Introduction - old geezer here, all amped to get going!

hameed said:

Aha! That's the Eureka moment then. Thanks for clearing up the mud guys!

There you go

Just to head off the usual follow-up question, it's absolutely fine for your seven different exercise progressions to be on different PE's and different weeks. Just use 1, 2 or 3 four-week cycles as appropriate, and keep the 4th (deload) week falling at the same time across the board.

It's a simpler than it sounds once you get going. Enjoy it!

Been reading a lot of other threads on the forum and I'm considering also getting the Handstand foundation course.  It also appears that other folks do the same because in workout planner that option is also there to combine these two foundations together.

Approximately how long does it take to do the workout for both foundations assuming a 4 day/week program?

hameed said:

Been reading a lot of other threads on the forum and I'm considering also getting the Handstand foundation course.  It also appears that other folks do the same because in workout planner that option is also there to combine these two foundations together.

 

Approximately how long does it take to do the workout for both foundations assuming a 4 day/week program?

About an hour I'd say.  Less if you do it on the lower body half of F1.

Definitely get H1.  Handbalancing is FUN!

Question for you guys.  I bought the Handstand 1 course and I created a workout using the Integrated style for 4 days/week and the workout schedule was for 5 or 6 days.  So I then created another one that was for foundation + 2 HS for 4 days and the handstand exercises are on only 2 days per week.

Which workout am I supposed to be creating?  I have F1 and H1 and I want to work out 4 days/week for both.  What am I doing wrong in the workout creation?

The scheduler is not infallible and can't accommodate everyone's different preferences personally I prefer the notebook and pen app.

Depending on how your wrists and shoulders respond to the new stimulus, you might be best beginning with 2 days/week and increasing it as you get used to the material. Although the handstand workouts are shorter, that mobility work is no joke! Expect some significant traps cramps

Ok, thanks Jon.  I'll try it out and see how it goes. 

I tested myself last night on the Mastery level for FL/PE1 and based on how I did, I can start at Week 9 for F1. I felt good about that.  FL/PE1 Mastery level was the hardest of the exercises.  The rest of the excersises I was able to do at Mastery level.  However I will start everything at Week 9 otherwise it will be very hard to follow each one at different weeks.

For Handstand, I am starting at Week 1.

I decided to create a workout config for F1 for 4 days and then another one separately for H1 also for 4 days and I'll merge the two in Excel.

hameed said:

Ok, thanks Jon.  I'll try it out and see how it goes. 

 

I tested myself last night on the Mastery level for FL/PE1 and based on how I did, I can start at Week 9 for F1. I felt good about that.  FL/PE1 Mastery level was the hardest of the exercises.  The rest of the excersises I was able to do at Mastery level.  However I will start everything at Week 9 otherwise it will be very hard to follow each one at different weeks.

 

For Handstand, I am starting at Week 1.

hameed said:

I decided to create a workout config for F1 for 4 days and then another one separately for H1 also for 4 days and I'll merge the two in Excel.

Cool. Because you spend a while with each exercise, it doesn't take long before you are just glancing at your sets/reps for the session and getting straight into it without referring to your notes too much

I would recommend doing H1 twice a week to begin with.  Those wrist exercises are pretty serious, and I don't think that I could hit them more than twice a week.

hameed said:

Aha! That's the Eureka moment then. Thanks for clearing up the mud guys!

Isn't that great when it happens

hameed said:

Been reading a lot of other threads on the forum  (...)

"........ we few, we happy few; we band of brothers..." 

Yesterday I was humbled and a bit depressed because I could not do a single deck squat (SLS/PE1).  Just watching the video and seeing the gymnast - how calm he is from the initial legs pointing to the ceiling, back on mat and rolling forward and standing up in one smooth motion - it looked so easy......

Tried it and and I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I cannot make the transition with my weight forward enough to stand up.  I get the point where my feet are on the ground and I start to move my upper body forward and then before I can get to the complete upright position (upper body), I just fall back.  So infuriating and frustrating.

I thought it was a momentum issue, so I tried doing it very fast - same thing.  I can't stand up.  It must be a combination of some hip flexibility and technique that is preventing me from doing this.  My wife was watching me and she attempted to do it (she is a yogi and even more fit than I am) and she did it as if she was born to do it.  She also watched me closely but could not figure out what I was doing wrong.

It helps if you straighten your legs while you're on your back and tuck them under as you roll forward.  Punching your arms forward also helps.

First try doing them on a mat with your feet landing off the mat. This is easier and allows you to get a feel for what every part of your body is doing and when in order to get up.

Here's a video of me attempting the Deck Squat

Hi Hameed,

Here are the differences I see between what you're doing and what the athlete in the F1 video is doing:

• You straighten out your legs a bit during the roll, he keeps them bent in the squat position
• Your legs come apart from your body on the back end of the roll (when you're on your back), he keeps his legs against his chest the whole time
• You roll back only to your mid-back, he rolls all the way to his upper back

Instead of trying to correct each of these pieces individually, I would suggest you try to keep your body in a tight ball during the roll, knees to chest the whole time.  

hameed said:

Here's a video of me attempting the Deck Squat

<snipped>

Hi Hameed.

