Stalled?

347mont said:

Sound like you're making good progress now. I'm 41 and have no doubt I would have many

 

imbalances that I've acquired over the years of bad habits. What specialist help did you receive??

 

Was it physiotherapy? I'd love to hear.

Hey 347mont, I'm only 3 years behind you so I had also accumulated a large number of imbalances over the past 20 years.

I was diagnosed with scoliosis only 6 years ago after I suffered a back injury at work and went to see a doctor who sent me for x-rays to confirm that I had a lumbar curve. I was offered surgery which I turned down and started researching on the internet for non surgical solutions and came across ScoliosisSOS (http://www.scoliosissos.com/) based in London.

I went for a consultation with them back in 2012 but the cost of their 4 week course was prohibitive and it took me nearly 3 years to find the time and money to finally get myself onto it.

Basically it is 4 weeks of physiotherapy that is targeted towards those with scoliosis but a lot of their work can be applied to the general populace. We spent a large chunk of the time on posture work and I never realised until they showed me all the scans and photos of my back did I realise what a mess I was in. A quick breakdown of my main imbalances were:

1. Due to the scoliosis one side of my back had gone to sleep. The left erector spinae muscles were virtually double the size of the right ones which were tight and failed to activate properly for movement. So not only was this huge imbalance giving me a lot of pain throughout my daily life but when I was doing Foundations only one side of my back was working and doing all the work! No wonder I was stuck on FL/PE1 and MN/PE1 forever due to fatiguing prematurely. The first session of GB after I got back from London my eyes were wide as saucers. After not training for over a year I almost managed mastery of both finding myself on the 3rd training block. MN/PE1 felt almost so effortless it was scary.

2. A left hip labrum tear from 20 years ago had put my glute to sleep on that side so the foot had to support the arch but over time collapsed and my ankle pronated severely. Work with SLS/PE1 was tough to get quality reps as my left foot kept wanting to pronate. I avoided running as I would have foot pain after a couple of weeks so my cardio suffered heavily. I was given exercises to reactivate the glute and strengthen the foot musculature. Also I have been running twice a week since I got back with zero pain or negative effects .Amazing how one injury can set off a chain reaction and suddenly your whole body falls apart!

3. My right shoulder and hip were higher which was causing my shoulders to be tight and occasionally I would get impingement like pain from any exuberance on my part when doing shoulder work. My shoulder flexion was terrible and extension was nearly non existent. I videoed myself doing RC/PE1 once and it was pure comedy at watching me failing at reaching the required rom. Stretch course and HS iMs are starting to make a dent in it now and the exercise is now starting to feel doable.

Like Mark said I also really recommend people sort out their problems first, maybe get an analysis assessment from a physiotherapist for posture and gait to see if there are any small things they haven't noticed wrong with their bodies. It is hard to analyse the back and easy to overlook things like I did. Once you have your problems fixed I am certain you will notice a huge difference in how you feel when you train and your rate of progression will start really cranking.

I still have my imbalances and I have to do additional work everyday on top of GB work but they are smaller than they were and will continue to diminish further over time. But the important thing now is that they aren't holding my GB work back any more. And for that I am so grateful and really looking forward to where I can be in a year's time with GB. Hopefully will feel ready to get out to a seminar to hang out with Coach and the rest of the GB crew.

Hi Daniel,

With respect, a large part of your OP was about lacking the strength endurance to complete mastery of the specified elements. My point, as others (Coach included) have alluded to on this board and elsewhere, was that strength makes strength endurance much easier to obtain. My own experience has been that adding heavy weighted work significantly improved my ability to express strength endurance and thus demonstrate mastery of early Foundation bodyweight elements. Weighted progressions have the advantage of being infinitely scalable and more predictable to programme than bodyweight progressions, so I have found progress in my Foundation work to be much more consistent with their addition.

I have omitted squats and deadlifts from my weighted progressions to avoid building unwanted leg mass, but otherwise I have found the weighted basics for the upper body have been most effective, i.e. weighted dips, pull-ups, side arch-ups, arch-ups and decline sit-ups, overhead barbell presses and barbell rows. Please be aware that none of this will prepare you for straight arm work and care must be taken not to add too much body mass.

I will leave it there and not comment further. As you rightly say, this is your thread and a full discussion on weight lifting and my experience of its benefits in accelerating my GST progress would result in an unwanted tangent.

All the best with your future progress,

N

To add to neil's point. I noticed some good improvement in my PE1 reps and holdtimes when I added week 1 or 2 of PE2 afterwards. Perhaps playing with very low reps and sets of more advanced progressions after your work sets will help.

Appreciated Geoff. I'm going to look into that and see how it works out for me. Thanks for the input, I see your point now and understand I was a bit off base in my understanding.

Hi Daniel,

I suggest that you start separate threads on each element you are stuck on and analyze and work through each one systematically. Like many have said there are general concerns such as lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, etc, which you should make sure are good. But in my experience, I have fixed plateaus in a few different ways, depending on the exercise and the problem. Mixing problems up could be confusing for you.

Playtime is a great tool. I think if it as giving my body perspective. Like doing rack pulls to get used to holding a bar with a lot of weight, and having your deadlifts (with quite a bit less weight) feel much more in control.