Flexibility, Strength and Muscle Imbalance

[Neal Winkler]

My experience thus far with the shrimps is that it is easy to allow your weight to shift forward on the foot (compared to pistols). I've been really diligent though with pressing down on the heel.

[Jason Stein]

The drawback to the shrimp can be mechanical, i.e. some people don't have the range of motion (either skeletal or for example multiple ankle injuries) to keep the heel flat while extending the knee over the toes.

I've found a minimal lift under the heel --- a 1.25# or 2.5# plate for example --- can allow you to keep the heel grounded.

I haven't looked into this, but I wonder if there'd be any carryover of Bulgarian split squats to shrimps?

Just for a refresher, here're the beginner/intermediate shrimp variations.

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[Neal Winkler]

Yeah, there is no chance that someone with poor dorsiflexion ROM is going to pull off this exercise while keeping the heel down (right slizzardman? :wink: ). I can touch my knee to the wall (while keeping my heel down) seven inches away, so I can do the shrimp and still get good posterior chain recruitment.

[terpol]

I did find the shrimp easier than i thought it would be. I'm 5'8 and my femur is about 3 inches longer than my torso but with the counterwight i had no problems getting my knee over my toes and keeping my heel on the ground. Without a counterweight though that and an sls is impossible for me.

[anhkun]

what are good bodyweight exercises for posterior deltoids? would adv tuck front lever rows be one? cos i feel i might develop an imbalance with all the handstand and planche exercises cos i feel they focus mainly on anterior. Or i could just balance them out with dumbell exercises

[Blairbob]

Did a google. Came up with this. These exercises were talked about in all the Bodybuilding.com threads

http://getthisripped.com/exercise/rear-deltoid-exercises

Try to do something similar I guess with DB and rings/bands if you don't have access to the machines.

[Brian Li]

Are the triceps supposed to be stronger than all the elbow flexors (biceps and brachialis) or just stronger than either one of them and are the anterior delts supposed to be stronger than the posterior delts and are the wrist flexors supposed to be stronger than the wrist extensors? My biceps (maybe brachialis as well) are much stronger than my triceps because of my ignorance in balancing muscle development when I first started weight training years ago. Is there going to be a big problem with that big imbalance in the elbow muscles soon?

[Joshua Naterman]

Probably not. Just slowly work on correcting it now and you'll be fine. I wouldn't worry too much about absolute parity, but you probably want them within 20% of each other. I would say that should be the long term goal, 12-24 months from now.

You will never get a clear read on the anterior vs posterior delts because they don't work in isolation and there is a lot more mechanical advantage in front delt work than rear delt work. What you want is for your traps, external rotators and rear delts (which are also external rotators) to all work together. There is no such thing as having these muscles get too strong, though you want to make sure you are training the upper, mid, and lower traps fairly evenly.