Developing the brachialis muscle

I now know what Coach means when he says that we have to prepare the elbows.

PPP, Planche leans, RTO, false grip holds and bent arm hang are really working my brachialis and tendons around the elbow like nothing else. It feels like I am waiting for my elbow connective tissue to thicken and handle huge loads before I accelerate to the next level. My elbow has already improved dramatically since F1, so it must be incredible by F4 and then iron crosses!

Thanks for this post, it is all so true. Ive only just started on tables for the PE 2 im, and find it puts just enough pressure on the elbows to say "if you did anything harder with me, id break"

You will finish to develop brachialis at the end of F4!

alex87 said:

You will finish to develop brachialis at the end of F4!

Idk if I'd say finish...

alex87 said:

You will finish to develop brachialis at the end of F4!

I don't think someone who completed and only just does F4 can handle crosses or maltese yet.

I will say, and I think Alex has discovered this too, that rope climb is probably the best way to build the elbow for ring strength. That's not to say you should jump from rope to iron cross but you will be well on your way and mostly prepared.

I would like to see the different rope climbing variations in F4. What do you think about bicep curls (inverted MU, German hang curl, BL curl, DB/BB curls)? The curls seem to have strengthen my elbows and its tendon well along with other straight arm work and I seen and heard quite a number of elite gymnasts using bicep curls.

Like an idiot, I took a break from F1 feeling like I was progressing slowly... I went back to program based on M/T/Th/Fr, training my current Handstands, L-sit, planche and front lever progressions for 3-4 sets of 6-10s, a vertical push/pull 3-4 sets of 3-6 reps mon/thurs, 8-15 reps tues/friday.

 

Now, I'm experiencing what I'd call shin splints in my forearms right below my elbow on the pinky side. The pain feels like its in the bone. I didn't experience this once in F1 material.... Despite lack of equipment for a lot of the movements, I'll be going back to F1 next week.

My experience with cross says that ,with a solid foundation of rope climbing, you don't feel any type of tension during the cross work and doms on joints in the following day. during the last  8 months i focused myself on rope climbing (climb at least 12 mts in a single set), then i move on weighted rope climbing (and now i'm using 10 kg ) and i can climb 4-5 meters.

Curls variation comes after the RC and the basic rings strength elements. i don't think is a good idea approach serious rev MU if you cannot manage some decent rope climbing. especially if you look to the "elbow to the side" version.

alex87 said:

My experience with cross says that ,with a solid foundation of rope climbing, you don't feel any type of tension during the cross work and doms on joints in the following day. during the last 8 months i focused myself on rope climbing (climb at least 12 mts in a single set), then i move on weighted rope climbing (and now i'm using 10 kg ) and i can climb 4-5 meters.

Curls variation comes after the RC and the basic rings strength elements. i don't think is a good idea approach serious rev MU if you cannot manage some decent rope climbing. especially if you look to the "elbow to the side" version.

Even after working weighted rope climb and acheiving straddle planche on rings I still felt tension in the biceps when lowering to cross. It isn't enough to hurt me though. Rope climb definitely helped with this.

Agree about doing curling motions after rope climbs have been acheived. But I would never remove rc from my conditioning cycles.

And yes advanced gymnast do curl sometimes. However I wouldn't recommend this until you know you need that extra work to cover a weak spot. And you can't possibly know this until you move to advanced strength elements.

Nice yo hear your Experience, For My leverage half straddle on Rings is more reasonable. I tried different Method of climb ad seems that the slow it down on the negative and on the positive phase is creating a good sensation. I tried also , when it's time to change the arm, to hold the top position with the other for one-second. Here if you try to,externally rotate the forearm before the hold , you can move entirely the stress on brachialis instead of share it between brachislis and long\small biceps.

I will definitely try some rope climbing once I have access to a rope. It sounds like it would make a good warm up for the elbows. I had great experience with bicep curls even without straight arm work for strengthening the elbows and its tendons. When I first started GST, I was able to jump into supinated grip BL work and RTO support holds without much discomfort due to having done heavy curls before. After combining curls with straight arm work, my elbow development skyrocketed and I never had trouble with hands backwards planche work. Now my biceps got weaker due to not doing anywhere as much curls, but I can almost do a full ROM German hang curl and my elbows can handle maltese pretty well.

 

I can see how rope climbing combined with straight arm work can give similar or better results for elbow development.

PrimalMove said:

Like an idiot, I took a break from F1 feeling like I was progressing slowly... I went back to program based on M/T/Th/Fr, training my current Handstands, L-sit, planche and front lever progressions for 3-4 sets of 6-10s, a vertical push/pull 3-4 sets of 3-6 reps mon/thurs, 8-15 reps tues/friday.

 

Now, I'm experiencing what I'd call shin splints in my forearms right below my elbow on the pinky side. The pain feels like its in the bone. I didn't experience this once in F1 material.... Despite lack of equipment for a lot of the movements, I'll be going back to F1 next week.

Take a week off, heating the affected areas regularly, then resume F1 whilst doing some wrist and elbow prehab.

Aadil Siddiqi said:

Take a week off, heating the affected areas regularly, then resume F1 whilst doing some wrist and elbow prehab.

I did that last week. I took Wed-Sunday off, working legs only, and focused on wrist, elbow, and shoulder mobility. I did, My F1 session this morning and felt great.

That's great! You should continue with your prehab regularly to prevent future injury.