Problems Moving Forward1

Hey guys just completed my first week and well not all is great...

Many of the Exercises including the iM are proving difficult. My thoughts are I should keep repeating week 1 until I have attained perfect form on all exercises.

What are your thoughts? I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere.

Which ones in particular?

Deck Squats... I am trying my best to use minimum amounts of momentum while also keeping my feet at the appropriate distance apart. Perhaps I am not understanding what it fully takes to successfully complete this movement.

Stiff Leg Windmill... My hamstrings are a bit tight, so I wonder if I should bend my knees or try to reach as far as possible before bending them.

Scapular Shrugs... I bend at the elbows a bit because I feel as though I am not getting the full ROM.

Those are the main ones... Little shaky on the other ones but they are of little difficulty to overcome IMO.

It is ok to proceed. You should only worry if you haven't achieved perfect form by the end of week 12. If at that point you still haven't achieved perfect form, repeat the third 4-week mini-cycle until you do.

Well, form and ROM are a little different. I'm no health or fitness professional, but this is what I've gathered from reading over the years.

Form serves a couple of purposes: preventing injury, and promoting good habits for the body (both in exercise and daily life). Perfect form should be strived for from the beginning with any exercise. Of course new exercises might take some getting used to, but it is generally recommended to practice form with negligible resistance or intensity to get it down first. In the case where flexibility/mobility/etc are preventing good form, it's recommended to correct that aspect before continuing to perform the exercise. Because form is not just recommended, it is vital.

However, depending on the exercise, full ROM may not be necessary in order to have good form and still benefit from the exercise. You won't get the FULL benefit, of course, but you can still progress while you work on your limiting factors. The mobility work is a good example of this (and its very purpose is to improve upon those limitations, but form is still important), but it can be applied to many exercises.

Unfortunately, I'll have to defer to the pros for those specific exercises though .

Hari_Seldon said:

It is ok to proceed. You should only worry if you haven't achieved perfect form by the end of week 12. If at that point you still haven't achieved perfect form, repeat the third 4-week mini-cycle until you do.

So simply repeat weeks 9-12 until form and ROM has been reached? And I can proceed with PE2 Routine?

Somalie said:

Deck Squats... I am trying my best to use minimum amounts of momentum while also keeping my feet at the appropriate distance apart. Perhaps I am not understanding what it fully takes to successfully complete this movement.

 

Stiff Leg Windmill... My hamstrings are a bit tight, so I wonder if I should bend my knees or try to reach as far as possible before bending them.

 

Scapular Shrugs... I bend at the elbows a bit because I feel as though I am not getting the full ROM.

 

Those are the main ones... Little shaky on the other ones but they are of little difficulty to overcome IMO.

With the scapular shrugs, a small elbow bend sometimes does enhance the exercise.  My right shoulder hurts if I don't do this, but it is such a small bend that you would barely notice unless you were at the perfect angle, and I move slow enough (around 1.5s each up and down) to where there's really no change in momentum. As long as you feel these in the serratus anterior area you're doing a good job.

If possible, it would be nice to not bend the elbows at all, but looking at scapular mechanics a very slight bend at the bottom of the motion does allow for a more ideal glenohumeral alignment.

It doesn't tale much of a bend, and this may depend on how wide your rib cage is. Perhaps if my rib cage was narrower I woudn't need the bend at all, and perhaps in the future I won't need it... I certainly don't use as much of a bend as I did 6 months ago.

Deck squats: These are a momentum exercise. If you're slowing yourself down on purpose, you're making these harder than they should be. The biggest concern here is to make sure your butt and shoulders are lifting at the same rate... you don't want your butt coming up faster than your shoulders once you're on top of your feet!

Windmills: Personally, I find it's helpful to do some sets with slightly bent knees, and some with completely straight legs. There's nothing wrong with that, but you'll want to keep practicing them until you do eventually get that full straight leg ROM.

