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He climbs stairs with his HEAD! – Guinness World Records

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A Chinese acrobat turned a headstand into a world record by literally climbing stairs with his skull.

Li Longlong doesn’t just balance upside down — he moves upside down, hopping stair to stair using nothing but his head to power the ascent. In January 2015, on the set of the CCTV Guinness World Records Special in Jiangyin, China, he pushed his own record to 36 consecutive stairs climbed while inverted, a feat that required strength most people never test in their neck and core.

• Li climbed 36 stairs in a headstand on January 5, 2015, on the CCTV Guinness World Records Special in Jiangyin, China, breaking his own mark.
• His previous record of 34 stairs was set on December 6, 2012, on the same CCTV program, and had been shared with fellow Chinese competitor Zhao Xiaolong.
• Between those two records, Li attempted to break the tie outright on season seven of Italy’s Lo Show dei Record, but the attempt was disqualified after part of his body touched the staircase.

The Rules Guinness Enforces

Climbing stairs on your head sounds like a stunt, but Guinness treats it like any other timed, judged record attempt, with strict conditions built to prevent shortcuts. No part of the body other than the head is allowed to touch the steps at any point during the climb — a hand, a shoulder, even a graze of the shin disqualifies the run. Competitors also can’t stall: they’re required to keep moving, with no more than five seconds allowed between each stair.

Those two rules are exactly what tripped Li up on Italian television. His disqualification during that Lo Show dei Record attempt came down to contact with the staircase, the same infraction that separates a record run from a wasted one. It’s a narrow margin for error when your entire body weight is balanced on your skull.

Breaking His Own Tie

Li had shared the 34-stair record with Zhao Xiaolong since December 2012, and the Italian television attempt was his shot at claiming it outright before Guinness ever certified the 36-stair climb. That disqualification meant the tie technically stood until Li returned to the CCTV set in Jiangyin in January 2015 and delivered the two extra stairs that gave him sole possession of the title.

No part of the body other than the head may touch the steps — and no pausing for more than five seconds between them.

Guinness resurfaced the footage in early February 2020, giving the 2015 clip a second life online years after it was filmed. The rules haven’t changed, and neither has the difficulty: hopping upward on a headstand, stair by stair, without ever letting hands or feet brush the steps, remains one of the more punishing entries in the Guinness catalog of body-control records. For anyone who’s tried the stranger corners of the Guinness World Records archive, Li’s climb sits comfortably among the feats that look impossible until someone actually does them on camera.

The Significance of Number 36

Every stair Li adds to his total raises the bar for whoever eventually challenges him, whether that’s Zhao Xiaolong going for a rematch or a new competitor entering through a future CCTV or Guinness broadcast. Unlike the climbing mishaps that make for viral fail compilations, Li’s runs are engineered for precision — five seconds per stair, head only, no exceptions — which is exactly why 36 stood as a clean, defensible number when Guinness certified it in 2015.

As of the footage Guinness circulated in February 2020, that 36-stair mark remained the standard to beat, with Li the sole holder after erasing the tie he’d once shared with Zhao Xiaolong.