Beginning F1 - Suggestions and more

federicoC said:

Thanks William, I appreciate your help.

 

I've been "morally beated up" because I didn't suffer from injuries for years - typically not even during my PL competitions - and I'm getting all sorts of troubles now with F1, which is suppose to be "safe". My knees still hurt, I guess it's the meniscus. Hamstring injury is just over. Hope this is going to get better. I'm looking forward to improve.

You are progressing too quickly. Your connective tissue needs time to adapt to the new stresses. Just because your muscles can do the movement does not always mean you should go to the next level. If you are having joint pain you need to keep the reps the same until your connective tissue adapts.

We need to help each other in this for the most of us new area of sport

It's difficult to find the reason for your injuries, maybe it's just hard without a real coaching to learn whole new movements, but i think, that the most injuries, pain and so on, in combination with F1 comes not from the exercise itself, the reason behind this is, that if our body learned wrong movement patterns its kinda hard to teach him the other way, also if it's the better way, the healthier one.

For e.g. like in this video for the elbow preparation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hlWgH3_0NU&feature=player_embedded

But if that helps, i hurt my shoulder with one iM and that sucks, but i think i was doing it too fast. You're doing F1 5times a week, right? Maybe scale it down to 4 and see if this helps your body. I'm just doing it 3times a week, and except my shoulder, which wasn't feeling best before F1, i don't have anything

But my shoulders are my problem child, for many years, so i'm not expecting F1 to figure this out for me in weeks

No, I'm doing F1 in F7 format 3 x week, 2 x regular scheme + 1 x deload scheme every week. Feels feasible and copes well with my recovery and swimming.

My point is that I didn't skip or jump anything. I started from ground 0, followed what needs to be done, recorded and evaluated, got feedback and reiterated. These two injuries are minor, IMHO, and one is resolved - I learnt a lot from getting back to my original hamstrings ROM. However, I learnt that mastery per se does not guarantee you that you can move to the next element right away, and I'd suggest to make this clear right from the beginning also in the text.

federicoC said:

(...)  My knees still hurt, I guess it's the meniscus. Hamstring injury is just over. Hope this is going to get better. I'm looking forward to improve.

Mark Collins said:

You are progressing too quickly. Your connective tissue needs time to adapt to the new stresses. Just because your muscles can do the movement does not always mean you should go to the next level. If you are having joint pain you need to keep the reps the same until your connective tissue adapts.

Good advice here Mark.

Take it down a notch Federicoc, it is not a race!

Yes, today I did my F7 WO where I used deload scheme and felt pretty flat and not so motivated. 

Thanks.

@Fred: everything in life is a race, the point is to be always fair and accept that sometimes you lost.

federicoC said:

(...) everything in life is a race (...)

Is that what she said? 

I have a weak left knee also and it's a pain with the Sls/PE2-im, my thinking behind getting rid of said pain is to use a steady state cycle. I can currently do sets of 4 of the im. Any more than about 25 in a session and my knee starts to hurt. So for one microcycle I will stay at these reps, for the next microcycle I will add a rep each side for each set so doing 30 in total (as a maximum of course it depends on the week I'm in) if I remain pain free and feel strong through the next microcycle I will then add another rep each side to each set.
It will take me a good 6 microcycles to master this im but that doesn't matter, it's only going to get harder if I try and cheat myself now

Really it is about the journey, it's like going for a walk. Yes you can just rush as fast as you can to your destination or you can relax and enjoy the sights on the way

federicoC said:

No, I'm doing F1 in F7 format 3 x week, 2 x regular scheme + 1 x deload scheme every week. Feels feasible and copes well with my recovery and swimming.

If you're getting hurt then maybe your recovery isn't as good as you take it to be. Mark has good advice, just slow it down a little. As you continue working out, you will build more work capacity and then on can add more in again.

Some people feel recovered, but keep breaking down with injuries. Unfortunately our tissues do heal at different rates. When we feel those warning signs we just need to be more careful about our progression rate.

Thanks for your input and sorry for having been annoying, I've been very busy this week and probably didn't recover optimally. Today I did my last session of F7 mastery week. I could reach 30,30,30,24 on HBR, my first 4x15r on push ups with strain, 5x15 tuck ups and a reasonable windmill on the right side (on the left I do still have to work on the shoulder ROM), and 10,10,10,10,8 of ground rows. This means that I can confidently attempt mastery of RC/PE3 next cycle. As a note, I could do 5x36s of ABH, but I don't understand if my ROM is improving. To me it seems stable or even slightly reduced. A video will tell, my deload sessions next week will be perfect for recording elements for form check.

