Beginning F1 - Suggestions and more

Did my F1 workout today. I can say that over the last 3 sessions I could use the same ROM for the arch hold, but did not get any feeling that I am gaining strength on it. 4x24s were OK, but next week it's going to be a pain I suppose. Tuck up and windmills are improving. On the latter, I can still see that my left side does not achieve the same ROM as my right. I tried and today I could easily break the parallel (with straight arm and almost full 360 deg DB rotation) on the right but not on the left, where the rotation ROM is also reduced. Any idea why?

Deck squats are getting better, 4x12r easy. Skiers as well.

Complemented the work with additional 2x5+5 windmills, 4x3 chin ups 5-5 tempo, pull through with rope 3x10, and stretching routine.

I am looking forward to your suggestions, also on the previous video if possible.

Your cat cow has improved IMMENSELY. Good work!

My biggest comment is on the incline rows at the end: It seems as though you are bending at the waist or hips near the top, probably unconsciously, as a result of trying to look forward. Keep your head in neutral position! That will keep you looking up a bit, because the frontal plane of your body will still be pointed up at the top of the row. That's it.

Your push ups looked good, as did Xiaopengs from what I could tell. They might be a little bit fast. 

Thanks a lot Joshua! Great to hear that I worked my way through the cat cow. Is the form OK for mastery or are there other aspects I should take care of? I have to say, also on the bHBH I have the feeling I am getting stronger. This just did not occur on the arch hold, but will come. That position worries me way more, as I have to take care of feeling no compression whatsoever on my testis. Next medical exam scheduled Sept, 10. I am not too optimistic, unfortunately.

I am not the final authority on mastery, but I think you are well on your way. It needs to be natural for you to move like that, and it will become smoother with time. Now that you've got the right movements down, that will come with practice.

I know what you mean about squishing the important bits, just be careful and practice on a thick, soft mat. Hard floors are... unforgiving.

Sure, thanks! I'll keep going!

Yes, for me, given my problem, is fundamental.

F1 workout went really smooth today. Good feeling, and importantly, I am getting used to the intensity. I am not completely tired afterwards anymore. Complemented with 5x10" RTO support (do you have a good video for this?), various sets of band pullaparts with minibands from different angles and 30x10r leg extension.

I wanted to ask couple of questions:

1) I did 4x12r of push ups, really close to failure. I then did a back off set of 6 reps. Xiaopeng's were OK, did them slower as well. Next week is week 10, hence 4x15. What should I do if I fail (which I guess is 99% likely)?

2) Scap shrugs feel good now, thanks to Joshua's tip. I'll make a video next time. However, on the swivel hips my inner knee is always far from the ground. Is is really required for it to touch the ground? Suggestions?

3) On the incline row, I removed the issue you mentioned with bending at the hips simply by keeping the head in neutral position (i.e. looking up through almost the entire movement). The exercise is fairly easy, I would say a little bit easier than RC/PE1 (at least I did mastery with but off the ground). The associated mobility drill is simply amazing, really deep stretching. However, on my right side I really feel it in my lats, whereas on my left one I feel it more in the shoulder, any idea?

4) I would like to improve my flexibility further and I am considering extending my current static stretching routine. I am neither able to pike nor pancake. I read threads around but found quite difficult to understand what is a proper progression for them that really starts from working on hamstrings, hip and lower back flexibility from scratches. Any hint on this would be really highly appreciated!

Thanks,

Federico

There is an additional thing I'd like to kindly ask you, should you have a clue. On Sept 10th I have the next medical examination/follow up for my epididymitis. I never had severe pain, fortunately, but always a sense of discomfort that I treated first with two cycles of antibiotics. Relevant analysis have been performed, excluding other (more serious) possible issues. However, as there are different possible causes for this inflammation, a targeted therapy (especially where no bacteria can be found) is difficult to set out.

I'd like to know if anyone here had the same problem. I can explain my history in more details of course. For the time being, for what concern sports, the doctor advised me positively on getting started with swimming and on increase my mobility. Swimming is beneficial, especially because it is done at 25-27 degrees. PLing, in constrast, is out of question as it puts an incredible amount of strain and pressure on the soft tissues and generally, on the pelvis. Calisthenics and F1 have been all right over the last months. The problem started in March, and since mid April I started back training with very positive feedback. I never felt pain during training (I always wear a supporter) and my belief is that if anything, it is beneficial/helping out. I'll certainly talk with the doctor about this in more details.

