Planche progressions

Can anybody give me a planche progression workout

I already have this one

Frogstand

Straight armed frog stand

tuck planche

intermediate planche

Straddle

just wondering if there are any in betweens, I can't hold the tuck planche at all, and the straight armed frog stand just feels wrong

any help?

thanks

You could work up to a tuck planche on parallel bars. At first, you may not be able to get your feet above the level of your hands. Just pull into the best tuck you can. With practice you should eventually be able to hold a tuck planche with your feet above your hands. Then you can continue to do the progression on parallel bars (or parallettes) or move to the floor.

Hope this works for you.

I tried that but I seemed to be stuck at the same poor form for a very long time

Thats when I gave up and went for the one arm pullup, but now im trying it again

My issue isnt weak arms, or abs i can do straight 20lb leg lifts, is it back?

how did you progress

Get some jump stretch bands or surgical tubing. Loop around your ankles, picking a resistance that lets you hold the assisted tuck planche in the correct position about 10 - 20 sec. Work up to 60 sec, then get a looser band, or position the band lower. Keep doing this until you don't need assistance.

great idea

ill give it a try

work handstand to full body planche negatives against a wall.

with a swiss ball, start in a tuck, hands on the floor feet on the ball, extened to a full straight body planche, leaning forward hold. back to tuck, repeat.

would i crawl my feet down the wall i guess

start body straight in a 45ish degree angle keep your body straight,

decrease only the angle between your body and arms slowly, keep your body straight (use socks to minimize friction)

if these are too hard straight, go for straddle

Hi pistol33,

Firstly, I assume you can manage the bent-arm frog stand for 0:60 as Rx'd by Coach in his article before moving onto the straight arm frog-stand as an intermediate step before the tuck planche?

If you can hold for 0:60 ...check your position. A friend and I both thought we had a good long frogstand (his for 0:60+), but couldn't understand why neither of us could manage the tuck version at all ...when we got together to trouble shoot, both our positions were way out, with hips a lot higher than shoulders. Get someone/video/photo to spot you, as we were totally surprised. The correct hip height brought him back down to 0:10!!

I personally feel that what is holding me back is anterior shoulder strength, and stabilisation. Don't forget that you are not only holding your weight up with your shoulders at a disadvantaged angle, but they are also levering your entire body up to horizontal as well. Not to mention stabilising shoulders, elbows and wrists at unfamiliar angles under high loads ...while balancing. Your body is going to have a hard time using full shoulder strength if it's worrying about falling over or hyperextending your elbows as well. It's got a lot of new stuff to learn!

Tight glutes/hamstrings/hips will make a tight tuck difficult.

Something I have been experimenting with for my personal planche-strength level is: Start in a push-up position with feet up on a ball (around knee height) on the floor. Then slowly lean as far over your hands as you can, pause, and return. The longer and further you can hold the pause ...the better.

You can also measure the distance between your fingertips and the wall, and lean to nearly touching it with your forehead. That gives you some kind of progression to follow, moving hands further back when you can (for example) hold that distance for a 0:20 static.

If you don't have a ball, but have rings, you could just hook your feet through those at the same height, and do the same? Or even get your feet up on the sofa and walk them forward ...however when I tried this variation, on occasions I didn't have the strength to support while walking back, and got some practice for my face-plant. :shock:

Hope some of that helps?

George.

George said:

Hi pistol33,

If you don't have a ball, but have rings, you could just hook your feet through those at the same height, and do the same? Or even get your feet up on the sofa and walk them forward ...however when I tried this variation, on occasions I didn't have the strength to support while walking back, and got some practice for my face-plant. :shock:

George.

I have a big bean bag on the floor to bury my face in. It lets you really lean forward without worrying about the face plant.

Paul.

Work what ts00nami and George have been saying, I've done both and they work great.

thanks george that was really helpful

ive had people watch my frogstand and my hips are completely level, and I can hold it for 60+ pretty easily

ill give those new variations a try

I think the reason so many people have problems progressing to tuck planche is because you're going from an exercise (the frog) that requires no core strength, to the tuck planche that requires a brick-like core. The frog stand and the swiss ball exercises mentioned above are great for the arms/wrists/shoulders but do not tax the core enough, IMHO, since the core is fully supported in all cases. So I'm sticking with my above suggestion to use bands to progressively increase the stress on the core.

i agree with what your saying as i found that to be my biggest problem

A simple way to involve the core in frog stands is simply trying to remove the knees from the arms, just an inch or so off or even remain just grazing the arms. The straight arm frog stand forces you to do this to some degree.

