If you are not able to fold in half you are not able to profit off the advantages provided by the stalder and your life will get much harder.
L Sits extra strength requirements
are not significant
The L Sit Press to Handstand looks and feels much more like a deadlift. You don’t get to cut around and you do not get to roll up. Yet, if you are leaning either of these advanced presses to handstand you are very strong and lifting through the L with both legs at the same time should not be a big problem. Therefore this extra bit of strength needed for the L Sit press can basically be ignored.
We can therefore draw a tie between the two presses when it comes to strength.
Stalder can be cheated
Now I don’t think you should cheat and I think you have enough pride not to but here is the thing: If you are just trying to somehow get up and learn a cool skill the stalder does offer an opportunity here that the L Sit does not have.
You can climb with your legs on top of your elbows and squeeze them in hard before pressing up. This will make getting the hips on top MUCH easier. Pressing like this won’t help you much in developing a proper stalder or L sit press but it can be a quick solution.
L Sits need
less technical precision
This is the main and jumping argument for what to learn first. The L Sit Press to Handstand requires less technical precision and less coordination. Building strength and flexibility is pretty straight forward. You train, you get better, you continue to train and you get even more better.
Making technical gains in advanced presses to handstand is harder. You need a surplus of strength and flexibility to be able to hold certain positions to then be able to figure out what and where to engage in this position.
The stalder press requires significantly more of this very specific work making it much harder to learn. That is why learning the L Sit Press to Handstand first simply makes sense as you will pick up many of the key principles needed for the stalder press to handstand. Yet, you do not learn anything “too much”. Meaning your time and energy is not spent learning a technical aspect that you would not be using directly in the Stalder Press to Handstand.
Bottom line is that unless you are much more flexible than strong you should stick to the natural flow of stalder progressions and pick up the L Sit Press along the way.
At the same time it is important to keep in mind that your progress won’t stop once you have mastered one the 2 and as you will continue to progress you will learn the other as well.
