Started by BodyTrain, March 6, 2013 · 28 Replies · 8,925 Views
Hey, after hard training my oac is pretty slow, but always I rotate just a few inch before my arm is straight. Have you any tips for me?
And are there any other harder progresses that can help me to build the strenght that I need? Or should I just do negatives?
These 3 exercises helped me to get the OAC
Dead hang one arm for time
Holding the top position of the OAC for time
Assisted OAC. Start from a dead hang and pull yourself up as slow as possible. I Aimed for 20 seconds.
mats, for how long u aimed top hold ( 5, 10 sec, or more )?
ty.
Daniel got his recently from the RC progressions. That's all he did.
That said, Mats' approach is intelligent. Take it slow and you'll get there.
If you work through Foundation 1-4, you'll get there without really bothering to do anything this specific.
Joshua Naterman said:Daniel got his recently from the RC progressions. That's all he did.
That said, Mats' approach is intelligent. Take it slow and you'll get there.
If you work through Foundation 1-4, you'll get there without really bothering to do anything this specific.
Forgot to say during this time I also did RC once a week.
kalel said:mats, for how long u aimed top hold ( 5, 10 sec, or more )?
ty.
Something like that I dont have an exakt number. I just made sure to mix in the holds with the assisted OAC
forgot to ask in previous question, how many times per week u did oac training?
p.s. what is rc? rope climbing?
tnx.
Yes RC= Rope climbing.
Cant remember exactly but the elements I listed were like 3 times a week. RC once a week.
I also regularly use the rope and progress with it. I couldn't lock out my oac for months no matter what I tried. Gave up and went to the rope. To my suprise, I could do a complete oac.
There is a reason rope climb is a foundational movement. It is much more beneficial for strength preparation than OAC work. I did OAC work specifically for a number of months and made little progress and was plagued by elbow pain. I've even heard others say that elbow tendinitis is inevitable when getting OAC. This is FALSE. Do rope climb correctly and you will find that it is safer and better for building strength. Oh and one side effect of high rope climb proficiency is OAC.
Daniel Burnham said:There is a reason rope climb is a foundational movement. It is much more beneficial for strength preparation than OAC work. I did OAC work specifically for a number of months and made little progress and was plagued by elbow pain. I've even heard others say that elbow tendinitis is inevitable when getting OAC. This is FALSE. Do rope climb correctly and you will find that it is safer and better for building strength. Oh and one side effect of high rope climb proficiency is OAC.
I can do strict rope climbs (legs straddled) for reps, but can not do an OAC. I've also never put any effort into training the OAC, which may well be the cause. But it certainly doesn't come automatically.
Hari_Seldon said:I can do strict rope climbs (legs straddled) for reps, but can not do an OAC. I've also never put any effort into training the OAC, which may well be the cause. But it certainly doesn't come automatically.
Hari, This is probably because you simply do not know the later progressions of the Foundation series. By the end of the foundation curriculum every person should either have, or be very close to a OAC. It should require minimal specific training.
I have a feeling that in a few years we will have quite a few people with OAC around here. I no longer see it as a difficult skill as long as proper foundation has been laid. I will say that mine is not perfect. The bottom position is still difficult for me. But I have not even finished the foundation series yet.
Daniel Burnham said:Hari, This is probably because you simply do not know the later progressions of the Foundation series. By the end of the foundation curriculum every person should either have, or be very close to a OAC. It should require minimal specific training.
I have a feeling that in a few years we will have quite a few people with OAC around here. I no longer see it as a difficult skill as long as proper foundation has been laid. I will say that mine is not perfect. The bottom position is still difficult for me. But I have not even finished the foundation series yet.
This is entirely possible. Where in Foundation's rope-climb progression are you currently?
Hari_Seldon said:This is entirely possible. Where in Foundation's rope-climb progression are you currently?
All I can say is that I am beyond what has been published so far. I went to a seminar and we got a lot of the foundation curriculum. Some of it has changed a bit so I don't even know exactly where it would line up as I haven't seen the complete foundation stuff. The later work is actually quite challenging.
In my gym I always see quite a few guys which have a OAC, nothing special. It's a climbing gym. They got it (like me) from campusboarding - which can be compared to RC with fixed lengths of the pulls (+extra finger work). If you're comfortable with a certain diestance, you augment it. At some point you have to do almost a OAC to proceed further on the board. So lenght of the pulls plays an important role!
Christoph said:In my gym I always see quite a few guys which have a OAC, nothing special. It's a climbing gym. They got it (like me) from campusboarding - which can be compared to RC with fixed lengths of the pulls (+extra finger work). If you're comfortable with a certain diestance, you augment it. At some point you have to do almost a OAC to proceed further on the board. So lenght of the pulls plays an important role!
yeah OAC for climbers isn't terribly uncommon. I had one for a time when I was doing a lot of hangboard/campus board work - but the neglect that climbers tend to put into many other movements (pushing in general, legs, etc) tends to leave them prone to injury. I know from first hand experience. I trained and trained to climb harder and all the while got chicken legs with unhealthy knees an overdeveloped back that caused me impingement issues and a handful of finger injuries to boot.
