Athlete In The City

I know how everybody likes to avoid, or just slack on their stretching.  I do it too.  But you know, stretching is important!  Flexibility promotes circulation, and nutrients at the joint, and discourages injury.  My personal feeling is it helps muscle to recover and grow quicker too, though I’m not sure if this is scientifically proven.  Anyway, on to the good stuff.

First stretch is to work each shoulder in opposite directions.  This picture is the basic version.  Even you big guys out there who lift a lot (or should I say especially you guys) should be doing this.

Once you work your fingers together doing this, you’ll eventually be able to touch your fingers together like this:

An advanced version takes it further, so you grab the whole hand as far as possible:

I’ve seen it done where people actually can grab the opposite wrist.  I’m not there yet, but hey, it’s worth trying!

Next is your basic backbend.  When you do this push the weight up into the shoulders as much as possible to reduce strain on the lower back:

We’re not done yet.  There are still two more ways that I know of to stretch the shoulders.  This next one is a great opposing stretch if you work the pecks a lot.  This really stretches straight across the front of your chest.  It also stretches the elbow joint.  I should know the name.  It will feel like the hamstring of your arm if you will, which really doesn’t get stretched very often:

Obviously you can use as long a piece of rope as you need to.  I’ve seen younger people touch the hands together.  So there is really no limit to how flexible you *COULD* be here.

Last but not least, let’s work the shoulders for the illusive manna move.  This stretch will feel uncomfortable at first, because you may have never stretched your shoulders this way before.

And that’s it.  Over and out, and Happy New Year.  Good luck with all your training in 2008!

I thought I’d made some progress in training until someone forwarded me this guy Coach Geoff’s Blog. This guy is seriously into training. Take a look at his Leonidas workout. Not bad, not bad at all. Of course I got to work on it right away. Most of the stuff I’m pretty solid on. My burpees are strong, but with a back tuck I’d only try in the gym with padding, I guess I could probably manage three. And then there’s the infamous holy grail, the planche pushup.

Well I have been training them on parallette’s. I uploaded a vid for those interested in a ball planche pushup. These are tough by themselves. I’m up to a max of about 15 in a row. Tough indeed!

Ok, I’m pretty happy with my progress on those. Anyway, after watching Coach Geoff, and various youtube vids of these guys doing planche pushups I noticed they rock into them a bit. So I gave that a try. I managed to do some weak ones, but these definitely tire you out a lot! So some new progress I think.

Give me a few weeks and I should have a good 5 rep set. Cross your fingers!!

If it wasn’t already clear, the Planche is sort of the holy grail of bodyweight training skills. It’s extremely difficult to achieve, on par with an iron cross. There are lots of conditioning and strength building exercises one can do of course, but mainly it just takes time!

I am making some good progress. This pic below shows rock solid straight arms, with knees just behind my elbows. Once I can hold this position for 60 seconds, I’ll be ready to extend one leg out further, or try a more opened position. This position pictured is called a ball planche:

If you’re working this skill I recommend you get a set of parallettes. Here’s a good article on various skills to work on with parallettes.

Dragon Door also has a very good article on planche progressions which I recommend.

Sometimes known as the elbow lever, this move is actually quite a bit easier than it looks. Here’s a quick shot of the basic position.

Ok, how do you get there. Well here is the modification. It may look intimidating, but you’ll see when you try it that your chin provides quite a bit of stability. Make sure your hands are DIRECTLY under your elbows, that is the angle where they are strongest. Also, Yoga folks will note that they tend to do this position with the chin more forward and neck back. This would mean I would look up as much as possible. The chin give more solid and better support. Also bending the legs would bring the weight more towards your center of gravity.

Also note the rounded or flat-back position. This is very key. Don’t arch your back.

Ok, now you may also want to do a harder elbow planche. For starters just hold the position for a longer period of time. Trust me that will build strength. You can ALSO start to straighten your arms. Here’s a shot of me doing just that. The first example above my arm was at about 90 degrees, but in this one below the angle is about 115 degrees. The straighter your arms are the further the hands will be below the waist. Every inch lower makes this an order of magnitude more difficult.

And no the legs are not supported. You’ll just have to believe me on this one!

Variations… Once you find these straightfoward, you’re ready to think about one-arm elbow levers. Here’s a first try for me. My feet are stabilized slightly by a medicine ball, and my left hand is providing a fingertip support. I have a ways to go on this one.

More next time, and good luck with your elbow balancing!!