Will you critique my *Tucked Planches*?

What do you think? Is my form ok? Is my arm locked? I made sure they were. And what advice can you guys give me to move on to the Advanced Tucked Planche? My max hold for the Tucked Planche are 10-13 seconds. Thank you guys and appreciate it.

After seeing the first one I thought it was a bit dark so I made a second one. I decided to keep both because when doing the second one I was beat from the previous sets.

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Looks pretty good! You're working hard! The general consensus is that if you can't max hold at least 20 seconds you aren't ready yet.

For me the pseudo-planche pushups help a lot, and so do the cast wall walks. You can find those in the gymnasticbodies youtube library. THey are basically where you start in a handstand, and slowly walk your hands out to a planche, with feet on the wall, and then back up to handstand, with straight arms the whole time. It's pretty hard. If you read Gregor's log he has some very interesting dumbbell exercises he uses that are aimed at straight-arm strength. He's a world-class competitor, so it's worth reading about what he does for sure! If you aren't doing any ring work, that will help you as well. Good luck with your progress!

Thanks for your input. I tried adding the pseudo-planche push up into my regimen but it strains my wrist to put in all the way by my waist and then do push ups like that.

Two solutions for that are one, to use pushup bars or an edged surface, like a 2x4, so that your fingers can curl down and take some of the strain off of your wrists and two(harder ) to point your fingers towards your feet. Pointing your fingers towards your feet is much, much harder than the regular position, so don't try to push it too fast.

There's a *finger towards feet* version? I did not know that. Wow, that sounds painful to do.

Titan, it isn't really painful but you find the balance weird and you'll probably fall on your face a bit for quite some time when using this technique.

It is similar to turning the rings out all the way forward.

I personally like turning out my parallettes to 45 degrees pointing outside when working on them. It also allows the inside of the elbow to be more forward which is a good thing for all support work.

Other than that, nice work on your tuck planche. I need to remind myself to get some video of mine to critique myself.

So for the other version with the fingers backward you're using more of your bicep am I correct? So you lean backwards to find balance instead of forward and vice versa?

You still lean forward to balance. It's still a planche.

Yeah, fingers backwards activates your biceps more probably.

Typically I do this on a pair of hex 25lb DB instead of my parallettes.

Not only do fingers back require (and build) much more bicep strength, they also increase the length of your motion arm and take away mechanical advantage. When fingers are forward, the point of balance is transferred through the wrist and hands to the fingers, so not only is your point of contact with the ground at least 6 inches further forward for any given arm angle, you also have the natural tension of your wrist in a stretched position helping hold your weight. Basically, with your fingers forward, you have a sort of cantilever system working for you. With fingers backwards, it's a naked fulcrum with no forward support. Much less stable, takes much more strength to hold.

Yeah. With hands forward it is substantially easier. I normally practice with hands to the side and i can essentially do a half lay planche, but with hands backwards it requires substantially more force and i believe that i can only push to an advanced tuck really.

Better than me lol! Hands backwards was more than I was ready for, and I aggravated an old elbow injury, some not-so-sexy tendonosis action. So now I'm being good about rehabbing it and not messing with planche until it feels right, probably around new year's. Hopefully sooner, but I know better than to try and rush the recovery. At least I can do some small fingers forward planche leans in the meantime.

sucks, some weird wrist soreness is stopping me from any tuck planche work currently it seems. I can do assisted planche leans because it takes pressure off of the wrist but I think my ability to do them at the end of a workout is compromised because my wrists only last so long.

even after the wrist prevention, it took quite a bit of tumbling on tumbl-trak before they were ready to do anything on floor.

they are fine on rings however, so support work there is good compared to PB or PH.

Blair, you might want to try some wide handle grip work. It's helped my wrists a LOT. Just get a thick piece of pipe, at least 2 inches external diameter, and run a rope through it and tie weights to the rope or something. Maybe a bucket with sand in it would be readily available?

I still haven't setup my bucket of sand.

This hand used to be FUBAR because of an non related stupid volleyball injury.

Ahh the weight on a stick exercise. We have one of those. It's odd because my hand doesn't hurt doing any of the wrist prevention series.

It has to be a rotating handle, and thick enout to prevent skin friction from playing a major role in grip. That's why I use a 3 inch pipe. I snap my handles onto a regular gym bar, and they rotate on it, you know what I mean? you can do the same thing with anything hollow and thick, and some rope. A wrist roller, which is a stick with weight attached directly to it by a string, won't work for this.