That's what I like so much about F1 and HS1 - by following these programs I am not only making myself stronger, but I'm also becoming healthier and less prone to injury in the process.
I still love climbing but lately it's been less about performance and difficulty and more about enjoying nature and adventuring for me.
Sorry, but it's not the lack of pushing. It's the lack of knowledge. They don't have overdevelopped backs, they have shortened pectorales. Pullups train the lower head of the pectoralis more than the upper back (I'm contradicting here the usual bodybuilder wisdom, which is simply not correct - discussed that with a climbing trainer and a climbing orthopedist), and so they end up with a strongly curved upper back, which easily leads to impingement. Pushing doesn't help per se. Dips do, as they train the back more than the pectoralis. Bench press makes it much worse as it trains even both pectoralis heads. Gymnasts in general have a better posture, but ring specialists also tend into these curved back look. The only sportsmen with perhaps overdevelopped back which I know are rowers.
Christoph said:Sorry, but it's not the lack of pushing. It's the lack of knowledge. They don't have overdevelopped backs, they have shortened pectorales. Pullups train the lower head of the pectoralis more than the upper back (I'm contradicting here the usual bodybuilder wisdom, which is simply not correct - discussed that with a climbing trainer and a climbing orthopedist), and so they end up with a strongly curved upper back, which easily leads to impingement. Pushing doesn't help per se. Dips do, as they train the back more than the pectoralis. Bench press makes it much worse as it trains even both pectoralis heads. Gymnasts in general have a better posture, but ring specialists also tend into these curved back look. The only sportsmen with perhaps overdevelopped back which I know are rowers.
Pardon my misuse of the phrase "overdeveloped back." Regardless of what particular exercise helps alleviate the issue my point was that many climbers neglect non-climbing specific movements, and this leads to injury.
I was imprecise with the dips, thinking of box dips behind the back. Parallel bar dips to my experience also target the pectoralis more. I have a meanwhile long history of a shoulder injury, and only the 4. doc realised that the real problem is my curved back. At the moment I'm only training for front lever and manna - when I have these two I'll be ok. Hope I don't need victorian 
A good OAC is uncommon among any people. People just have different standards for skills, like people still call it a real OAC when they aren't even starting from deadhang and hardly get their chin over the bar. This is something many bar-athletes do and they still claim they can do multiple OACs. In general, the higher standards you have for any skill, the better because it drives you to work harder and further, that's why I won't be satisfied until my skills look near "perfect".
Daniel Burnham said:There is a reason rope climb is a foundational movement. It is much more beneficial for strength preparation than OAC work. I did OAC work specifically for a number of months and made little progress and was plagued by elbow pain. I've even heard others say that elbow tendinitis is inevitable when getting OAC. This is FALSE. Do rope climb correctly and you will find that it is safer and better for building strength. Oh and one side effect of high rope climb proficiency is OAC.
Daniel Burnham said:Hari, This is probably because you simply do not know the later progressions of the Foundation series. By the end of the foundation curriculum every person should either have, or be very close to a OAC. It should require minimal specific training.
I have a feeling that in a few years we will have quite a few people with OAC around here. I no longer see it as a difficult skill as long as proper foundation has been laid. I will say that mine is not perfect. The bottom position is still difficult for me. But I have not even finished the foundation series yet.
I am also one of the people who achieved OAC without doing specific work, but it was from FL work and not RC. Not arguing that RC is not a foundational movement, but I'm curious as to why you depict it as vastly different from OAC work? The way I see it is that they are both pretty much the same type of movement (single arm pulling/assisted single arm pulling), but RC just has a more difficult grip which I believe is really the only additional benefit over regular OAC work. Didn't Coach also say that RC was intense on the elbows as well?
Now I could be wrong, but could you care to explain how RC is really different from OAC work since they both look bio-mechanically the same to me. There must have been something I've overlooked or misunderstood if I'm wrong.
Also, I think there are already quite a number of people here who already have or have done OACs. I also remember hearing that most of Coach's gymnasts can't do OACs even though they do tons of rope climbing with the exception of Dillion who mentioned that he was like the only one in the gym who could do one, but even then he said it was not from deadhang. So is the Foundation series vastly different from the GST program Coach uses with his gymnasts then?
It's true they are similar. And if you make progressions for OAC correctly the training could be very close. I do feel the climbing of a rope peeped my elbow better than assisted OAC. Once the later foundation progressions you will be able to see some other differences in assisted vs rope climb.
I'll post a Coach Sommer comment from youtube about OAC:
To an extent.However after including OACs in our conditioning for a while, as far as Gymnastic Strength Training™ is concerned my athletes and I have found that rope climbs and reverse muscle up are far more productive and demanding than one arm chins and have since discontinued training them.Yours in Fitness,Coach Sommer
And I'm not sure about coaches gymnasts but I suspect that they could find their OAC very quickly. For gymnasts at a high level rope climb is more of a warmup and volume thing. I believe coach found reverse muscle up to be a better focus for bent arm conditioning.
I must agree that gymnasts (and hardcore rock climbers) are closest to OAC. But Coach choose other excersises for his athletes, the best ones for their sport. There's some philosophy too over here - we should always choose the most effective excersises, depending on what we're doing in live and what are our training goals