One issue is flexibility -- the closer you can get your heels in to your butt, the easier it will be.  Currently, your feet are quite far away from you when you try to stand up. If you aren't doing so already, try really kicking those heels in close before trying to stand.

Now, the deck squat can help with issues of strength or flexibility by allowing you to use momentum.  I notice that you are starting from a lying position; perhaps you can get more momentum if you can start from a standing and then sit down into it?  Also with regards to momentum, notice how the athlete in the demonstration video builds up quite a bit of momentum by rolling all the way onto his upper back, keeping his whole back curled. (see focus point 2: keep the back curled in chin tucked when rolling).  The more tightly you can keep yourself balled up during the roll, the easier it will be.

LateStarter@46 mentioned doing it off an elevated mat, which can help.  Another possibility to help with momentum is holding a small weight in your hands.

insideout said:

Hi Hameed,

 

Here are the differences I see between what you're doing and what the athlete in the F1 video is doing:

• You straighten out your legs a bit during the roll, he keeps them bent in the squat position
• Your legs come apart from your body on the back end of the roll (when you're on your back), he keeps his legs against his chest the whole time
• You roll back only to your mid-back, he rolls all the way to his upper back

Instead of trying to correct each of these pieces individually, I would suggest you try to keep your body in a tight ball during the roll, knees to chest the whole time.  

He's kicking his legs out to try to generate momentum.  It's not working because he's starting from a lying down position.  It's something I had to do at the start in order to stop myself stumbling around after each rep, but once I got better at hollow body rocks it became somewhat less of an issue.

At first I had also a lot of trouble with the decksquats.

It felt like a trick or something to do it right.

Personally it helps me to kick my feet under my but just before they touch the ground.

After this discovery, it is no problem for me to do multiple in a row.

Thanks for all the feedback folks. 

I'll make some adjustments based on the insights given here.

I noticed that bipocni mentioned that hollow body holds helped you with Deck Squats.  Two questions - (a) am I to take it that you moved on to the next level without mastering the Deck Squat?  I was fully prepared to repeating week 5 of PE1 because I have not achieved mastery on this exercise.  (b) Is that not the best course of action?

hameed said:

I noticed that bipocni mentioned that hollow body holds helped you with Deck Squats.  Two questions - (a) am I to take it that you moved on to the next level without mastering the Deck Squat?  I was fully prepared to repeating week 5 of PE1 because I have not achieved mastery on this exercise.  (b) Is that not the best course of action?

You can move on to each different PE separately from the others.  I could test out mastery of tuck hollow holds on my first workout, but I had to spend quite a bit of time working on deck squats.  The rocking motion of FL/PE2 is what really helped me out.

It all comes at different speeds.  I'm at PE3 for some exercises, but I'm still stuck on PE1 for my trouble exercises.  Some of them you try the first time and you're like "Oh wow, I'm never going to get that" and then you get the hang of it within a week or two, and others are arch holds...

You'll wish you were doing Arch Holds once you're on Arch Rocks...

So I tried out the tips you guys suggested -

• kept my legs tucked in very tight against my body,
• rolled all the back to my shoulders (not just my back) and
• then used rolled forward as fast as I could, and
• shooting my arms forward and
• tightening my abs really tight when I was making the transition to going up on my feet and it worked! I was able to get 4 in a row and then I was wiped out from exertion.

The trick was to roll all the way back to my shoulders and tighten my abs extremely hard at the top just before the transition starts and keep it like that till I was on my feet.  Yaaaay!

Thanks guys!

One thing I have found as well as all the above tips is that is a lot harder on a hard unyielding surface. I normally do deck squats on a one inch thick gym mat outside which is quite nice to roll back on. However one day due to poor weather (yeah I know what a surprise in London) I had to do them inside on a wooden floor with a fairly thin carpet. I couldn't do one !!! I went outside in the rain and managed to complete my reps, I'll admit they are not the greatest but the difference was quite a revelation. And I'm an old geezer too 

tfeal said:

One thing I have found as well as all the above tips is that is a lot harder on a hard unyielding surface. I normally do deck squats on a one inch thick gym mat outside which is quite nice to roll back on. However one day due to poor weather (yeah I know what a surprise in London) I had to do them inside on a wooden floor with a fairly thin carpet. I couldn't do one !!! I went outside in the rain and managed to complete my reps, I'll admit they are not the greatest but the difference was quite a revelation. And I'm an old geezer too 

Gotta love deck squats in the rain.  I can't wait until it's snowing...

using an elevated mat worked for me! even starting from standing I couldn't do one.  lolz.

I lost some ankle ROM after a heavy course of anti-biotics a few years back that nearly caused me a double Achilles rupture.

I hope that as I improve on the elevated mat, some of my ROM will improve.