Are you merely holding it in a hang?

It felt somewhat better today as supporting on the pommel horse didn't really feel too bad. It still was sensitive but I could have swung on it (and didn't). HS on floor were ok feeling without a warmup (besides doing the wrist wu for the boy's workout and horse vaulters class). I opted to just call it a week and not do any event work unless I go the gym on saturday or sunday.

3 inches, sounds pretty wide and I got small hands. Hmm.

Yeah me too Blairbob. I've got small hands. I know how how the guy feel from the Burger King's commercial.

Slizzardman, that wrist device you are talking about, Bruce Lee used that in his training didn't he?

How would you go about doing the planche with your hands pointed back? What would the progressions be? Should one master the regular Planche first before attempting to progress with this version?

Titan said:

How would you go about doing the planche with your hands pointed back? What would the progressions be? Should one master the regular Planche first before attempting to progress with this version?

Well, I train both at the same time. The planche with hands backwards just take a little more shoulder I think, but a lot more elbow strength. You just need to prep yourself for it.

Work on pseudo planche pushups with your hands backwards, and work through the planche progressions. I have found that the back lever and iron cross have helped my elbow strength. Without ever specifically training the planche with hands backwards, I can do the advanced tuck planche on the ground, but i can do a half lay planche with hands to the side, so it is a lot harder.

Titan said:

Yeah me too Blairbob. I've got small hands. I know how how the guy feel from the Burger King's commercial.

Slizzardman, that wrist device you are talking about, Bruce Lee used that in his training didn't he?

I don't know, it's been a while since I reviewed his material. I got the idea from John Brookfield's Mastery of Hand Strength book. There is a massive amount of info there!

Blair: I'd start with a 2 inch pipe and see how that feels, personally. I have reasonably big hands, so 3 inches works well for me. Even so, it's really tough!

It has to be a rotating handle, and thick enout to prevent skin friction from playing a major role in grip. That's why I use a 3 inch pipe. I snap my handles onto a regular gym bar, and they rotate on it, you know what I mean? you can do the same thing with anything hollow and thick, and some rope.

I don't get it

Do you have a picture or video on youtube? I need more wrist strength :twisted:

I guess I'm going to have to make some, there's a bunch of stuff that I use that is a bit hard to describe Picture this, maybe it will help: put a pipe over a broom handle, so that the pipe can spin freely. attach weight to both sides of the broom handle, but only grip the pipe you have placed the broom handle inside. Instead of the weight being distributed evenly around the pipe, the center of mass is near the bottom of the pipe. This uneven distribution of weight will cause it to "try" to roll down and slip out of your fingers, because if you loosen your grip and the pipe rolls out of your hand a little, the weight will shift to always be at the bottom of the pipe. If the weight was fixed at a certain point in the pipe, you could make the hold easier by placing the fixed center of mass near your hand and fingers, so that as you lost your grip the center of mass would actually be moving towards your hand and fingers, instead of away. That would cause friction to decrease the force necessary to maintain your grip. You could, of course, grease your hands, but I don't think anyone wants to deal with the greasy hands afterwards.

As a side note, in the Eskimo Olympics, one of the events is a contest of grips. They take a wooden dowel that has been tapered on both ends, grease it heavily, and then two contestants grip near the center. Whoever pulls the dowel out of the other's hand is the winner. The grease obviously all but eliminates friction, leaving the event a contest of pure muscular strength. The same concept can be applied to grip training, but if you do that I suggest buying a bucket of Gojo(industrial grease cutter) and doing it at home, away from the nice, clean stuff at the gym.

Thanks slizzardman!

I have a barbell at home so I'm going to buy some pvc pipe

How long should that pipe be? And what is your favourite exercise? Wrist curls, deadlifts.. ?

Pipe length doesn't matter, 1 foot of it is plenty. That'd make two 6 inch handles, and I don't think anyone alive has palms that are more than 6 inches across If you cut a one inch thick hole lengthwise down the side of each handle so that you can just pop it onto the barbell you'll be set! If you're thinking about using one long pipe for the handle, you could certainly do that. It's just going to be more of a pain in the butt to cut the groove down a long pipe. I'd suggest a saws-all if that's what you are thinking