You should go ahead with the weeks, as long as your form is good in the ROM that you have access to. Unless you have some kind of injury status that is simply going to keep you from doing things 100% picture perfectly, you should probably stay on weeks 9-12, repeating the 4 week minicycle, until you achieve full ROM with perfect form.

The funniest thing about deck squats is that it feels like the iM and the skiers feel like the exercise. Just this guys opinion though.

Thanks for the great info guys.

Somalie said:

The funniest thing about deck squats is that it feels like the iM and the skiers feel like the exercise. Just this guys opinion though.

Thanks for the great info guys.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought this

Ha me too. Skiers exhaust the heck out of me.

Jerry Mangona said:

Ha me too. Skiers exhaust the heck out of me.

Lol. Here's a good question for you... Are you doing ten to each side?

Ouch...no, I'm doing 10 total, alternating sides. Should I be doing 10 each side = 20 total?

Somalie said:

Lol. Here's a good question for you... Are you doing ten to each side?

10 total is correct.

Somalie said:

Lol. Here's a good question for you... Are you doing ten to each side?

I am doing this, but maybe in a few weeks I'll cut it back if they get too taxing.

Lol first skiers I did ten each side lol... Sore?... A little.

For many people the IM will be more challenging then the paired skill. Just a matter of what you need to work on.

By random chance I noticed I had "liked" my own post above. I didn't realize you could do that. Anyways, it was an accident, so I removed it.

But yeah, mobility will definitely be the thing holding me back in some areas more than strength will, such as SLS. The Hawaian squat (I think it was called) isn't even an IM and it looks like there's a decent mobility requirement to it.

maleko said:

But yeah, mobility will definitely be the thing holding me back in some areas more than strength will, such as SLS. The Hawaian squat (I think it was called) isn't even an IM and it looks like there's a decent mobility requirement to it.

I think if you've mastered the previous mobility elements, you shouldn't have trouble with it. 

Hari_Seldon said:

I think if you've mastered the previous mobility elements, you shouldn't have trouble with it. 

I gave it a shot again tonight to refresh my memory. I can handle the mastery sets/reps for each of the previous elements + IM, but I could probably stand to gain a little mobility by practicing all of them for a while, and maybe some joint conditioning as well. So, I won't be starting with SE1, however the mobility I seem to really test there is bending at the hip to keep the back straight towards the bottom of the movement (a little tougher here than with a 2-leg squat or any of the PE's). I've never seen this exercise before getting F1, but after practicing a bit more tonight, I found part of the issue was finding the correct balance and another part was simple strength at the bottom of the movement. But I think I'm gonna look for some extra hip mobility stuff for the squat before getting to this one. I think it will definitely work that aspect, but it's kinda a heavy resistance to start with. That's gonna be a good exercise though.

maleko said:

I gave it a shot again tonight to refresh my memory. I can handle the mastery sets/reps for each of the previous elements + IM, but I could probably stand to gain a little mobility by practicing all of them for a while, and maybe some joint conditioning as well. So, I won't be starting with SE1, however the mobility I seem to really test there is bending at the hip to keep the back straight towards the bottom of the movement (a little tougher here than with a 2-leg squat or any of the PE's). I've never seen this exercise before getting F1, but after practicing a bit more tonight, I found part of the issue was finding the correct balance and another part was simple strength at the bottom of the movement. But I think I'm gonna look for some extra hip mobility stuff for the squat before getting to this one. I think it will definitely work that aspect, but it's kinda a heavy resistance to start with. That's gonna be a good exercise though.

Note that for mobility elements, "mastery" is not defined merely as the ability to perform the element for the prescribed number of sets/reps. Mastery over a mobility element means  that you can perform it with form and range of motion comparable to the that demonstrated in the video. If you can't perform the elements at that standard, you would benefit from spending time perfecting them. 

I don't think I've quite got enough twist in the skiers, thus, I'm starting at PE1. I understand the mastery concept, no worries , but thanks. For the rest I *think* I'm good on ROM, but I'll still practice them to make sure. I don't want to shortchange myself on mobility, because that's something I've NEVER focused on working before--like several other things, I've discovered, with this GST stuff.