I don't agree with that completely. It's true that you're never going to be perfect off the bat, and that perfection is a long way away if it is achievable at all.

However, I've watched Coach Sommer and he doesn't allow things like that. People are spotted.

I know that most of us do not have spotters, but at the very least we have to be able to control the position.

I've never seen someone who was ready to train for a stalder do it dirty. I've seen them only have control about 1/2 of the way from the straddle press to before having to speed up, but they never lost the basic control of the position.

A stalder is basically just a straddle press that goes all the way down to a straddle L. Obviously as you reach the mid point of the descent you won't touch the ground, but instead continue to compress, but there are some really simple drills to train yourself through that phase. in one sense it's very similar to a tuck L sit to tuck planche press to handstand, but you stay compressed in a straddle L position instead of tucking. That's the hard part: Keeping the straddle L the whole way through.

I guess a lot of people just haven't been exposed to systematic training for that, but there's no need for dirty training even if you're alone.

You train the straddle L, you train your straddle press, you train a tuck L sit press to tuck planche press to HS. Those are your basic movement patterns that make the stalder press.

At that point it's just a skill to learn, you already have the strength and just need a bit of practice learning to control the straddle L compression during the press... you already have the strength at that point, straddle L is easier than tuck planche from a pure upper body strength perspective.

I'm not saying people don't train dirty, I am saying they do so because they don't know the 'right' way to do things.

You inevitably build bad habits that are hard to lose when you train dirty, and that ends up limiting long-term progress.