MN/PE2 (straddle-up) question

btw-- when I said it looks like your chest starts to cave a little, I mean that when you sit up your torso doesn't go all the way up--- you reach forward with your neck/head to try to artificially create a tighter straddle, which bends your back (and thus caves in chest). This is doing yourself a disservice; you might get a couple inches further but it puts your torso/hips in a bad position to 'hinge'. This also keeps you making the sit-up part of it smooth; you can see in that video that you just aren't getting up high. You're clearly strong enough to do this but you're allowing your head to lead you. If you're walking and looking down, your back will arch and your chest will cave. Same deal here. Lift them to meet each other, don't just go forward and hope to get your legs high enough.

Yeah. So... not just the hip/leg part, both halves need to work together to close the angle.

(All Jon's advice completely from Jon's POV and experience and not affiliated with GBodies certified instructors/athletes no promises this is 100% correct or what you need to focus on)

Charm said:

::words::

Thanks Jon - I read your "supplementary active flexibility" thread today and gave it a try - WOW.  Something in my hip/glutes cramped up immediately - I never get this sensation while doing straddle ups.  I think I'll work on those to supplement the PE and concentrate on duplicating that effort/feeling in my hips while performing my straddle-ups.

As far as my chest caving - I do that because if I sit up any further (straight, without caving) my legs just hit the ground as my flexibility is so poor.  With better straddle flexibility I feel like this will sort itself out - but I'll try sitting up more next time.

Cannister said:

Thanks Jon - I read your "supplementary active flexibility" thread today and gave it a try - WOW.  Something in my hip/glutes cramped up immediately - I never get this sensation while doing straddle ups.  I think I'll work on those to supplement the PE and concentrate on duplicating that effort/feeling in my hips while performing my straddle-ups.

 

As far as my chest caving - I do that because if I sit up any further (straight, without caving) my legs just hit the ground as my flexibility is so poor.  With better straddle flexibility I feel like this will sort itself out - but I'll try sitting up more next time.

Just seemed like a good time to info-dump since it was fresh in my head. Hopefully there's one or two things in there that help tip the balance for you

You might want to try with looking up vs. looking forward. I find that looking up helps me keep my neck neutral/upper back-- same as in hollow hold. But the demo video clearly has him looking forward, so... YMMV.

Anyone care to shower their insight / wisdom on me by critiquing my attempt at the MN/PE2 ?
 
I was doing the same as the OP with starting at week 9 but I have since then began heavily focusing on straddle flexibility and just doing week 1. Any advice / recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
 
http://youtu.be/96pphDdY6FU

phenom said:

Anyone care to shower their insight / wisdom on me by critiquing my attempt at the MN/PE2 ?

 

I was doing the same as the OP with starting at week 9 but I have since then began heavily focusing on straddle flexibility and just doing week 1. Any advice / recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

http://youtu.be/96pphDdY6FU

As I see it, your torso is going up a touch too high-- rolling onto glutes, which puts you in a difficult position to lift the legs (which are slightly too low). Start from pressing your lower back into the floor and compress up (don't forget to keep your knees locked and toes pointed). I stay on the upper portion of my glutes, closer to my tailbone than 'sitting' on the floor-- if I relaxed in the top position I would fall over, I have to actively maintain the position.

Not too far away, just refining the positioning.

Jon Douglas said:

As I see it, your torso is going up a touch too high-- rolling onto glutes, which puts you in a difficult position to lift the legs (which are slightly too low). Start from pressing your lower back into the floor and compress up (don't forget to keep your knees locked and toes pointed). I stay on the upper portion of my glutes, closer to my tailbone than 'sitting' on the floor-- if I relaxed in the top position I would fall over, I have to actively maintain the position.

Not too far away, just refining the positioning.

Perfect, this is just what I needed to hear. I was utilizing the back to wall straddle lifts and was trying to focus on keeping my chest as high as possible while keeping the back round as minimal as I could.

Should I be trying to use momentum to bring my legs up as high as possible? Do you think I should start moving up weeks even when my form isn't like the athletes in the video yet?

Thanks for the advice

What Charm said + you need to pay special attention to keep your legs straight at all times

phenom said:

Perfect, this is just what I needed to hear. I was utilizing the back to wall straddle lifts and was trying to focus on keeping my chest as high as possible while keeping the back round as minimal as I could.

 

Should I be trying to use momentum to bring my legs up as high as possible? Do you think I should start moving up weeks even when my form isn't like the athletes in the video yet?

