FL/PE15 (Negative front pull)

Hi everyone,

I have a bit of an equipment issue for this exercise. I built parallel bars a while ago for some of the other elements of foundation, and they sit at about head height. For this exercise I can't descend through full ROM because they aren't tall enough.
But I do happen to have a single pullup bar which is about 2m off the ground which would allow me to do the exercise with full ROM.

So I'm wondering should I use the pullup bar for full ROM? Or will it stuff up my arm position for the later exercises which all seem to be on the parallel bars? 

It seems that when I do the exercise on the single bar I engage more of my chest and biceps and kind of internally rotate my shoulders. Whereas on the parallel bars they tend to stay naturally more externally rotated and it feels like my back and triceps do a lot more work and it feels totally different. 

Tuckett

i'm exactly at the same situation...

Ditto.

IME it's fine to use a single bar, but it makes it substantially harder, because you are essentially doing the inverted bar hang reps to get back up. You don't get a moment's break on a single bar-- very much harder, certainly harder than the next few progressions.

Recommend you use Pbars or rings if you can for that reason. If you can pass it though, with full ROM (meaning fully extended body at the top) more power to you

I first posted this months ago and there wasn't much of a response so I just experimented a little.

What I found was:

If I did the exercise on the parallel bars I had to tuck in my legs just I got past horizontal. I quickly worked my way up to mastery. The problem was that for the next exercise (PE16 - front pull) I found that starting from a tucked position and then extending my body halfway through the motion meant I used a lot of momentum and felt like I was totally cheating. I tried to do the front pull on a single bar.....I couldn't even do one without piking the hips

So I started doing negatives in the single bar. Like Jon Douglas above has said it is a lot more tiring because you can't pause at the top. I have sat at three to four reps for quite a number of weeks because whenever I master week 7 (5x3) I try to do 4x4 reps and I always lose form by the third to fourth set. I still have trouble doing a perfect front pull on the single bar - I always pike slightly.

The thing is - I tested out exercises ahead of these (SE1 and SE2) and I can do them no problem, but I still haven't finished the negative front pulls on a single bar and I can't do front pulls on a single bar.

It's awful tempting to just skip ahead. I know Coach would crucify me for that but with the equipment I have it's hard.

At the moment I am going to persevere with the single bar front lever negatives- I figure if I can get through them and then the front lever pulls in a single bar I'll probably smash through the next couple of exercises. But I have been stuck at 5x3 reps for probably 5-6 weeks now.

Tuckett said:

... It's awful tempting to just skip ahead. I know Coach would crucify me for that but with the equipment I have it's hard ...

You have successfully made it to 5x3; but consistently fail on 4x4. Perhaps try the following programming modification:

week 1 - 2x4,2x3

week 2 - 3x4, 1x3

week 3 - 4x4

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thanks Coach!

I hear a lot of people looking for perfect solutions to their problems. Both of you posters are doing FL in your pictures lol. Clearly you are strong individuals or take pictures of strong people. Coach gave us the map but the destination is the same. If you can't get through the progression as prescribed then you need to find an alternate route. In your case i would still do the mobility work . With the progressions i would do them with the limited range of motion if i was locked inside of a jail cell. If you have access to Any kind of bar then i would do them there. If you already passed the progression where you had to hold a candlestick(single bar inverted hang) for 30 seconds 5 times then that part should be no trouble for you. And if that makes you too tired to hold that position then i would definitely put in more work on the previous progression.

I said all that to say this... Take your time and progress steadily and slowly. As i tell all of my athletes... it is just fine to spend too long on what they are working on. Trust me that you don't want to have any piking problems when you are doing your FL. They are terribly hard to get rid of. I "have" a FL but i still am going thru all of the steps and had to stop to spend time on some of the flexibility things.

If your body isn't naturally adjusting and becoming stronger then 1) i'd check my diet, 2) i'd check my additional work, 3) i'd work a lot harder.