In the mean time, I'd really value your experience.

Thanks in advance,

Federico

Well, first off: definitely see your physician.

A few questions:

1) Have you, at any point, done anything specific to encourage the repopulation of your gut bacteria following antibiotic treatments? If so, what did you do, specifically?

If you took, or take, probiotics, that's a good start, but they can't provide everything you need. You also need "prebiotics." That's just a fancy term for different types of plant fibers that gut bacteria eat.

Eating roots, stems, flowers, and other plant organs can actually help quite a bit with this. They all contain quite a number of different types of fibers that are food for your gut bacteria. Frequent small doses seem to be better than large doses, as you can't exactly control WHICH gut bacteria are going to chow down when it's a giant buffet. For whatever reason, beneficial gut bacteria seem to get a greater boost when the food supply is limited.

So, you could try buying inulin, which appears to be a primary food for bifidobacteria, or you could try natural sources. Onions, garlic,chickory root, and bananas are the four that come to mind.

I know that the next question you're going to ask me is "how much do I eat?" and my honest answer is: I don't know. It seems to be incredibly difficult to get any kind of information regarding how much inulin is in foods... I believe one banana has about 1 gram of inulin according to some source I once came across, but it wasn't a referenced source so take that with a grain of salt. If using an inulin supplement, I will suggest using 1-2 grams per day at first, and not using more than that per meal. Eating a wide variety of plant matter is, in my opinion, a superior option, but in the beginning it might be convenient to use the supplement while figuring that out.

2) What does your diet look like? Lots of veggies? Which veggies? Lots of packed foods? What protein sources do you use? Etc, etc.

You may find that, just in general, gearing your diet to be more anti-inflammatory could be of benefit. http://nutritiondata.self.com/ can be a great resource when figuring out what to eat for this purpose. The inflammatory potential , or anti-inflammatory potential, of each food is listed, and your goal will not be to avoid inflammatory foods but rather to make sure that your diet is heavily tipped towards the anti-inflammatory side of the scale. I am not going to make any food recommendations, but take a good look at a bunch of different greens, cruciferous vegetables, and whatever else you can think of. You will see trends quite rapidly, and get a good idea of how much you need to eat at each meal to get the anti-inflammatory balance that might benefit your condition.

My suggestion, if you can't beat this with just your physician, is to explore the idea of complementary medicine. That's where allopathic treatments (western medicine) are combined with "alternative medicine" treatments. The right thing to do, in my opinion, is to start off by seeing your physician. Then, if things can't be completely controlled with those solutions, perhaps you might consider finding an alternative medicine professional (someone who has a degree in Naturopathic Medicine or Homeopathic Medicine or Traditional Chinese Medicine or something like that, not just anyone with a shingle on their door) and finding out what their approach to the problem will be. I do not want to speak for them, this is not my area of expertise. Just know that these people can often be hostile towards Western medicine, just as Western practitioners can often be hostile towards them. The truth is that both have much to offer patients, particularly in issues like this, and they tend to work better together than they do separately.

The answer is often an individual one, and isn't always found right away. Keep training intelligently, and do some google searching on some of the ideas in this post. 

I can't guarantee that any particular thing will help you, but perhaps now you have a few new options on the table.

Thanks a lot. I will provide a detailed answer later on. My diet changed really a lot over the last 3-4 months and I will explain this in details. 

As an additional thing, to make this a 360 degrees discussion, I would also appreciate hints and references on how to improve my static stretching routine. Walking on the next PEs, I think I will have a hard time with the MN/PE2. I can already be 100% sure that I will not manage to get a straddle as shown, and I am sure my knees will bend. Just to give you a small piece of information, if I stand and raise my leg (basically a front kick), by the time I reach 45 degrees my knee already bends. I would like to work more on hamstrings and hips, but how? Lots of references around and they just confuse me quite a lot.

