Bent hollow holds=HARD!

Does anyone else really struggle with FL pe1??

I initially completed 5x60 and moved to FL pe2 (bent rocks) but I was terrible at these! So much so I doubted my form in the original bent holds (ie back too flat).

I now try to perform the bent holds perfectly with a strong tense and as little of my lower back touching the ground as possible.

WOW these are hard! I am already struggling to get to 4x36. Love this though as it's such a challenge!

Cheers guys

I was never able to reach 60s on the final set on these, and I stumbled upon some posts a while back which said that you need to keep not only PPT but also a "flat" stomach (I believe Coach said "in and down") whereas mine was potruding quite much so in the middle.

To be able to keep a flat stomach I had to regress and am now doing these with only one leg in the air at a time. It's a pretty different sensation, and I hope this will help me pass PE1 later on.

Dave Wilkinson said:

and as little of my lower back touching the ground as possible.

This is a typo right?

Ha kind of Jason!

I meant that I am tensing hard and keeping as much of my MIDDLE back off the ground during the sets (obviously my upper back is off the ground throughout). Towards the end I lose a bit of strength and my middle back starts to touch the ground.

It's a hollow, not a crunch. What helped me was to realize that you don't want to come forward but up. You only need to come up enough so that your shoulders and glutes are off the ground. Going further than that will lead to excessive muscle contraction and excessive muscle expenditure. Think of the difference in body position between these two shapes of a letter C and a parentheses (, you want your body to be more like the latter than the former when lying on the ground. Doing it this way will keep your abs down, as well. Hope that helps a bit. You want to keep your lower back in contact the whole time.

Aaaahhhh thanks guys! I think I have slowly let myself think that the harder I tense, the better results I will get.

Which may explain why I am finding them so hard!

Thanks again for all comments

Avoiding alien baby stomach is an important point too

Haha yep

I'm still stuck on FL/PE2 myself and something I try to remember (while I'm religiously searching the forums for a hack on how to improve my form, which I later forget seemingly every time I work on these at the gym) is that a better synonym for these first six elements is not "HOLLOW BODY" but more so "SHALLOW CURVED BODY".

You really only need to "hollow" or curve your body to the extent that shoulder blades and hips/glutes leave the ground. Seemingly only a few centimeters would suffice, if not then an inch or two to engage the abs and coordination needed for the rocks. Once protraction and PPT are better you can hone in the hollow body shape, but a thing to remember is that in the front lever, the body forms a line: an I shape, if the front lever necessitated more of a bodily curve while it was being performed then all these hollow hold elements would require us to be more curved, but front lever is not more curved, so these elements don't need all that. Now, if only could heed my own advice and remember this when it comes time to work on them. 

A point, about differentiating between the curved and shallow -ness of the body is that I find it much easier to get rid of "alien baby" when I make it a point to keep my body curved and shallow -- in essence hollowed, versus when I would curve it to a much greater degree (as would be the case in the earlier MN elements). I hope this all makes sense.

Dave Wilkinson said:

WOW these are hard! I am already struggling to get to 4x36. Love this though as it's such a challenge!

Cheers guys

Same here. I've been trying to get to 4x36 for months...

Dose of reality: These are nothing compared to HBH and HBR, so you'd better man up and accept that progress in these is measured in ab pain.

If you crank the pain up to 11, you should progress nicely!

Great points Daniel cheers.

Up not forward, ( not C. Great stuff.

Absolutely Ravn, a lot of work ahead but looking forward to the pain!

Last question... Anyone have a better way of timing the hollow holds/rocks than holding a stop watch between your knees?? (when in a gym with no clock)

I keep my stopwatch at my side and tilted so i can readily look at it

Metronome app

I usually have my phone with a metronome app set to 60 bpm lying next to me, I find this makes it easier to keep form because I'm not tempted to look at the timer when things start to get ugly.

Thanks guys. Just found Timer+ app.

It's free and can do countdown in seconds. Could be handy for the holds!

I also use a metronome app "MetroTimer" works great.  And its just another thing that makes everyone else at the gym look at you sideways!  Your doing all these weird holds and stretches and your phone is dinging away the seconds beside you.

How do people use the metronome? I find that my tempo isn't on par with a metronome's 60bpm (60 beats per minute, a beat every second). Is that the desired tempo? Just wondering. I know that a consistent steady tempo was desired/required but wasn't aware it needed to be that fast. Thanks. 

Daniel Taylor-Shaut said:

How do people use the metronome? I find that my tempo isn't on par with a metronome's 60bpm (60 beats per minute, a beat every second). Is that the desired tempo? Just wondering. I know that a consistent steady tempo was desired/required but wasn't aware it needed to be that fast. Thanks. 

Just using it for the holds.

Dave Wilkinson said:

Last question... Anyone have a better way of timing the hollow holds/rocks than holding a stop watch between your knees?? (when in a gym with no clock)

There are other apps that measure intervals and beep, so you don´t need to count yourself like in the metronome app.

If you don´t want to carry a smart phone and prefer something smaller, you can buy something like a gymboss, it´s around $20

https://www.gymboss.com/

Guys in general, if I am struggling with one particular element, should I do it less (as more recovery might be needed) or should I do it more (to build endurance)???

The bent hollow holds are still kicking my ass and I was actually better when I did a lower body workout only twice a week, so bent hollows were done twice a week at that stage (shoulder injury so no upper body workouts).

Maybe more ab rest is needed as I am now back to 3 workouts per week, and core work is done in both upper and lower workouts as course recommends.

I am considering splitting the upper and lower days into a core day (FL/MN/SL/SP) and a HBP/RC/SLS day so a bit more rest for the abs!!

Any thoughts?

Cheers

I'm struggling big time with these as well, FL/PE1 and SLS/iM2 are my biggest challenges. At a point 

where I know these are going to take a great deal of time to get right, quite depressing really.

For these, my brain was telling me to stop doing what I'm doing waaaay before I actually experienced muscular failure. Have you guys tried to just ignore the pain and carry on? For me, that gave pretty much instant gains.

I was at 4*48 and actually had moments where I was bravely ignoring the pain but had to watch myself sink back and no willpower in the world would keep me from doing so. So this does happen.

Turns ou though I was, as mentioned above, trying to curl instead of just holding a nice hollow, and had to readjust form again - now I'm finally on the right track and this time will finally pass beyond 4*48.