Weighted Pancake Advancement

Hi all,

I've been working on my weighted pancake for the last month or two; generally 3 sets of 30-60s holds at the end of training 6 days a week. This is coming along pretty well, and I'm happily snoozing with my stomach on the ground easily with a 20kg bar with correct APT.

I'm wondering about the best way to advance this. I see my options as;

1. Dropping the weight gradually, thus forcing my active flexibility to make up the difference so as to build a better active pancake

2. Elevate my feet and maintain the weight to work on 'overpancake'

I did some experimentation with 1) and discovered that with 15kg, I can achieve a correct flat pancake but it works my hip flexors quite strongly. Given what we generally want pancakes too, other than eating, this seems to be the approach to me, maybe with a day or two of 2)/week dropped in to keep opening it all up.

Welcoming input

seeing as how we're advocates of combining methods / tools, I don't have the range myself but lifting my legs and treating this as the other side of the coin of pelvic movements to do while stretching is what I've been doing for pancake / pike. so if you are doing the former, how about a challenge of the latter? say lifting the leg for pulses, holding it for time or lifting it, moving it left / right and touching down + reverse the movement. I've had some trouble on the sPL SE elements due to being able to engage glute med and applying more or less the same thing we're doing in the SAC drills to pike / pancake produces killer cramps followed by new ROM that sticks around after it's been breached. haven't tried this with weighted hip mobility, but these are the things that immediately come to mind to experiment / follow up on.

 

My suggestion is overpancake sets.

Also if you can perform the overpancake with a partner, then at the end of the lower position take off the partner and hold the position actively, there is nothing better then squeeze  abs and quads here, because normally you cannot promote the same level of strength in this position. expect cramps.

Also you can evaluate some stalder pullses, it is like to perform a straddle legs lift at the stall bar, but you do it at the bar with someone pushing your back forward. maybe with some ankles weight?

5 hours ago, Jon Douglas said:

This is coming along pretty well, and I'm happily snoozing with my stomach on the ground easily with a 20kg bar with correct APT.

Hi Jon, very glad to see your post about this and your progress. Obviously I don'the have the how to advance answers like the others but I've been looking for other's progress and specifics on weighted pancake options for a while now on the forum: 

So, Quick question if you don't mind:

1) I assume you are using the weighted bar over head, arms straight up, wide, almost dislocated straight back technique?

2) Do you ever use weight plate 20kg or a so? If so, where do you place the weight, low back, mid back? I assume the bar approach with straight arms stretches the chest better though.

Excellent Jon!

-dislocate happens in order to hold the bar over the shoulders all the time, so if you are not familiar with good weight on dislocates pay attention.

-have the weight over the shoulders is perfect. ideally a plate should be adjusted over the most rounded part of the upper back.

- Do not use a weight plate place on the back.  This makes it entirely too easy to merely hunch over in PPT rather than extending forward into the stretch while in APT.

- Use a bar held overhead; not a plate.  The plate will be too narrow for the vast majority of people to properly roll the shoulders as they lean forward.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thanks Coach. I was doing weighted plate with probably less than ideal form. That is why I really appreciate this thread.

I have a lot of work to do on my middle split stretch day today, and looking forward to hearing more feedback for Jon's question.

Exactly that reason yes; I'm using an Olympic barbell with a wide grip and just a partial dislocation to keep the weight directly up, because i have discovered despite being quite good at forward bending, my hamstrings have actually been very tight and I've been curling from my back. Like many others here things like straddle L and press HS have gotten a big kick in the pants from addressing this

I will have an investigate of overpancake sets this afternoon thanks all

When starting out with this stretch what weight should I aim for? Should it be enough to push my thorax down? I assume if it's too light I wont get any benefit from the weight.

Jon, excellent question. 

Jeez, I'll make other mistakes, but rounding (curling) from my lower back seems an impossibility for me. I see people doing it and understand how it can happen. I wish I could feel what this mistake feels like. I just want to taste it! 

So! Investigation happened.

First i did a set on the floor. No problem.