This post consists of two parts:

1) Today's WO. ABH 4x36s were really tough and borderline. I miserably lost the arch as function of time, but did my best to complete the sets. I hope to improve, from 24s to 36s is an enormous jump. Wondering whether people have considered smoother progressions. This is an increase of 50%, with no other specific work that targets the region. Let's see how it goes next. Managed the rest. Did a video of MN/PE1 and windmills:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qi0_ywl-ds&feature=youtu.be

my feeling is that on the first I drive the movement better. For windmills, I also feel I am increasing the ROM. Please correct me if I am wrong or you see dumb errors. During the movement, I felt slight pain on my left piriformis (it can well be the mid glutes), perhaps I have been too harsh on stretching. As I said before, I used the search function a lot but still I could not find some guidelines for it and recommendations on F1 specific stretching.

On a side, I think I will soon master deck squats.

2) Answering Joshua.

First, thanks a lot for your patience, input and the amazing link you recommended. Answer to your first question is rather easy. Yes, they gave me yeast capsules to take along with the antibiotics. Worked out pretty well, I did not suffered from heavy side effects on this regard. I do eat bananas quite often in my diet, generally 1-2 long ones per day, either smashed in a smoothie or just raw. I will further have a look at inulin supplements. Thanks for the tip and I will come back as soon as I gather more detailed info on this/read on it.

Answering your second question instead, will take a little bit longer. My diet changed substantially from when I was doing PLing to when I moved to CH. Without bothering you too much, my earlier diet was poor of vegetables, almost no fruit, tons of meat and seldom fish. No salad, plenty of nuts, etc. That was before 2010. After that, I started to dig more into nutrition science. Although I am not an expert, I dissected concepts that really helped me out in improving my regime. Despite this, however, my diet was still rich in elaborated food and this was mostly due to the fact that I was working between 90 and 100 hours per week (7/7). Importantly, I never ate deep fried food, fast food, sauces, alcohol and I don't smoke.

In the last 6 months, I decided to increase the proportion of vegetables and fruit in my diet and recently, I switched my protein source to fish and eggs. The amount of red meat decreased a lot, with focus on very high quality meat eaten 1-2 times a week. I now reach 5-6 portions of fruit per day, and currently settle to 2900-3000kcal daily. Over the last three weeks I decided to keep track of my food intake and weight. I moved very neatly from 70.0 on Aug 15th to 72.1 this morning and in general, I feel very good. I do not like to force myself to eat and I am not doing it. I did in the past as this was the only way for me to gain weight and I believe is a totally unhealthy thing to do. My diet is based on 5 meals/day and I try to keep them balanced.

Just as an example, this is what I ate today

Breakfast

>Milk 2.5%, 300ml

>Weetabix x 3

>Plasmon x 12 (very nutritious baby biscuits)

>Dried plums, 20g

S1

>Nuts, 20g

>Pear x1

Lunch

>Eggs (63+) x 2

>Zucchini x big one, pickled

>Black bread and handmade breadsticks, 150g

>Carrots, a lot, raw + 10g EVO

>Smoothie (Bananas+strawberries, fruit only 100% fresh)

S2

>Whey proteins, 30g

>Banana x 1

>Nuts, 20g

>OS x 8 (type of whole grain "biscuits")

Dinner

>Boiled cereals + lentils, 80g

>Pangasius, 150g

>Mixed salad, a lot, raw + 10g EVO

>Dark bread, 80g

>Strawberries, raw x 100/150g

This is ~2900 kcal. For the other point, I will google some of your suggestions. As a scientist, I personally do not believe in this type of medicine but this does not mean I should discourage its use.

Thanks once more,

Federico

Short edit: I checked the inflammatory index of the food I eat the most, it appears that my choices are not too bad. Didn't do the math, but the majority (e.g. carrots, tuna) have a positive index and a moderate anti-inflammatory effect.

I also checked out Kit's videos on YT. I found the one on glutes activation very interesting and I'd like to try this out slowly starting from level one. Pretty much sure this is also something I need to work on. Now the point is to decide on correct complementation with F1, I cannot do too much.

I managed to complete the second microcycle for arch body holds, but I couldn't make the week 9 mastery.  I've decided to go back to week 5 with perfect form and hopefully I'll make it next time around.

