Planche - A different Progression Route?

I don't think I've really ever tried it. I doubt I really care to either, unfortunately. I brought my stability ball into the gym mainly so I can use it to stretch my back and we play it with sometimes in the gym or use it for some exercises.

I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the stability ball exercises in general, especially for my athletes besides the fact we only have 2 balls which isn't typically enough unless we are doing circuit conditioning ( which I use for the adults or tumbling classes ).

Has anyone pursued this approach yet?

Any suggestions on what strength band someone who is doing ~10-15sec. tuck planche iso. holds would need to start with? I have two red Jumpstretch bands, I don't think that will be enough, but I'll give it a go this weekend.

Garrett Smith said:

Has anyone pursued this approach yet?

Any suggestions on what strength band someone who is doing ~10-15sec. tuck planche iso. holds would need to start with? I have two red Jumpstretch bands, I don't think that will be enough, but I'll give it a go this weekend.

I tried it. I have a power rack, so when I did this I just put my red band at whatever height made the hold somewhat easy, then I progressively lowered the placement of the band. It's really effective, because the stronger you get and the lower the band, the more it becomes like a real planche. Plus you don't have to bug anybody to spot you.

Thanks Joe.

I tried them myself this afternoon with two red JS bands hung from a low pull-up bar, it worked quite well!

I'm really excited to work these into my routine, I was going nowhere fast with the standard tuck planche iso holds...

I have to say that it seems like one 5-7 rep set in the weight room each week is helping everything. on paralletes my flat tuck planche is getting really, really strong. 15 seconds for sure. I didn't have that before. Doing that on the ground is also quite a lot more difficult, I haven't timed that yet but I'm not at 15 seconds, I can tell you that!

slizzardman said:

I have to say that it seems like one 5-7 rep set in the weight room each week is helping everything. on paralletes my flat tuck planche is getting really, really strong. 15 seconds for sure. I didn't have that before. Doing that on the ground is also quite a lot more difficult, I haven't timed that yet but I'm not at 15 seconds, I can tell you that!

********** By the way the Soviets had a planche training mechanism!

Brandon Green

power, strength, and endurance aren't about rep numbers, those rep numbers just so happen to tend to put you near the correct set time lengths for certain training effects. It's about time under tension. If the muscles are working constantly for 1-20 seconds, you're going to get a power response. Your nervous system will become more efficient, and you will see strength gains because of that. If your sets last 20-40 seconds then you will get strength results, which means you will be experiencing myofibrillar hypertrophy. In layman's terms, there are going to be more actin and myosin strands in the muscle and so you willb e stronger. This adds minimal size. At 40-60 seconds you will be primarily adding size. This is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, and it's literally the muscle cell increasing its fluid volume. This primarily adds size. From 60-90 seconds you are in the pure endurance zone. This set length really develops the muscular endurance, not strength so much. For these set lengths to mean anything, the set time has to be imposed by the resistance being too much for you somewhere in the given range. So if you do planche pushups and you can do them for a minute, but you stop at 30 seconds, you are not going to get strength out of that even though you are in the numerical range for strength. You did not fail in the 20-40 second range, you chose to stop. Choosing to stop doesn't mean anything. The end of the set has to be determined by the momentary failure of the muscles working for these times to translate to actual progress.

Obviously, as you approach one end of the time range for each training effect(power, strength, size, endurance) you will start to get a mixed training effect. It should be fairly obvious that if you fail at 38 seconds you are going to be gaining more size than if you fail at 24 seconds.

If you consider that typical reps take from 2-4 seconds to complete, at a 4 second repetition you would be doing 1-5 reps for power. Surprise! That's the traditional way of doing things. It just so happens that those rep ranges put the lifters in the correct time under tension range. In he same vein, 2 second reps would mean that 20 reps still puts you at the tail end of the strength range. You're moving into strength-endurance, which puts on a bit more size than maximal strength work, but hey, you're still getting a strong maximal strength effect as well.

Technically, time under tension isn't the be all just like rep numbers aren't. Rep ranges are approximations just like TUT for sets is an approximation of how much stress/damage at X weight and at Y repetitions is doing to your muscles.

It's all about the load placed upon the muscles + the stress and damage you do to them that give you various effects.

1. Heavier weight with less TUT/less reps tends to give better strength & myofib results b/c of increased emphasis on CNS adaptations

2. some what heavy/moderate weight with moderate TUT/moderate reps tends to give good/moderate hypertrophy & some strength b/c of some CNS adaptations + maximizing muscular damage which is essential for sarco hypertrophy

3. Lighter weight with longer TUT/lots of reps gives some hypertrophy + mostly endurance because it's more metabolic (energy pathways) + some damage for hypertrophy if the load is heavy enough to cause such adaptations.

Yea, I didn't want to go into that, but I am glad you did. That's why I said that it's important that the TUT is limited by one's physical ability, and that the time by itself doesn't mean squat.

The intensity percentage( weight being moved as a percentage of 1 rep max) is also important, I know that's what you're saying with the heavy weight, but for those who are curious you have actin and myosin proteins, and titan proteins connecting the various sarcomeres to each other. The titan proteins connect directly from one sarcomere to the other and are extremely elastic. These are what provide most of your eccentric strength. They also take about 45 minutes to synthesize, which is considerably longer than any other protein. They are the largest protein in the body, the full chemical name is over 190,000 letters. Yea. Try saying THAT 5 times fast!

What really causes the need for longer rest between heavier workouts though is the junctophylans. They connect the sarcoplasmic reticulum to the cell membrane, and they degrade quickly during high intensity work. You are using more muscle fibers during the high intensity work and so while you do less total muscle damage than moderate intensity exercise with a much higher volume, you do much MORE damage to the junctophylans and the titan proteins. These are directly involved with contractile and eccentric strength, respectively, and that is why you get stronger more so than bigger when you are working near your current 1 rep maxes.

You do experience CNS adaptation in the beginning few weeks, but after that it's almost all physical restructuring of the muscle cells. When we say CNS adaptations, here's what we mean. Your motor units(the actual groups of muscle fibers that are connected to each nerve ending) become more efficient and start firing in sync. This produces more power. What does power mean? Well, it's force generated over a certain period of time. When your CNS starts telling a particular muscle to fire its motor units all at more or less the same instant, it is producing its maximum force very quickly. This transfers more force and generates more momentum, which allows you to move more physical mass.

Think about a power clean. You may be able to deadlift 400 lbs, but if you can't get it moving fast enough you'll never get it up to your shoulders. So you're strong enough, but not powerful enough. Athletes value power over strength, as far as priorities go. Increases in strength provide potential increases in power, and increases in power let you lift more, which lets you build more strength. They play off each other in a well structured training program.

******* So junctophylans are more important than the CNS for recovery? In other words the CNS is not the limiting factor?What about connective tissue?

Brandon Green

In recovery from heavy lifting, yes. Neurotransmitters are replenished pretty quickly. Connective tissue is stronger than muscular tissue. It is almost unheard of to have an actual tear. What usually happens is that the connective tissue tears away from the attachment site on the bone. The tissue itself is fine. I don't know if the attachment sites get stronger over time.