 

Thanks for the advice

Definitely not momentum-- this is false flexibility and won't help with the active flexibility you need. It sucks, but it just takes time (and thigh cramps, enjoy those, it means it's working )

The ideal is to work on improving your form first, then building up volume. I know this is kind of hard when the sets are quite short, they feel unsatisfying and like not enough strength work. From what I have seen though, once people take the time to get the form right the movement becomes much more efficient and they can add reps very quickly. In your position I would keep the reps quite low-- like repeating week 1-4 until the flexibility comes low-- and up the sets a bit to get some more practise in. Don't push this--working to exhaustion is going to set you back. You might even prefer just sticking to 5-8x3-5 and forgetting about progressing the weeks until the compression is there and it feels like a stretch instead of strength work.

Drills like the straddle and pike compressions will help too, one set of 10 (of each) in the mornings can help a lot, as well as obviously stretching all around hips and glutes and working on posterior pelvic tilt (pushing that lower back into the floor).

Don't think you'll need to plan to that much detail though, just clean up the technique (actively maintaining position rather than balancing) and stretch, and you'll be golden.

Jon Douglas said:

Definitely not momentum-- this is false flexibility and won't help with the active flexibility you need. It sucks, but it just takes time (and thigh cramps, enjoy those, it means it's working )

The ideal is to work on improving your form first, then building up volume. I know this is kind of hard when the sets are quite short, they feel unsatisfying and like not enough strength work. From what I have seen though, once people take the time to get the form right the movement becomes much more efficient and they can add reps very quickly. In your position I would keep the reps quite low-- like repeating week 1-4 until the flexibility comes low-- and up the sets a bit to get some more practise in. Don't push this--working to exhaustion is going to set you back. You might even prefer just sticking to 5-8x3-5 and forgetting about progressing the weeks until the compression is there and it feels like a stretch instead of strength work.

Drills like the straddle and pike compressions will help too, one set of 10 (of each) in the mornings can help a lot, as well as obviously stretching all around hips and glutes and working on posterior pelvic tilt (pushing that lower back into the floor).

 

Don't think you'll need to plan to that much detail though, just clean up the technique (actively maintaining position rather than balancing) and stretch, and you'll be golden.

Amazing.

Thanks a lot, gonna be implementing everything you recommended right away. One more small question, you mentioned I should be focusing on bringing my torso lower, if so, why does it look like the athlete in the videos back is much less rounded and more flat than what I see from myself? Is this detail even that really important?

I feel as though working towards mastery in this PE is what is going to get me my HS press as well - exciting !

Thanks for all your help !

phenom said:

Amazing.

 

Thanks a lot, gonna be implementing everything you recommended right away. One more small question, you mentioned I should be focusing on bringing my torso lower, if so, why does it look like the athlete in the videos back is much less rounded and more flat than what I see from myself? Is this detail even that really important?

 

I feel as though working towards mastery in this PE is what is going to get me my HS press as well - exciting !

 

Thanks for all your help !

Not necessarily to keep your torso lower-- more that it's coming up too high too early. Think how a pair of scissors opens-- handle and blade up at the same time. As I said, sitting up too far onto your glutes makes it more like the straddle leg lift drills-- difficult to get much rom and takes stress off stomach (directly onto hips).

This PE is a bottleneck for a lot of people. Just keep plugging away and it will come together just btw, whenever I find elements that take me more time and work to get the hang of, I make a particular point of keeping a set of them in my warmup, and recommend you do your same. To paraphrase Daniel Burnham, it's a good thing to spend pleny of time with your least favourite exercises.

Keep us updated

Jon Douglas said:

 

Don't think you'll need to plan to that much detail though, just clean up the technique (actively maintaining position rather than balancing) and stretch, and you'll be golden.

I am still working on getting mastery on MN/PE1, but this idea of actively maintaining the position vs. balancing is something I noticed as my strength finally started to increase as the weeks have continued. I went back to Week 1 and started doing these solely as a negative/eccentric rep and focused on a controlled movement from the core through the entire range of motion of the rep. Doing this has helped me see that I had some weak links near the very end of the rep when abs were nearing maximum compression. There is definitely a different feeling of using my hip flexors + balance vs. feeling the core activated through the entire range. Hope that is of some help here too.

I think I'm not going to advance on this particular PE until I get the form of this girl at 0:02

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6hUqA5QLjY

Seriously, a pancake stretch it's a prereq for sure, and not only that, we've to do it active!

I have been performing week 1 of this movement for roughly 6 months and progress has been made gradually (slow and steady wins the race). The amount of improvement I have experienced inspires me to keep on keeping on.

Jerry Mangona said:

I am still working on getting mastery on MN/PE1, but this idea of actively maintaining the position vs. balancing is something I noticed as my strength finally started to increase as the weeks have continued. I went back to Week 1 and started doing these solely as a negative/eccentric rep and focused on a controlled movement from the core through the entire range of motion of the rep. Doing this has helped me see that I had some weak links near the very end of the rep when abs were nearing maximum compression. There is definitely a different feeling of using my hip flexors + balance vs. feeling the core activated through the entire range. Hope that is of some help here too.

