Planche push-ups starting from the ground

So I know doing a planche push-up with the body relaxed on the ground is much harder than lowering and pushing up due to the lack of stretch reflex and having to generate tension from the relaxed position. For instance, I can do 3 reps of full planche push-ups the regular way on a good day, but only barely one rep of a straddle half lay PLPU starting from the ground to show you the massive difference in difficulty.

I was wondering if doing more PLPUs from the ground will build much more strength overall and also increase the ability to do them the regular way of starting from a planche. I assume so, but I'm not sure if it just teaches your body how to generate more tension from a relaxed position to help you do the concentric. Admittedly, I also don't know much about the stretch reflex other then that it is activated right after an eccentric contraction and that it takes about a 3 second pause after a negative to get rid of it.

I'm currently still using GTG with PLPUs starting at the top and only occasionally doing singles starting from the ground.

I thought your biceps tendon was injured...

FredInChina said:

I thought your biceps tendon was injured...

Planche push-ups without full lockout don't hurt or discomfort my biceps tendon. It only hurts when it's straight arm, but now it's much better and I don't feel any pain with straight arms anymore. I'm still going to keep my straight arm work volume low for now.

Charm said:

I like Ppp starting from the bottom. Its a little harder, but once you get used to it no harder than (and maybe a little easier) than Ppp+. If i had to choose one id do those instead, with a focus on extending the static hold at the bottom.

So when you say "once you get used to it ", do you mean once you get stronger or once you get used to the feeling of generating tension to do the concentric?

B1214N said:

So when you say "once you get used to it ", do you mean once you get stronger or once you get used to the feeling of generating tension to do the concentric?

The feeling of generating tension.

Deleted my previous post as I realised I was talking about pseudo PP and you were talking about full. Never mind

Charm said:

The feeling of generating tension.

Deleted my previous post as I realised I was talking about pseudo PP and you were talking about full. Never mind

It should apply to all exercises and not just planche push-ups (PLPUs) so your post had some relevance. 

Do you think you got even stronger from starting from the ground (relaxed position) than starting from the top or you just got better at generating the tension?

B1214N said:

It should apply to all exercises and not just planche push-ups (PLPUs) so your post had some relevance. 

 

Do you think you got even stronger from starting from the ground (relaxed position) than starting from the top or you just got better at generating the tension?

Don't think I got much stronger in a general sense, but it did make PPP feel easy. Think largely it was learning how to efficiently get and hold the shape.

Thanks! I also think a large part is learning how to efficiently get and hold the shape too while pushing up because I find that a lot times I get stuck in the middle of the ROM and my arms feel like they are about to squeeze the side of my torso which doesn't happen when I start from planche and lower down before pushing up.

I still think it takes significantly more strength to do this way though.

Update: So I started practicing a lot of straddle half lay PLPUs starting from the ground yesterday and got up to being able to do 5 consecutive reps that same day. I even did a full PLPU (done the regular way) and a straddle half lay PLPU (from ground) combo. It's true that a big part is learning the feeling of starting from the ground up and I also found that slightly flaring the elbows out at the beginning helps too. I still can't do a half lay PLPU from the ground yet so doing it this way does still take a lot more strength I think.

Anyone else want to chime in about the informational part of starting the concentric from a relaxed position and without stretch reflex and what benefits it may give in development?