Been taking 2-5 minute breaks between HS-PE sets, is that acceptable?

Hi all,

I did a search and there seems to be 2 schools of thought, but no official answer. Some say no rest, others say as much rest as needed to perform correctly.

Since, the course material doesn't specify, I've been taking sometimes up to 5 minutes of rest (week 11 of the hard ones for example.)

Is there an official verdict on this?

I would say both.  You want as much rest to perform properly, but you may not claim mastery until doing so with no rest.  Sometimes I add more rest if i'm borderline on passing, just so i can add volume and make subsequent workouts easier.

I don't see any reason why HS/PE should be an exception to the usual drill (=mobility exercises are you only rest).

I always gave it for granted that we should train H1 this way, so the pause between some PE, its IM and the subsequent set of PE, should be minimal and only for "logistic" reasons (i.e. I can only do those ones in 2 different places and need to walk there).

For me the pes feel more like strength training than skill training so I take no rest but once I move on to the ses I will take rest where needed.

I would also keep rest to a minimum as long as you are still on conditioning exercises. Then when you get to the ones that involve some sort of free balance they transition to skill work and the rest as needed rule applies. (Though 5 mins seems quite much)

My 2 cents

It's skill training, so take the time you need to focuse on what you are doing but when the bodyline is good and when you take confidence with it reduce the rest  ( the time you need to do IM)

I'd hardly call the first pes skill training.

> but you may not claim mastery until doing so with no rest.

For foundation, yes, that's 100% clear. But for H1 it's not documented anywhere. I went over the course material a couple of times to verify.

Currently I'm at PE10. The iM takes 15 seconds to perform. It feels to me that 60 wall runs separated by 15-30 second rest/iM (x 5) might be overkill.

I'm at week6. I'm going to keep moving forward limiting my rest to 2-3 minutes max hoping to get an official answer by week 11

Nash said:

> but you may not claim mastery until doing so with no rest.

For foundation, yes, that's 100% clear. But for H1 it's not documented anywhere. I went over the course material a couple of times to verify.

Currently I'm at PE10. The iM takes 15 seconds to perform. It feels to me that 60 wall runs separated by 15-30 second rest/iM (x 5) might be overkill.

I'm at week6. I'm going to keep moving forward limiting my rest to 2-3 minutes max hoping to get an official answer by week 11

I had this same question to myself last night. I hit 5x60 HS wall runs but I have been doing my H1 PE & iM with my wrist strengthening as a giant set. So I do 5 WP, 5 FKP, 5 WR, 5 FTP --- 60r HS wall runs ---- 5 Prone Posterior Pelvic Tilt. Take a drink of water and repeat. And on the days I don't do the full 5x5 of all the hand and wrist prep I just take breaks. Does this count or do we need to work up to 5x60r with only rest being the iM which takes less than 30s lol??

That is gonna be quite the feat if so...but then again we used to do 10 min of HS wall runs in the WODs and some guys were able to do this unbroken...

the overkill actually creates National Champion!!!

One thing is learn an habit (than is balance with rest , this needs only quality work to be learned), another thing is reinforce it once is achieved a basic balance (this learning process needs resistance training to be achieved).

Read the introduction to the handstand course and it says: "All Gymnastics Bodies courses follow the same highly successful instructional method and course structure".  I take that to mean we follow the same protocol as foundation.  Perhaps i'm wrong, but nowhere else does it say otherwise.  It's certainly what i've been doing.  Right now I'm on PE9, which would be way easier with more rest.  I've worked up to 4 x 60 sec and am almost at mastery.  

MT Nordic said:

Read the introduction to the handstand course and it says: "All Gymnastics Bodies courses follow the same highly successful instructional method and course structure".  I take that to mean we follow the same protocol as foundation.  Perhaps i'm wrong, but nowhere else does it say otherwise.  It's certainly what i've been doing.  Right now I'm on PE9, which would be way easier with more rest.  I've worked up to 4 x 60 sec and am almost at mastery.  

Off topic, but FYI, I made the mistake of placing my hands 3 inches from the wall for PE9 and struggling for a while to beat mastery. Don't forget that hands can be 6-12" from the wall for this PE, 1-3" from the wall is for PE11.

