Weekly Progress Report: 2012-10-08
Challenge #2: The Whistle
Challenge #6: Straddle Press to Handstand
Latest take on the Frog Stand Press Handstand. A wee bit better alignment, although definitely still work to do on that end. Plus, I went up quite faster.
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Source: GMB
Now, so far I’ve been working on this movement basing my method mostly on tips here and there I found with personal research. Also, in this movement
we have the balance part, and the actual movement leading to it. Most of my time spent with this challenge so far has been to be able to perform an actual
handstand! But as I’m now able to perform at least some seconds of it, I’m putting more and more attention on the movement part.
I progressed a lot with my handstand push-up, which is an obvious first step. But as breaking down the movement gets trickier, and also as my pressing practice starts progressing less speedily, I feel I need a more straightforward and specific method to finally get to achieve it.
As we saw before, when I finally started following specific progressions to learn the handstand balance, I made tremendous progress and learned many other balancing skills that are fun to do.
For the movement itself, I found what I feel I need to get my shit together: A Parallettes training program.
Quoting their page:
Parallettes give the gymnast (or any athlete) two major advantages when mastering feats of balance and strength:
- Leverage
- Ground clearance
By increasing leverage, we’re able to add some advantage to skills like planches that might otherwise be beyond our capability. As we train and improve, we can gradually rely less and less on the tool itself. Adding ground clearance gives us more space to execute movements where we might not yet have the strength or mobility to perform the same skill on the floor.
So here we go. Started the program yesterday and I’ll be integrating it with the rest of my general training schedule. What I’m thinking of doing is focus my regular gym work to big movements such as deadlifts, squats and olympic lifting (and grip), and focus my upper body work on the parallettes practice. I’m eager to find out the upcoming results!
Varia
The ocarina is, at the time of this writing, a much better whistler than I.
