Hand direction on planche

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and so far have been very impressed with the collective knowledge of many different forms of training. I personally practice yoga, break dancing, and am relativly new to gymnastics. Most of my background is in yoga so i am used to doing almost everything with my hands forward. I have been practicing the planche for about 5 months now and have achieved a 5 sec hold on the straddle planche with my hands forward. If I move the position of my hands to face backwards I can barely hold an adv tuck planche for 5 sec. This makes me believe that all the practice I have done has made some muscles very strong while others got neglected. So my question is what is the muscle difference between hands forward and backwards and what exercises can I do to strengthen these ares.

hands forward is much more forearm, shoulder and chest dependant, whereas hands backward is much more forearm, bicep and chast dependant, much less on the actual shoulders. They still work, obviously, but there is a lot more stress on the structures around the elbow, specifically the biceps and the inside of the forearm. The wrist series will help a lot, check out the dorsal pushups and first knuckle pushups.

There is a video for dorsals, I don't know about first knuckles. For first knuckle pushups, start in pushup position, fingers forward. Now, as you do the pushup, go up onto the area of the palm where your fingers attach. That's the first knuckle. These are hard, you may want to try them on your knees first. When you can do them with straight elbows on your knees, move on to pushup position. It's helped me a lot! Also, hands backwards back lever work seems to build a lot of strength in the hands backwards planche position. That will help you as well. Anyone else have suggestions?

That makes sense, biceps are by far my weakest muscles. At least I know what I need to work on. I'll give those pushups a shot and let you know if they help.

Thanks,

Andrew

slizzardman said:

hands forward is much more forearm, shoulder and chest dependant, whereas hands backward is much more forearm, bicep and chast dependant, much less on the actual shoulders. They still work, obviously, but there is a lot more stress on the structures around the elbow, specifically the biceps and the inside of the forearm. The wrist series will help a lot, check out the dorsal pushups and first knuckle pushups.

What? This doesn't even make sense.

Yes, hands forward is more forearms because you can use the fingertips to mitigate part of the work (cause your fingertips are closer to your center of mass). Similarly, biceps + medial elbow flexors for hands backwards. You got those correct.

However, there is BARELY any difference between hands forward, side or backwards involvement with the shoulders and chest. The humerus is only very slighly rotated compared with with hands backwards thus making chest and shoulder leverage approximately the same.

Hands forward is definitely the easiest to get, but it is also the hardest on the wrists because of the same reason.

I notice that for me I can feel the difference. It feels like my rear delts are less active and my chest is doing far more work when I am in hands backwards, though the main difference is the biceps like you confirmed. It might be something I am doing wrong as far as hollowing, I don't know. When I have hands forward I feel my upper chest more but a bit less everywhere else. With hands back I feel my chest flex from the top to the bottom pretty equally. You know, it could just be the difference in lever length. I just now thought about that after I wrote this whole post, and decided to put it here in the middle.

As for the shoulders, I don't feel much of anything in hands backwards. The humerus is rotating about 90 degrees even with a strong hollow compared to forward, i think that counts as more than slightly. I mostly do hands neutral on the parallettes, because my elbows are still adjusting and probably will be for quite some time, and I definitely agree that there is almost no difference between that and the hands forward. I certainly don't feel it, anyways.

I think is more a matter of balance than strenght, u are used to use ur fingertips to mantain balance and by changin the direction of ur hands make u lose it. Although, Im used as u to have hands forward, and I ve tryed some days ago the tuck planche on paralletes, and was real hard to mantain the time and repetitions I been doing until that day, but I think is more a matter of gettin used to it : )

There is significantly more stress on the biceps when the fingers are facing backwards during the planche.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Yea, I noticed that fingers forward I can do 15 pseudoplanche pushups at least pretty easy, but fingers back 5 is a serious challenge.