The Iron Cross

Hello everyone,

This is my first post on the forum. I'm a newbie gymnast having started last October. I have a list of goals of which one is the Iron Cross. Despite it being one of the harder items on my list (along with the planche - my nemesis) I started training for it in January using a British version of the Elite Strength Trainer. (I have a good background in bodyweight conditioning from before starting gymnastics so I'm injury free so far). I feel like I'm making significant progress with it though I'm by no means close.

I have given a brief overview on my blog of the last six months training for the cross and was wondering if anybody had anything to add that may help me in achieving it.

During this time I have also been regularly climbing, practising parkour and some circus skills.

An advance thank you for your help,

Castleclimber

London, Uk

http://super-human-strength.blogspot.com/

P.s If it's of any interest to anyone, I will be reviewing both the Elite Strength Trainer and The Gymnova Educano on the blog in the next week or so.

For planche, you can change how you point your fingers out to adjust for wrist flexibility. You can do it with the fingers out to the sides or towards your feet. It changes it a bit but is valid.

Thanks Blairbob, I'll try some different hand positions for the planche - hands behind sounds good but must be difficult to hold the balance. I'll have a play with this for the tuck planche and let you know how it goes.

I think I saw a picture of you doing a straddle planche. How long did it take?

My 2 cents:

-reduce iron cross training, it is better to have a large reserve of strength before training a skill

Do:

-front/back lever for 10s, they build much of the core strength required

-rings handstand, for straight arm strength

-long, wide arm muscle ups

Thanks for the advice Felipe!

I've been training the Front lever over the same period as the Iron Cross and average about three times a week. It's slow going but I'm nearly there! You're right in that the mutual benefits between the cross and Levers really carry across. I can hold the back lever for 11 secs as it feels like a much easier position than the front lever.

I'll start practising the ring handstands as you advised. Do you begin with legs around straps or with a spotter? I'm concerned that the legs in the straps may encourage a bad habit that's hard to shake later..

Never tried wide muscle ups; I'll try those tonight too.

Legs around straps is easier but I prefer legs inside straps.

I'm training HS, now I can do one or two HSPU, when you put the legs inside the straps there is a lot of pressure on all the body to mantain the position, but now I can say that it isnt impossible I can do back levers but not fronts, they're so hard...

dip is a very good movement, I do bulgarian dips every workout trying to not put my arms on the straps.

The best friend on rings strength is probably the false grip. Get comfortable doing that and it all holds will feel completely different. Before, I trained cross without false gripping and could only get to about 45 degrees before falling through. Then I learned to false grip and could hold it. I think another thing that false gripping does is position your shoulders so that you can lock into position for a cross.

The biggest thing that the false grip does is that it takes the wrist joint out of the movement. If you're false gripping, you don't need nearly as much wrist strength to do things, especially muscleups. It also makes the levers a few inches shorter, which makes a noticeable difference.

My target is to eventually achieve the Iron Cross with no false grip.

Do you think that it's best to train first with the false grip or will it be very difficult to break the habit once learnt? I have very good forearm flexor strength which, whilst a hindrance in many other areas -handstands, planche progessions etc- I was hoping would make the cross without false grip much easier to achieve.

Congrats on the Cross WangTang6911!

Castleclimber said:

My target is to eventually achieve the Iron Cross with no false grip.

Do you think that it's best to train first with the false grip or will it be very difficult to break the habit once learnt? I have very good forearm flexor strength which, whilst a hindrance in many other areas -handstands, planche progessions etc- I was hoping would make the cross without false grip much easier to achieve.

Congrats on the Cross WangTang6911!

Nah, you can learn the wrists out more if you wanted to eliminate the false grip later. But if you learn bent arms that will be hard to eliminate.

And I think WangTang is competitve high level gymnast... so he's had cross for a while...

Yea, don't worry about the wrists. Get your cross, then start easing off of the false grip.

Castleclimber said:

My target is to eventually achieve the Iron Cross with no false grip.

Do you think that it's best to train first with the false grip or will it be very difficult to break the habit once learnt? I have very good forearm flexor strength which, whilst a hindrance in many other areas -handstands, planche progessions etc- I was hoping would make the cross without false grip much easier to achieve.

Congrats on the Cross WangTang6911!

For me, getting the cross was a lot about the shoulder positioning. I tried holding a cross without false gripping the other day and I could lower into it, but it was really hard to pull out.

When I say false grip, I don't necessarily mean having the same false grip as in a muscle up. I think for cross, just lower into it from support with your rings turned out and you will find that the side of the rings will rest on your wrists making it easier. The hard part about stopping in the cross position is figuring out which muscles work for you. If you use mostly your shoulder muscles, think about pushing your shoulders as forwards as possible. If you use your lats to lock, think about sitting back on your cross.

Having your wrists in that position will make it easier in the future if you want to pull out of a cross or want to train a maltese, invert cross, or other strength skills.