Sure, I'll do the same should I realize that I have the same issue. Today I managed, let's see. This week will not be optimal anyway as I have to pack sessions differently due to various duties at work.

One thing I see is that you don't have much green leafy stuff going on in that diet. They should be in nearly every meal unless there is a medical reason for them to not be in your meals. As long as no such restrictions apply to you, I have found that cleaning and freezing fresh leaves gets me the best, freshest yield. They wilt as they thaw, so that a half cup is actually a meaningful amount and more of the cell walls are broken than you achieve by chewing alone, so you get a bit more out of it.

You may also want to consider a gluten free trial, just to see what happens. 

As much as we all like biscuits, I can tell you as n=1 that staying away from baked goods like chips, biscuits (and I was raised in the South so I do understand the appeal of good biscuits, though very likely not the biscuits you speak of) has made me feel much better. I know a lot of people who say they have similar results. As wise old people say, where there is smoke there is often fire.

A single success doesn't mean anywhere near as much as an ABAB type trial, where you can consistently get the results you want with dietary changes. This may not work, and I do not know what your chances of success are, but it sounds like it's worth trying. I'd cut everything out, and cut it back in, on 4-6 week timeframes just so that you can see how you are affected. 

You may be near the end of idiopathic issues, so you may not get the chance to run a proper ABAB, which would be terrible for research but fantastic for your comfort! It could be that the dietary change may shut down your pain, or may be completely irrelevant with a purely coincidental timing. You won't know unless it works multiple times.

Thanks Joshua, very valuable advices! Frankly speaking, I think that you get some good point out there and I certainly keep going in adding leafs to my diet. However, eating as I am doing now is already very difficult given my work and I can only proceed through little steps. The biscuits I mean are certainly nothing you have seen before They can't be compared with other biscuits and actually, they should not be classified as such. Those contains milk proteins (caseine), complex carbs, EVO and minerals - they are used for nutrition of 6-24 m.o. babies. 

I have been tested for coeliac disease and I was negative. Never had any of the known/common symptom. 

I'll keep considering your suggestions and certainly, I am aware and confident that I am definitely moving towards a far better diet than before, and I can see the results.

Interesting WO today. On the bHBH I managed to do 4x60s correctly, and I therefore can state that I substantially improved from the beginning. On the scap shrugs I could cope with the 4x15. However, I need your help for the swivel hips, I have the feeling I am not improving and it's painful if I force. What should I do?

Another question is on the push ups. I was supposed to do 4x15. As I wrote previously, I was 99% sure I would have failed and indeed, I did. I could do 15,12,12,10. Now, I stopped at 12 by purpose on set 2, as my idea was to get out a 15,12,12,12 and then proceed up to 4x15r in some weeks. Is this a reasonable approach? Another thing I noticed is that for the Xiaopeng fwd I am using a 5kg DB, whereas a 5-10lb one is recommended. Should I switch to a 3 or 4kg DB and see if this maybe helps me in doing the movement a bit slower without trashing me for the next pushup set?

RC/PE2 was quite easy, 4x15r with no problem. I think the first PE3 for me will be on RC. Really like that and the associated stretch. I confirm on the left I feel it more in my shoulder, why is that?

I complemented the work with different sets of band pullaparts (what Joshua refers to as chest openers) from different angles, the glute activation movement on Swiss ball (see Kit's YT channel), 3x10 leg extension and stretching. On the latter, again, I'd value your input. My priority is to become more flexible, I am putting a lot of effort and I'd like to get the best out of it (Kit's book is no go in CH, it's not available from Amazon).

federicoC said:

Another question is on the push ups. I was supposed to do 4x15. As I wrote previously, I was 99% sure I would have failed and indeed, I did. I could do 15,12,12,10. Now, I stopped at 12 by purpose on set 2, as my idea was to get out a 15,12,12,12 and then proceed up to 4x15r in some weeks. Is this a reasonable approach?

Completely reasonable, but my only suggestion would be to not get tied to the numbers on the following sets. There are many different ways to handle something like this. I personally use the approach similar to what you outlined because for me the reps fall off quite quickly as I near failure and it definitely impacts my recovery for the next few days. First rep speed falters, then if I push past that my form will deteriorate. For me, even pushing into that range where I have to change tempo eats up reps from the following sets.