I am unsure as well, rest wasn't an issue until PE8 or PE9 and I was performing as you described (like the rest of foundation). I feel like this may have been discussed before, but in my opinion, when the freestanding elements are reached you are working a skill and what Alex said is spot on:

alex87 said:

It's skill training, so take the time you need to focuse on what you are doing but when the bodyline is good and when you take confidence with it reduce the rest  ( the time you need to do IM)

But I definitely think it's a gray area as far the inverted work on the wall...

There is no grey area. Never has it been stated that the PEs and iMs in H1 should be performed immediately one after another without rest.

H1 is skill training. Take the time you need to successfully perform the next set. Do not attempt to follow a timed interval for your rest intervals. Go when you are ready.

Remember also that missed or imperfect sets do not count for credit towards that day's workout.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

There is no grey area. Never has it been stated that the PEs and iMs in H1 should be performed immediately one after another without rest.

H1 is skill training. Take the time you need to successfully perform the next set. Do not attempt to follow a timed interval for your rest intervals. Go when you are ready.

Remember also that missed or imperfect sets do not count for credit towards that day's workout.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thank you for clarifying Coach and for saving me months and months of mini-cycles.

Awesome!  Glad you got this clarified Nash.  Here I've been doing it wrong all along 

Coach Sommer said:

There is no grey area. Never has it been stated that the PEs and iMs in H1 should be performed immediately one after another without rest.

H1 is skill training. Take the time you need to successfully perform the next set. Do not attempt to follow a timed interval for your rest intervals. Go when you are ready.

Remember also that missed or imperfect sets do not count for credit towards that day's workout.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Holy sh...

I've never been happier of being wrong!

This is quite clear now and all well and good.

However, it is the !@#$@# IM's that are the real problem. Please excuse the cussing.

Honestly I think taking the rest you need is fine but its not going to stop me from limiting my rest to the absolute minimum. Being able to do a 2 minute handstand sets every 3-5 mins is cool but imagine being able to do handstand practice for hours. If you ever get an ankle injury or knee injury you could just jump onto your hands and go about your day as normal . personal goal is to be able to walk to the shops on my hands and freak people out

ausswe said:

Honestly I think taking the rest you need is fine but its not going to stop me from limiting my rest to the absolute minimum. Being able to do a 2 minute handstand sets every 3-5 mins is cool but imagine being able to do handstand practice for hours. If you ever get an ankle injury or knee injury you could just jump onto your hands and go about your day as normal . personal goal is to be able to walk to the shops on my hands and freak people out

And when you get a wrist injury from too much handstand work?

After all the prep of mastering h1, h2 and h3 ? I think not!

So... after testing this I have to say it's a total game changer!

Because I get to do the drills a bit fresher, I'm really able to *think* about what my body is doing and it's pretty good in terms of understanding what to aim for.

Also... even if I'm getting more rest, I got quite sore traps from last workouts, I'm assuming I'm just doing things with a better form, hence there's more activation?

I can only say: thanks Nash for popping up and asking this, I would have never noticed!

I'm the most amateurish of amateurs, but I need adequate rest between handstands, or they just turn into crap.

I still think some of these earlier pes are worth minimizing rest to the ims. Pe/5 for example is more strength training than skill training. When you get to later progressions where it requires more balance I definitely understand resting but I feel like If I rest between sets on certain pes I'm not doing myself any favors. We don't rest on the strength exercises doing foundation so why should we rest doing the strength parts of h1

ausswe said:

I still think some of these earlier pes are worth minimizing rest to the ims. Pe/5 for example is more strength training than skill training. When you get to later progressions where it requires more balance I definitely understand resting but I feel like If I rest between sets on certain pes I'm not doing myself any favors. We don't rest on the strength exercises doing foundation so why should we rest doing the strength parts of h1

I did PE5 and PE6 without taking breaks and agree that it might be more beneficial to do it foundation style. Perhaps taking as much rest as needed is better applied with SE's where you start training balance.

So....

Given this is skill training the question for Coach Sommer or any other proficient guy would be: when would it be better placed in case you wanna do H1 + something else in that training session?

Should we train skill first, then move to the other stuff or viceversa?

I know with the split schedule it's F1 first, then H1, but we're talking about 3 drills overall, then the whole handstand set.

What if I wanna do H1 the same day I do some other type of training?

Shall I work in H1 at the end of it? Before? Why?