FredInChina said:

Is that what she said? 

Not that I find this comment useful in any way, but the answer is...this is a GST forum.

I read on another topic that there is some confusion on the number of reps to be performed on the Cossack. I do 10 reps in total, which means 5 right and 5 left, alternated. I did a 5x10r this way. However, if the deload week uses a 5x5 scheme, how can you get the same volume on the right and left leg? The product is odd, so no way.

Any clarification?

Keep up the good work!

Re cossack squats.

https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/topic/10177-repetition/?p=97926

This is pe 2 though, so it's going to be pretty easy. You could just do sets of 6 to make it even. I think I worked it reps per side rather than total when I did it. 

@Fred. I lol'd!

I misread this and did 10 each leg. Coach clarified on the seminar it was 5 each leg and said with a wry smile the extra conditioning would do me good any way! It did as I mastered the next level in one session.

Mark Collins said:

I misread this and did 10 each leg. Coach clarified on the seminar it was 5 each leg and said with a wry smile the extra conditioning would do me good any way! It did as I mastered the next level in one session.

thanks for clarifying this, Mark much appreciated

Thanks! Indeed, given that I'm struggling with the Im, I can plan to reach 5x20 over time so that I don't get bored on the way. My knees feel better now, the pain has gone away. At the moment, I'm doing the twist squats on a parallel box, with no rotation. Focus is on lowering myself with full control. I will record some elements today, I also want to show you where I stand with my windmills.

Regarding the knee stuff, especially iM, I too have suffered knee injury (I probably damaged it through faulty conditioning).

When I was at the inside squat, I remember being somewhat nervous about them, too. It didn't feel nice in the beginning. -But it did with time. I can do them without issues, now.

Same thing with natural leg extensions. I really thought I was going to blow my knees. Now, no problems, and I believe I have pretty good ROM (to the point where my knees lift off the ground).

Ido Portal has a video on youtube explaining why it's important to be strong in unstable positions. I keep going back to this thought. Only go as far as you feel your body allows, but keep strengthening yourself in these weak positions - it will for sure benefit you, and protect you from injury.

federicoC said:

Thanks! Indeed, given that I'm struggling with the Im, I can plan to reach 5x20 over time so that I don't get bored on the way. My knees feel better now, the pain has gone away. At the moment, I'm doing the twist squats on a parallel box, with no rotation. Focus is on lowering myself with full control. I will record some elements today, I also want to show you where I stand with my windmills.

If you can get 5x20 you will get the next level so easy. One thing that I picked up from the seminar is that Coach really has made the volume easy for us although it seems like a lot. As long as we can recover and progress doing extra volume whilst waiting for mastery of the iM should be ok.

OK! Today I did my first deload session for this week. Felt good, solid. On the Cossack I then did 5x10r. Interesting that the deload session has higher volume on the Im than my mastery week, because during that I used a week10 template on the elements in which I failed to complete week10. 

I always reduce my tempo during the deload sessions, e.g. on scap shrugs, push ups and ground rows, and this makes them harder of course but still allows me to complete everything with buffer. Is this advisable?

I wouldnt know how to answer that specifically, though if you're deloading, you should cutting in half what you do during the week, so there won't be any need to make deload weeks hard, thats what the rest of the work week is for

(my opinion)

I understand. In my (little) experience this allows me to refine the execution and has some carry over in the forthcoming weeks. In the end, I didn't feel that tired.

Second session of the deload week also over. Tomorrow the third, then everything starts again. Recorded some elements but I don't have the time to edit the video, I'm very busy this WE and next week. 

deload is deload, take it that way.

Yes William. Session 3 of F7 deload week done. Next week it will be extremely difficult and busy at work, not sure I will be able to do all 3 sessions, let's see. However, the feeling I had from this deload week were amazing, I really believe I'm improving on small details that I will try to move to the more complex - higher tempo - sets. 

Just to mention one, my HBH form improved by just doing a single set mastery as WU for HBR. Same for the cat-cow, every time I do it - besides feeling very good for my spine mobiity - I feel like I'm still improving.

OK, I looked back at my first two cycles of F1 and found out that I certainly improved. Now, my 3rd cycle is going to start tomorrow. I will try to reach 4x40s ABH (yes, I modified the scheme on this element) and hope to get there by this cycle. Last one concluded with a 4x36s.

On the other elements, I aim at mastery RC/PE3 and who knows, maybe that's the right time for push ups and scap shrugs. Although I'm getting better on the swivel hips, I need to see if time is mature enough to get to full ROM. My motivation is reasonably high.

Let's see.