Weekly Progress Report: 2013-04-21
Challenge #6: Straddle Press to Handstand
Shoulder Stand / Straddle Sit Practice
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Keeping up the work.
Full Flow practice
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Full flow! Very fun to practice. The most, I would say, unsettling part of starting this has been to realize how fast you can fatigue from combining all of these movements one after another. Which tells more of the story about how friggin’ fit gymnists have to be, what with the amazing flows these guys come up with.
Challenge #11: Origami
179 + 13 = 192!
Weekly Progress Report: 2013-03-19
Challenge #6: Straddle Press to Handstand
Check it out. It’s the first time I can actually, really play around with this series of movements.
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I’m so excited! I used my gymnastics gym’s p-bars for the first time to get my scheduled practice in. The width is fixed, and much narrower than how I usually place them.
This kind of offset me at first, but then I realized it’s pretty much where they’re meant to be, and I managed to get my body through even though I thought I could not! Anyway, so after my scheduled practice I went and decided to practice my L-sit to bent shoulder stands to try to get it in.
Ryan doing a Shoulder Stand
And get it in I did.
Another element I think helped, is I got across one of Ryan from GMB‘s shoulder stand poses, and it made me realize that, as with the elbow planches, I wasn’t getting my weight nearly forward enough! And sure enough, paying attention to that gave me way better stability and balance.
Challenge #11: Origami
153 + 6 = 159! Not missin’ a day!
Weekly Progress Report: 2012-11-22
Challenge #6: Straddle Press to Handstand
Ryan Hurst on the P-Bars
So! I’ve been working on GMB’s Parallettes 1 program for a bit more than 1½ month. I figured it would be a good time to start showing you what these trainings look like, so here you go.
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Again, filming oneself proves very valuable, as I can already see some details I’d like to correct on my movements.
Within the program so far, the 2 movements that I’ve found the most challenging to work on are Read more
Flexibility Training: Experiments
I love flexibility, and flexibility work.
Some people think it’s necessary. Others despise it. According to my observations, points of view are in great part related to the kind of physical discipline one is involved into. I’ve been into martial arts for many years, so following my theory, I guess my opinion of flexibility training is biased in favor of it.
Training Videos Medley: Gymnastics, Parkour, Calisthenics
I came upon a couple of videos recently which I would like to share with you. They present three different styles of bodyweight ability training. This goes in line with my earlier posts about giving more focus on bodyweight movements and also Parkour.
Ready to get inspired?
Gymnastics
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So it’s not exactly what you would expect to see from a gymnastics video. However they’re still gymnastics-related movements, and what I like most is seeing the guy try, fail sometimes, try again and progress through his movements. It gives an idea on how his training sessions look and I like how he’s not scared of making a fool of himself. Now of course, many of his movements are definitely impressive, awesome, and stuff I want to be able to do someday. Definitely related to longer-term goals, say, post-challenge-#6.
Parkour
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Parkour Generations is a group part of what we might call the “original traceurs”, from France. I like this video a lot because it gives a nice glimpse of how their training sessions look like. The analyses, tries, fails, perfecting, and also some of the fooling around.
Calisthenics
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Calisthenics is, in my opinion, a very interesting training style. Not unlike Parkour, it uses urban facilities publicly available in order to train. It’s more focused on public park modules and less varied in that fashion. But a lot of what they do could be directly transferred and used on Parkour movements, and it’s amazing how creative they can get using mostly bars.
You know what’s even more amazing?
Most of everything they do actually look easy for them. I love that. As I progress through learning movements and training them, I want them to be and look as easy as possible.
Don’t you?
Handstand progression (#8) and other Training Shenanigans
Within the last year, my training has been directed a lot towards general weightlifting strength, endurance and ability. Some of my favorite progressions:
- 1 rep max Deadlift: 275 lbs to 375 lbs in 4 months;
- Power Clean & Jerk : 135 lbs up to 195 lbs 1RM in 6 months;
- Clean & Jerk : Ditto;
- Push Press : 12 642 lbs to 61 305 lbs in Volume (200+ reps @ 115 lbs in 20 minutes)
- Plate Curl: 25 lbs with each hand
These are among those I’m the most proud of, but they definitely are not the only ones. My PR (Personal Records) log is getting bigger everyday I train, thanks to the beauty and genius that is the Gym Movement Protocol. I’ve been using this protocol regularly for almost a year now, without a single need to switch to something else. I highly recommend you to have a look at it.
In the recent weeks I’ve felt an intrinsic need to alter my focus towards more of my bodyweight goals of strength and ability. The arrival of summertime definitely is part of the factors in this change.
