Hey there, gurus of gst! After lurking around these forums for a few weeks I bought H1 recently and am sort of feeling out how and where to start.
For reference, i'm 30 and thin at 5'10" 155lb, discovered crossfit two years ago and it opened my eyes to how awesome it is to feel strong and in control of your body, and GST is pretty much the pinnacle in the strength + body control department. So that eventually led me here. I bought BtGB and Overcoming Gravity a few months ago (pre-F1) and with that and some help from a coach/programmer I've been doing basically a custom strength program heavily influenced by bodyweight training (but also including squats and olympic lifting) so I've made some progress on front lever, back lever, l-sit, etc. I plan to switch to F1 after my current cycle, but anyway, i came here to talk about handstand work!
As is probably common, shoulder mobility is my biggest issue. My question: i know for sure that the shoulder flexion exercise, er, PE1iM, is going to take me quite a while, but does that mean that's the only thing i should work on? I did the 5x60s mastery of the tripod and it was not very challenging, and i feel pretty solid in a headstand, but I've read among these forums that you should maser the iM before moving on. And regarding the mobility, it seems silly not to work on extension along with flexion if i know that both will take a lot of work. Also, if I am supposed to stay at PE1 because of the mobility issue, what are my work sets? more tripod? just hammer the shit out of flexion stretching and strengthening?
I understand the need for patience, and i ask only for clarification. If the idea is to just devote supplemental work to the iM as needed to get it mastered, then that's cool and i'd appreciate some suggestions on extra things to add (wall slides, probably?). But if the idea is just to do the 5 sets of the exercise as prescribed a few times a week and that's it then surely there's enough capacity left over to do iM2 as well.
Let me know!
Oh, also, what do you guys use for weighted bars? I need something heaver than the pvc pipe i've been using (heh). I'll probably just see what they have at the sporting goods store but thought yall might have ideas on scaling weight and whatnot.
Sorry for the long post and thanks!
