Arms bending backward at elbows during ring training.

Hi,

 

I've been doing gymnastics bodyweight exercises for a couple of years now. I've been doing planche, back lever, front lever and handstand training. I do static and dynamic exercises and don't have any signs of overtraining (atleast I don't think I do.) In the past 5 months I've shifted all of my exercises over to the rings. 

 

I mainly do different kinds of dips, L-sits, assisted iron cross exercises and a "pseudo maltese" exercise (my legs are up on a bench and I get into a pushup position with my front body weight on the rings and let my arms out to the side, lower myself down, hold and bring myself back up.)

 

I try and place a lot of emphasis on proper form so I always keep my arms straight and toward the direction of exerted force (ie. toward the floor when doing iron cross and maltese).

 

I have footage of doing the exercises and my arms are bending backwards at my elbows. I feel no pain but it looks wierd and I don't know how far it will end up bending backward in the long run. 

 

I am able to flex and bring my arms back to a straight position, but when I do that I feel I am "cheating", the feeling is like doing the exercise with bent arms (making it easer), even though my arms are actually perfectly straight. 

 

Any advice on what I should do? Do I need more bicept strength to keep my arms straight? Do I continue the exercises with arms pointing backward or do I flex to bring my arms to a straight position (but make the exercise considerably easier)?

 

Does anyone else have this problem?

 

Thank you!

If your elbow is hypermobile (i.e. it naturally extends beyond 180 degrees), then you should perform straight-arm strength skills at full extension. Do not try to keep it at 180. 

This would be an example 

 

Precisely.

 Very common for men's gymnasts. Some will have some pretty extreme hyperflexion in the elbows.

 

 Before gymnastics, my elbows might have actually been less than 180 by just a bit when they were extended. In 2004 ish, they were not 180. By 2009, I found out they were straight with possibly a very tiny bit of hyperflexion.

 

 I figure they weren't as straight in 2000-2004 because prior to that I was mainly doing a lot of barbell work with pullups and dips besides handstands as the only BW work I did. And yes, I did my curls because coach had us do curls in HS. Curls with a bar and curls with DB.

 

 These days they look pretty straight possibly less than straight. Bare in mind, I have been doing minimal gymnastics since late 2011 and mostly Olympic Weightlifting besides a bit of gymnastics whenever I decided to play on rings when visiting gyms or on the weekends to have a bit of "play." For a few months last year, I was away from barbells for about 3 months and was instead working only BW stuff, generally very basic stuff like A skills on rings and rope climbing besides dips and HS work.

If you that concerned about it, just make sure to get in some supinated pullups, rope climbs and do some curls. A friend of mine at Berkeley could do crosses and had about 30 degrees of hyperflexion in his elbows so it looked freaky but he didn't have any pain with them besides them being difficulty. I used to point him out to Carly whenever she was concerned that her elbows would halt her gymnastics.

Most of this is a combination of genetics besides the rings and gymnastics hitting the triceps hard which is actually the bigger muscle.