The last part is kind of confusing, but it will make more sense the more you do it and figure out the physics. Let me know how it goes! Try posting a video of what you have so far or something!

Good for you that you can train the cross, for me it's nigh impossible ^^ I think that it's due to hyperextension, when I lower into position with biceps facing down my elbows fells like they're goin' to break, when they're facing more or less forward as Gregor suggested the arm bends sort of upwards and hurts like hell it's kinda weird 'cause I can do full ROM muscle ups, all sorts of dips and pullups, back levers, front lever is almost locked etc., so my bent arm strenght doesn't suck that much. Anyways I'm keeping in mind what one of the guru's said that it's pretty much pointless to attack the cross without locked front and back levers

However this is really frustraiting as I saw many people that were much weaker than me and they were able to lower through the cross, or slowly deeper into it than me before they fell without their arm assuming weird angles, well, just my luck I guess, gotta live with it.

Nuff said, good luck in your progress!

Cheers,

Chris

Depends on a lot of things, Chris. " Freak " elbows don't help with the straight arm static movements at all. Kind of depends on your size as well.

Blairbob said:

Depends on a lot of things, Chris. " Freak " elbows don't help with the straight arm static movements at all. Kind of depends on your size as well.

I never said that they help, they rather make things significantly tougher.

Have you tried using a trainer Chris or are you already past that stage? It doesn't help a huge deal if it's just the elbows that are giving you trouble as it supports them -which is not going to strengthen them- but it trains the lats and shoulders up nicely!

(By trainer I mean the thing that straps on your arm allowing you to attach the ropes closer to the elbow).

Castleclimber said:

Have you tried using a trainer Chris or are you already past that stage? It doesn't help a huge deal if it's just the elbows that are giving you trouble as it supports them -which is not going to strengthen them- but it trains the lats and shoulders up nicely!

(By trainer I mean the thing that straps on your arm allowing you to attach the ropes closer to the elbow).

nope ^^ maybe someday I'll give it a try, first I got some basics to achieve because I think that invading the terrirory of an iron cross is overkill when the beaches of the front lever and the cliffs of the back lever aren't ours.

Thanks for the suggestion though,

cheers,

Chris

Wangtang6911 said:

The best friend on rings strength is probably the false grip.

I have a lot of trouble doing a proper false grip, which may either be a lack of strength or improper facilities. I have no rings, so I rely on a pull up bar for all my hanging training, so I'm not entirely sure if this makes the false grip more difficult or not. If it doesn't, what sort of things do you do to build up strength for it?

Iron cross is a goal of mine as well, but I'm a newbie, so my strength is pretty low right now.

Building up to the false grip? Simple, practice hanging in it. If you can't do this, you could do it as a body row or standing body row for less BW.

Hello, I have a question about the cross. I am a handbalancer and I just started circus school at a circus school where they have a couple of long rings. I have a fair bit of straight arm strenght due to 1 arm handstands, planches and other skills. I tried lowering into a cross today, and though I couldnt hold it, I felt quite strong and comfortable with it. The thing was, that when I fell, it didnt feel like a collapse. I could still feel that I exerted some force, and it reminded me of a negative repetition. There was no discomfort at all in my elbows or shoulders, even after 3 or 4 tries. The last time I tried a bit on this(before I did a LOT of planche work) I got weak pains in my elbows even on low rings.

My question is basically if there is anything to gain from working with negatives at crosses or if it easily can end in injuries. Since you are allways moving a tiny bit beyond your controlled range of movement, it seems like a pretty good way to build strenght. The reason I ask is because a lot of the strenght I have at presses to handstand, 1 arm handstand positions, planches, and even 1 arm presses to handstand have come from doing negatives, lowering controlled down from handstand. Even so, I have little knowledge of rings, and would like to know from someone who is experienced before working further on it, or if I should do pullouts instead.

It should be ok.

If you're worried just do spotted crosses... probably the best way to work up to it. Have someone spot you down into the position as little as you need and then pullout from it with a bit of assistance.

If you're pretty strong already (strength to bodyweight) you may be able to attain it within 1-3 months.

I've finally begun training without the training aid (Gymnova Educano or Elite Strength Trainer). I set up my rings in the park yesterday and found I can almost hold the cross without a false grip (perhaps 20 degrees out).

I found the false grip unnecessary although the shorter length of my own rings hanging from the tree felt much easier than the competition set I've been training on up to now for obvious reasons. (Longer straps have you holding the ring further from the attachment point at the top of the rope resulting in lower stability).

Just thought I'd update as it's nice to finally feel that the cross is in fact possible!

Oh yea, it's possible, on the long rings too. Even for big guys like us I'm your height and 220 lbs right now It just takes a lot longer to build up to those stress levels.

Excellent! Slizzardman, can you already do a cross at 220Lbs or are you training for it like me?

I'm currently doing two sessions a week on the long rings with false grip and spotter and one session a week on my Elite rings (5" straps) with no spotter or false grip. I'm hoping that this will help me get to the non false grip cross by next January.