assitor exercises are fine to do too. personally i do some hyper extensions, not that many just to add to my planche training, mainly i do reverse leg lifts from headstand and i'm building up to handstand.

i found that using some stretchie tie wraps i was able to include core and practive the tuck

i found i didnt need much help at all

Hi all,

While messing about with cables in my workout today, I tried some variants of planche and front-lever, trying to engage the core as much as possible. I ended up with - laying on floor with cable pulley set to 6â€

I've messed around with stuff like this in the past. I've mostly used elastic resistance using springs and handles from old fashioned chest expanders. They proved a nice 'live' feeling a bit like the rings as they always want to move in all directions. I never found I gained all that much strength carry over from it though, not the sort of strength that you get from doing say planche holds or front lever holds. In some holds with the springs I'd be stretching up to seven at a time with straight arms which is still quite a feat. It did do a lot fo my core though which was about the only benefit.

Paul.

JoeS said:

Get some jump stretch bands or surgical tubing. Loop around your ankles, picking a resistance that lets you hold the assisted tuck planche in the correct position about 10 - 20 sec. Work up to 60 sec, then get a looser band, or position the band lower. Keep doing this until you don't need assistance.

Where do you hang the bands from?

Anything overhead should do (as long as it is not too high or too low). Chin-up bar, garage roof-beams, swing set, branch, etc. The height will dictate what strength of band you need, as the further it has to stretch, the higher the resistance.

Does that help?

George.

Replicating sport specific movement

I think it is a big mistake to try to reproduce sports movements in a strength development environment. This is why the 'functional training' craze is not producing any high caliber athletes. (Look around the internet and try to find an exception - it is rare)

Many athletes that are using pure strength movments as an addition to their sports practice, keep on improving their performance, on the other hand.

It is a double mistake to try to reproduce an already existing sports specific strenth movement like a planche with some other improvised movement with bands, springs, etc... This is useless, and besides 'feeling right' to some individuals, will not produce noticable results.

Keep in mind, no need for gimmicks, this is not the way strength is built.

My 2 Shequels.

That's a very interesting post Ido. Could you elaborate on what you mean by pure strength movements.

Thanks,

Paul.

I can see where Ido is coming from. While I'm in the exact same position as the OP (no prob w/ frog stands, but unable to progress to tuck planche beyond a couple secs), I worry that the use of "props" will actually slow down my progression. While props may help with the strength development, wouldn't they at the same time take away from the balance and core stabilization aspects required? It seems that strength, balance, and stabilization need to develop in tandam. But since I'm stalled as well, I'm also open to suggestion.

When I'm saying 'pure strength' I mean either a specific sports movement in its purest sense or a loaded movement that comes from the natural patterns of humanly possible movements - squat, pull, push, twist, etc....

In short, perform the planche variations - unsupported and build sport specific strength and combine it with general physical preparation and strength training, instead of building special machines/ using springs from various positions and other duplicates. This only confuses you, (I mean coordinativly and not psychologicly) and mainly produces results that do not transfer well to the real thing.

One of the biggest things I truly think of as essential to success in s&c is using what is MOST usefull and knowing to cut out the BS around it. This is why coach sommers aproach to gymnastics s&c is so interesting to me, because gymnastics strength is one field which is full of useless information, and he realy knows what he wants. Did you notice Coach's recommendations? very directed, obviously from experience, and he wont recommend a zillion methods in complicated combinations like a lot of newbes do. When all other things are equal, you better choose the most simple aproach that will produce results, it is the best.

You need to get the 'most bang for your buck' information, cause you dont have a lot of time, energy and recuparation ability to spend as a.... human.

I have many russian friends, both here in Israel and in Russia. There is a common joke, which is half true they like to tell:

when developing various tools for space exploration, NASA has developed the known 'zero gravity pen', after a lot of r&d, for use in space- because a normal pen wouldnt work without gravity. What did the russians do?

They used a pencil....

stevena9 said:

JoeS said:

Get some jump stretch bands or surgical tubing. Loop around your ankles, picking a resistance that lets you hold the assisted tuck planche in the correct position about 10 - 20 sec. Work up to 60 sec, then get a looser band, or position the band lower. Keep doing this until you don't need assistance.

Where do you hang the bands from?

I have a weightlifting power rack and I hang the band from the pins. It's perfect because as I get stronger, I put the bands on a lower pin.

It's true that using bands alters the movement a bit, but the less tension you have in the band, the more it becomes like the real thing, until finally you can do the real exercise. It worked for me, and It's a tried and tested method, especially in iron cross training. No different from traditional progressive methods, like spotting, that also alters the movement some