Think of each set as having a goal of 15 reps. Where you can hit with each set is where you can hit that day. I wouldn't recommend pushing to get the numbers, but some on here do and it really comes down to your own personal ability to recover and where you perceive the effort level. About the only thing everybody agrees on is not to sacrifice your form.

- Chris

Pushing to get the numbers is very difficult with good form. I fully agree with what you wrote in general, especially on the last sentence. Regarding the impact on recovery, I think failure is far from optimal. For me working with buffer will be and that is  why I tried to do 12 reps only on the second set instead of shooting for 13/14. It turned out that I was quite tired for the 3rd and the 4th then, in which I did 10 to failure. In PLing, we distinguish between technical and physical failure. I always trained using the former, now I have to find a balance. Next time, this Sunday, I will try it again. From there I will have an estimate on how fast to attempt approaching 4x15.

Thanks!

During the WE I will also check the material in H1. Now that I am slowly getting into F1 I want to start having a look at it and then later this year I will start to integrate it. Honestly not my priority at the moment, as I would like to keep my focus on acquiring an "efficient" crawl technique.

I know that today I must be annoying , but I was wondering how to deal with the following. Next week is week 11 = mastery for example for bHBH. What do I do, say, with the push ups in order to keep everything sync and proceed through week 12 (deload) afterwards?

when I fail, i just try to repeat the same reps/sets until i hit it. or repeat the cycle once its over to make it clean.

today i was on week 9 of rc/pe1. it went like this 12,12,12,9. so next session (monday) im gonna go for the same week (9) then try 10, then deload.

if you have it written down, it causes little confusion

When you say then I will try week 10, what do you mean? That on the first set you'll try to shoot for 15 and then get whatever out of the other sets.

What I am planning to do given your input is to try to reach the 4x15 this week and next week (by considering each set as independent). Then I will apply the deload week and go back to week 9 for a second cycle where hopefully 4x12 will not be tremendous anymore. I also think decreasing the weight on the Xiaopeng within the recommended range will help.

Tomorrow I have to work on the tuck ups again. Should you have the time to look at the last video I posted, please let me know if you see defect or if I am going right with it.

Edit: the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qi0_ywl-ds&feature=youtu.be

In the first rep of your tuck ups you used a whole lot of momentum to get up, it looks hey begin to tame out with momentum, but just be weary of it.

The tuck ups also don't seem to look like they have enough compression, you knees should come all the way up to your chest.

(as reference, i do a 4 day split)

first week-

Week 9-4x12 (but I failed) 12,12,12,9. 

(second session of RC week 9, im going to shoot for 4x12, lets say i do this) 12,12,12,10

instead of moving to 4x15, i'll repeat week 9 but it is technically week 10. 

second week-(im supposed to be week 10, but im going to repeat week 9 programming)

session 1- Goal:4x12 (let's say i reach 4x12) 12,12,12,12 + iM's. 
session 2-Goal: 4x12 (i make the effort to make them quality reps) 12,12,12,12

third week(goal 4x15)
session 1-let's say i do 15,15,13,10

session 2- 15,15,13,12

fourth week(instead of going to continue with the template, I deload)

session 1- 5x8 

session 2-5x8

(begin cycle again)

week 9-4x12 

session 1-12,12,12,12 + iM's

session 2- 12,12,12,12 + iM's

week 10-4x15

session 1- 15,15,15,13 (see what i did here?)

session 2-15,15,15,15 +iM's

week 11-5x15

session 1- 15,15,15,15,9 (didn't master)

session 2-15,15,15,15,10(didn't master again)

week 12-deload (5x8)

the lesson is to keep the 4th week of exersion as a deload. 3 weeks of steady effort towards hitting the goals and if you don't reach it, adjust and make the 4th week of exertion into a deload. it's what's been keeping me constantly working on progressions like SL/PE1 and RC/PE1 for example

Thanks a lot for your time in writing this down. It's clear, you basically then sync the element with the rest, so that you can deload on the same week, which is btw I guess the only way to call that week a deload!