Stalled progress at PE2/iM

I've been at pe2 since april, and while I made gains the first month or two, progress seems to have stalled. My arms are 10-15 degrees below horizontal, and it doesn't really matter whether hands are at shoulder width or wider, or whether I'm using 1 or 5 kg's on the bar. I think I need to increase passive ROM, so I may have to include some additional stretching prior to the H1 session. German hangs and table stretches seems obvious choices, but are there other suited stretches?

According to Kit Laughlin, I should do some hard stretching once a week, and some limbering throughout the rest of the week. The workouts would pass as limbering I guess. Should the hard stretching precede a H1 session, so that it also acts as a warmup? How about the soreness that occurs the following days, won't that limit the ROM in the workouts?

Do you guys have any other input to deal with this plateau?

try rolling with a baseball on your chest. i did a few times with iM1 because i would get popping sounds in my sternum. its significantly gone down during times of iM consolidation and once i push hard again, ill get a pop or two in a month at most

Are you following also the Foundation series?

What i've had the opportunity to learn analyzing the Foundations Progression and Handstand is all the elements are made to increase the proficiency on other elements.

For example hollowbackpress IM and RC IM are very good to decrease tension over the internal rotator muscles that are the biggest obstacle to handstand flexibility. There is a certain point where the active flexibility you need to elongate a muscle is to much and maybe you need to increase the ROM passively maybe with some backward bend progression.

Found Series provide this solution with it's mobility and of course during the last seminar i got the opportunity to do some serious good stretching position with Orench where i really feel the stretch of my internal rotation.

Yes, I am also following foundation (see my signature), and while the integrated mobility drills are excellent, the problem remains.

I gather that the problem with HS/PE2>iM is that I have tight/short front delts and pecs. They need to be much more flexible if I am ever to pass PE2. Easier said than done, though. Perhaps german hangs from a bar with hands at shoulder width would be the best stretch to mimic the requirements for PE2?

I have a concern about german hangs however: With all the straight arm planche work, my elbows and biceps are being worked quite thoroughly. Adding a lot of german hang volume could increase the risk of injury, since GH also stresses the elbows and biceps significantly, in my experience. Hmm, what to do...

Ravn said:

Yes, I am also following foundation (see my signature), and while the integrated mobility drills are excellent, the problem remains.

 

I gather that the problem with HS/PE2>iM is that I have tight/short front delts and pecs. They need to be much more flexible if I am ever to pass PE2. Easier said than done, though. Perhaps german hangs from a bar with hands at shoulder width would be the best stretch to mimic the requirements for PE2?

 

I have a concern about german hangs however: With all the straight arm planche work, my elbows and biceps are being worked quite thoroughly. Adding a lot of german hang volume could increase the risk of injury, since GH also stresses the elbows and biceps significantly, in my experience. Hmm, what to do...

you know, one of my favorite trigger points to show how pressure points work is one specifically in the pec. to verify find your sternum, your nipple and the top of the clavicle. it'll form a triangle, touch dead center. if you feel tenderness, give yourself a massage. lacrosse ball, golf ball, baseball, softball or with a roller. i dont like rollers on the pecs, doesnt give me too much liberty of movement.

edit: such a lovely place to practice Iponken as well

i suggest to you this exercise if you have a partner coupled with a stallbar exercises that i met first time with Morandi, i'll upload it tomorrow, meanwhile try to stretch internal rotator with that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mPbEggRY_k

Good stuff guys, keep it coming.

You may also consider self-spotting yourself by getting as high as you can go, then using a door handle or counter top corner (or table, etc) to catch the dowel on. Squat down slightly using a split squat (like a lunge) position so that you can stay upright. This way you can get your arms higher. Try to reach the ideal position, and then hold it as you stand back up.

You may only hold it for a few seconds. If so, don't do a slow negative afterwards, just let it on down. Keep repeating this so that you focus on learning the skill of holding the bar higher. This works really well for moving into that new position. It won't be terribly long before you can get there on your own. 

You can keep doing this all the way into the top of an inlocate if you are patient and careful, and have a high enough object on which to catch your dowel.

ok this is the cue of the stretch, bridging is the best solution to elongate the muscles that are working against the shoulders extension. 

But at certain level of IMMOBILITY also the bridge is not possible especially because during the bridge you have to push yourself of the floor as a normal handstand to have the maximum relax into muscles.

This variation provided by Morandi is a good way to stretch the bridge without to much compression over the shoulders section because the idea of push yourself far away from the floor is perfectly achieved with gravity.

The person behind you have to push yourself away from stallbar maintaining his ass near the stallbar and pushing you out with the upper back so that the result is the forward movement of your thoracic section. As your partner is higher in the stallbar as the elongation will be more intense in the upper back/shoulders.

For more intense stretching you can try to maintain your feet in contact with the stall bar.

If you look to the photo probably you will obtain the best stretch for your purpose by asking to your partner to move on the following bar so that his head is at your same level and you can easily catch the stallbar with feel.

Thanks!

I'll be at pe2/iM for few more more months, but I think that stretching and patience should allow me to get in the end. The table stretch used as iM in F1 FL-work is an incredibly intense stretch that gives a good bang for the buck, I'll keep milking this one for a long, long time.

I like the idea about snagging the dowel on a door handle, I'll give that a try to shake things up. The Laughlin partner stretch also looks good, now I just need to persuade my wife to assist. That may be the harder part!

gained more or less 2-3in on each hand after rolling my pecs yesterday. possibly mastery on iM1 as well.

Just this week I finally made this iM.

I did no other kinds of exercises. I just focused on the iM itself.

1) I really, really, really pushed hard into it when I did it. Not just casually pulling it up. This makes a big difference I think. Work it hard like it was your life depending on it.

2) I did it sometimes after my F1 workouts too, just to get more load on it since I am currenly doing just two days of H1 per week.

3) Experiment a bit with your shoulder and arm positions. After a while I realized that just that by holding my shoulders a bit differently rotated, I got a lot more ROM than compared to how I did it initially.

Erik Rissanen said:

Just this week I finally made this iM.

I did no other kinds of exercises. I just focused on the iM itself.

1) I really, really, really pushed hard into it when I did it. Not just casually pulling it up. This makes a big difference I think. Work it hard like it was your life depending on it.

2) I did it sometimes after my F1 workouts too, just to get more load on it since I am currenly doing just two days of H1 per week.

3) Experiment a bit with your shoulder and arm positions. After a while I realized that just that by holding my shoulders a bit differently rotated, I got a lot more ROM than compared to how I did it initially.

Oh trust me, I pull hard! Perhaps greasing the groove on these may help. In any case, I did 4x30 secs of narrow hold German hang on a bar before the last H1 session, and it seemed to help, so I'll pursue this avenue and check for progress. Thanks!

A couple of days ago I tried internally rotating (or is it externally rotating? While holding the stick behind your back, rotate your arms such that your thumbs go down) and I was able to get to shoulder level with my hands a bit closer.

Thanks Geoff, I'll give it a try.