Question about mastery

Hi all!

I would like to clarify a matter about mastery of some preparatory elements that require a considerable care technique.

Take for example, pseudo planche push ups. (HBP/PE3). For this exercise I have to care about several stuffs: scapular protraction and depression, PPT, hips not squared, forward leaning... I realized that as fatigue accumulates , scapular protraction in the last reps is not as evident as in the first ones. I mean, there's still a protraction and PPT is kept as well, but not so evident just like in the beginning.

Another examples could be planche lean (SL/PE5), the last seconds of the last sets protraction is certainly a bit lower than in the first seconds.

Now I wonder if I have to consider similar element as mastered when I am able to perform all reps /secs with perfect technique (so each rep performed just like it was the first one) for each set, or if a minimum of imperfection caused by accumulated fatigue is still allowed.

Thank you!

Joshua Slocum said:

[...]

Take videos of your work sets! Take them frequently! Having feedback is crucial for developing good form. It's very common to *feel* like you're doing an exercise right, only to find out that something is not right once you take a video. I use a smart phone and a tripod with a phone-attachment (like one of these). If you've been stuck on an exercise for a while, comparing old videos to new ones can be helpful: has your form changed at all?

Even if you don't want to video anything else, make sure to video your attempts at mastering an exercise. Mastery requires good form in *every set* - failing to meet this standard may result in stalled progress later on.

[...]

Edit: Removed quotation that is out of scope.

Video every set every workout and watch. It's absolutely worth the effort, and the few times it pays off in terms of insight is worth the price of admission. It's a great thing to look over between exercise sets.

If you take videos of your first set, your fifth set, and you mute it so that you can't hear the swearing, in a perfect world you struggle to tell the difference between the two.

I'm not saying you should find set 5 easy-- if you do, it's probably not hard enough for your real strength work right now but you should keep your standards very high. Remember that being strict on yourself and patient with the training is the fastest way forward long term.

Balance this with not being ridiculous about it It's hard to give an easy answer. One good method is to post your last sets as your form checks here, not your first, and work on the feedback you get there without making any excuses or disclaimers about fatigue etc

I like to think that all five sets don't have to be identical but the last one still has to meet the miminum requirement. While that's a really simple concept, it still is a very vague answer as we're not always sure what the miminum requirement is. 

For planche leans, I think losing protraction shouldn't happen, so keep at it, for PPP, I'm not sure I'd be so strict, but if you end up perfectly locking your planche leans, you might not lose protraction anyway. So yeah, balance, and post your last set and see what people have to say about it.