This is one of my favorite techniques. I like to make people squeeze at the top for 3-5 seconds, and then lower back down without losing the feel of the muscles. This seems to help people really get the feel for what abdominal compression really is, and helps to reprogram the core tension pattern that we tend to see with weight lifters, as that is not a useful pattern for this exercise.

Sometimes I have to tell people to use their hands to pull themselves into the compressed position at the top, and then start squeezing the muscles for 3-5 seconds so that they don't lose compression as they slowly let go of their knees, and then slowly descent. It completely wrecks them for the first week, but pretty soon they are able to lift to the top on their own with good compression.

Thank you all for such great advice, haven't been able to pancake stretch recently because I may have strained / pulled something in my right leg from abusing this movement too much, feeling a little better today so I'll be back at it today. Will be posting significant progress as it's achieved!

Joshua Naterman said:

 

 

Sometimes I have to tell people to use their hands to pull themselves into the compressed position at the top

Could you please elaborate on this more? Do you allow them to have significant lean in order for them to get the legs that high with locked out knees?

One thing that helped me at the beginning is combine PNF technique with V-ups.

Simply think that when you are at your best compression, grab the legs with the hands and try push push your legs down and in the same time try to arch your lower back, maintain that isometric hold for 3-4 for second the relax and enjoy the momentary new level of compression.

alex87 said:

One thing that helped me at the beginning is combine PNF technique with V-ups.

Simply think that when you are at your best compression, grab the legs with the hands and try push push your legs down and in the same time try to arch your lower back, maintain that isometric hold for 3-4 for second the relax and enjoy the momentary new level of compression.

this^ bring a towel. you might cry. 

^ Do you have a picture or a video of this? I can't visualize what you mean.

M K Mossop said:

^ Do you have a picture or a video of this? I can't visualize what you mean.

An example would be standing on your left leg, lift the right knee as (not using your hands), place your hands on top of your right knee and try to push it down to the ground -resist this by pushing even harder with your knee, let go with your hands and your knee will go higher than it was before. Pavel calls this the "jack knife"if you want to Google it.

Hmm cool thanks. So practice these before MN/PE2?

Here's a video of me doing it... from what I've seen I assume my form could use improvement before moving on?

Murray Truelove said:

An example would be standing on your left leg, lift the right knee as (not using your hands), place your hands on top of your right knee and try to push it down to the ground -resist this by pushing even harder with your knee, let go with your hands and your knee will go higher than it was before. Pavel calls this the "jack knife"if you want to Google it.

Actually that is kind of the opposite of what a PNF would be, though that is still a very useful method (I believe this would be more akin to MAT).

To do the same thing with the exercise you are talking about you would:

-stand on one foot

-raise the other knee as high towards the chest as possible

-clasp your hands UNDER the thigh/hamstring/behind the knee

-pull the knee down towards the ground using the Glutes and Hamstrings and resisting it from moving with the arms

-stop trying to pull the leg down and again lift the knee towards the chest (using the abs and hip flexors)

Two different but equally valid methods of utilizing neuromuscular reflexes to gain greater ROM.

Question - I'm trying to figure out my next purchase.  I was thinking H1...

...but then the email about H2 said there was some really great mobility for the straddle/pancake in H2.  

What do you guys think?  Is it worth getting H2 just for the mobility (which is my biggest weakness)?  Or should I really get H1 first anyway? 

Keegan said:

Actually that is kind of the opposite of what a PNF would be, though that is still a very useful method (I believe this would be more akin to MAT).

To do the same thing with the exercise you are talking about you would:

-stand on one foot

-raise the other knee as high towards the chest as possible

-clasp your hands UNDER the thigh/hamstring/behind the knee

-pull the knee down towards the ground using the Glutes and Hamstrings and resisting it from moving with the arms

-stop trying to pull the leg down and again lift the knee towards the chest (using the abs and hip flexors)

Two different but equally valid methods of utilizing neuromuscular reflexes to gain greater ROM.

Sorry that's my mistake. As corrected they are two different techniques.

H1 is a gold mine for shoulder mobility and is a prerequisite for H2. H1 is also meant to be worked along side F1.

Murray Truelove said:

Sorry that's my mistake. As corrected they are two different techniques.

H1 is a gold mine for shoulder mobility and is a prerequisite for H2. H1 is also meant to be worked along side F1.

^This. Get H1 first if you have to choose between the two.

Ok, I'll get H1 next.  Thanks!