Then i tried feet elevated on bosu balls. Discovered this was too high --- could not maintain correct APT. This is a good goal, but not currently in my reach

I went down to weight plates under feet. This was better but it was easy to lose my APT if i did not pay close attention to it. Better but not great.

I thought about that for a moment, and then elevated my butt AND feet, three weight plates total. This made it easy to keep my APT and still allows the greater ROM by going past my feet. This is certainly the variation in which i felt the most specifically hamstring stretch.

My understanding is that i will work this variant as middle groubd until my hamstrings are sufficiently flexible to productively work the version with my sitting on the floor and feet elevated on weight plates, and over time aim to add another plate to the stack. Or am i better off just going straight to feet only elevated and working on that until it eases up?

Nb; used a 20kg bar for all these. 

Nbb; 10 minutes later feels amazing

For what it's worth, here is my experience with the weighted pancake:

1) Not knowing any better, I've always just used plates on my back (as high as possible for maximum leverage); I feel like I have enough body awareness to know whether I am in APT. As per someone's suggestion (not on this forum) I actually started by going down as far as I could in APT, then curled down a bit further. Just what I did, not saying it's a good idea... I recognize the advantage of holding a bar overhead, it's quite an ingenious setup. 

2) I started butt on floor and probably at 25 lb. Moved up to 45 lb until I hit stomach to floor. Then I cut the weight back down to 25 lb. Once I hit stomach to floor (after some reps/holds always) with that, I started elevating the feet. First on pieces from a 2x4, then on HS blocks, then on yoga blocks. Doing the overpancakes with weight was big for getting full pancake without weight. 

3) some key cues: 
a) when going down into pancake, aim to lift your butt of the floor. That seems to engage the right muscles for me to get deeper and/or hold.
b) rather than passive holds (which feel nice also), what gave me good progress was doing holds (15-30 sec) at the bottom at the verge of getting back up, i.e. very active.
c) for the last bit to the floor, for me it's always not so much about the hamstrings (though I will say that working on the head to toe stretch took them out of the equation to an extent) but rather about relaxing things around the hip to allow the pelvis to tilt forward more. Always seems to require a conscious effort to do that for me.
d) to help with APT, think about lengthening yourself/your spine forward, rather than going down.

PS: I have made good progress doing the weighted pancakes just once to twice a week. 

Inspiring stuff Kai! I'm roughly a thumbs up away from my head to toe. Definitely upper hamstrings that limit me there.

I'm a big fan of the cue to lift your bum off the floor too, as well as to imagine reaching forward rather than down.

Max

Heh, I have written a walk through very similar to yours in another thread cheers 

Investigation update;

I ran these today post-Movement session with my feet elevated on yoga blocks. At first it required fair concentration to maintain correct alignment and was limited to not goin very far down at all! Second set I was down to 45 degrees is, and a bit lower on the third. These are going to take some time

These are definitely my preferred variant. My tighter left hamstring felt it like never before, lit up crazy.

I didn't think my lower back had any issues; never felt stiff or sore or anything.... figured it wasn't too far off 100% in terms of health... but right now since it feels around 120% I think I will have to re-evaluate my scale. How tight were my hammies and how much of a roll-on effect were they having that nothin but a little bit of stretching feels so much better?? Damn. Lesson learned.

A personal suggestion that is only a result of personal experience. I've found that we can add difficulty to pancake with 2 solution:

1-cubes under feet

2-butt and legs elevated and going deeper

Recently I did both in two different session. during the first technique nothing was wrong  but the starting position wasn't helping me to hold my back straight and the following day some little pain over the sciatic nerve. on the other side the second variation I used is perfect and I had no problem the day after and you can continue the use of the olympic bar.

As a side note 5 months ago I went with one my kid for the national junior test program, the standard of pancake flexibility was at least 15-20° under the horizontal, they tested and suggested to use the second variation. you can use benches, boxes, mats etc. adjust them so that you can sit near the angle, no matter if the angle is 90° , you can open the legs how much you want.

Yes, it did require me to pay constant attention doing #1.

Thanks Ale; in my current location I don't know if can do that setup but I will give it a look when i can