My first week of hell, foundation one :)

Hi all

brand new to the forum, just started the foundatino one course on Monday.

Have been into calisthenics for a few years but was finding it hard to progress to the more difficult skills due to chronic tendonitis , kept flaring up everytime I tried to go heavier and harder.

Saw this course and was so keen to try it after listening to the Tim Ferris podcast that I bought it Sunday and jumped right in on Monday.

Why the week of hell?¿ Well basically Monday I did mastery of all seven skills, and passed 6 of them. (in reality I didn´t pass swivel hips but I am working on it every day , several times a day to get it - I won´t stop til I do)

Passing 6 sub sequentially meant another 6 mastery tests on the Wednesday. Wow that was hard, took me over two hours and left the gym shaking.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I passed another 4 , which means another 4 mastery tests on pe3 tomorrow. I am secretly hoping to fail them all so that I can have a little respite!

Anyway that´s my first week , hope you are all doing well and nice to meet ya!

If you are spending 2 hours attempting mastery that is too long. Split the workouts in half otherwise you will end up injured. I would attempt mastery twice before moving on. Most people start out in a hurry and regret it later on. It is quite common for people to go back and polish up their form and technique.

You already have chronic tendon injuries and one thing tendons hate is abrupt changes. I would hate to see you get injured at the start of the program.

14 minutes ago, Mark Collins said:

If you are spending 2 hours attempting mastery that is too long. Split the workouts in half otherwise you will end up injured. I would attempt mastery twice before moving on. Most people start out in a hurry and regret it later on. It is quite common for people to go back and polish up their form and technique.

You already have chronic tendon injuries and one thing tendons hate is abrupt changes. I would hate to see you get injured at the start of the program.

Hi Mark, thanks for the advice

It wasnt that I was attempting more than once, it just took me that long to complete them all once. If that makes sense?

If it is taking you two hours to complete a workout, you have not achieved mastery.  In fact, not even close.

Did you follow the Pro+ videos for your mastery workouts?  If not, then you need to.  They are there for this very reason.

Also, slow the hell down.  There is a reason that you have chronic tendonitis - and this is it.  

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Hi Marcus, 

Great to meet you! The quickest way to progress in F1 is to film yourself on all the elements you consider mastered and let the moderators confirm mastery. There numerous reasons for this:

Often, we think we're doing something like protraction, retraction, or whatever, but it may not be enough or the timing is off, etc. If you take a video of yourself, you can quickly see what you're doing or not and compared it to the course standard. This will save you regrets down the path.

While we have access to great videos performing each PE/>iM, there are many subtleties and requirements that may scape your understanding, again for different reasons. A huge one being selective attention and how our previous experience shapes what we see.

Each exercise is like a suit. You must be able to tailor it (adapt it) to your own body and unique anatomy and that takes time. I don't think that doing more than one mastery round in one week is advisable. It doesn't give you time to savor or extract from each exercise, or identify any deficiencies/Imbalances. 

It's great that you have a calisthenics background so you're already familiar with the rigors of bodyweight training. However, that can be a hindrance too as you may need to undo certain movement habits or tendencies that you don't even know you have. Not to mention the learning curve in different gymnastics standards of execution. @Fabio Pinna wrote a great post about this point:

emember what brought you here, tendonitis, finding it harder to progress to more advanced skills. As Coach would say "due to improper preparation." I have a few years of circus background and like yourself ended up with chronic tendonitis, mostly from improper progressions and too much too soon. 

Take a deep breath and re-examine your attitude and ultimate goals. You're here to build your own foundation so you can be prepared to later progress to those advanced skills. Take your time in Foundations to restore yourself and come back stronger. This is not hell, it's heaven.:)

Dude, you're so me three years ago. 

Truth be told, I probably didn't extract all the benefits from the first few pe's, because I thought mastery was central to the Foundation concept, and was therefore anxious to just plow through as much mastery as possible. 

Actually, focusing on mastery is really doing yourself a disservice. You paid for this course, and you DON'T want it to be over as soon as possible. You want to gain, gain gain from each exercise, to the point where you cannot squeeze more benefit out of it. Don't throw the lemon out before you've squeezed it dry, essentially. 

Once you've done that, mastery is only a byproduct of your effort. 

5 hours ago, Mikkel Ravn said:

Once you've done that, mastery is only a byproduct of your effort. 

@Mikkel Ravn Love what you said about mastery.

You have to focus on doing things right, not doing them fast. Take your time, this is no race.

19 hours ago, Mark Collins said:

If you are spending 2 hours attempting mastery that is too long. Split the workouts in half otherwise you will end up injured. I would attempt mastery twice before moving on. Most people start out in a hurry and regret it later on. It is quite common for people to go back and polish up their form and technique.

You already have chronic tendon injuries and one thing tendons hate is abrupt changes. I would hate to see you get injured at the start of the program.

Quoted to add emphasis...

Wow to everything said. It has completely sobered me. 

When Coach Sommer says that I am nowhere near mastery if it took me two hours, wow. That was mastery at 7 skills, how long should it take??  That´s crazy. I can´t imagine finishing it quicker than that right now! I shoud mention that I took at least 5 minutes rest in between each skill so say min 30 minutes rest time.

So what do I do now?

I finished the sets and reps required for mastery, however I don´t have mastery. Should I go back in and change my workout logs to say that I didn´t finish so that it sets me back? Confused about what to do next.

Oh , and which ones are the pro+ videos?

Basically, like Coach said, slow the hell down. Who cares if you take 4-5 sessions where you review your form, perhaps sharing it here, before you test for mastery? If you hit mastery straight off the bat, perfect, but chill out and use a couple more attempts to make sure.

You're also educating your body to perform these exercises and engrain them to memory, to serve as, you guessed it, foundation for more complex movements. For any sort of education, repetition is a necessary component. So give it a few sessions, and then move on.

Another thing to consider: At the beginning of a cycle, following a deload week (or as a newbie to the program), I've experienced several times that being well rested and bursting with enthusiasm will enable you to blast through mastery. Then as fatigue begins to set in midway through a cycle, you're much less likely to be able to repeat it. Now then, would this constitute mastery?

Hi Marcus.

My first 6 months of GB has taught me a few things. Upload videos for critique. There's a chance you haven't mastered it at all. Got perfect PPT, not rushing reps, protracting fully?

Even if you have mastered something once you might have had a good day. Test and re-test on subsequent days. I 'mastered' hinge rows last week. Did them again next session and couldn't hit the reps. My intention from here on is consistent mastery reps for a cycle and then move on.

GB is for some as much a process of healing as strength. You cant rush the healing process. GB is a long scenic journey on a train, not the rush hour commute to work. Sloooow down, enjoy it.

After 6 months of GB I'm going back to all the PE1 exercises and iM because I rushed them, assumed i'd mastered them (swivel hips anyone?) without uploading form vids. Tortoise and the hare. I'd be further along now if I acted more like the tortoise than the hare.

3 hours ago, Marcus Patterson said:

Wow to everything said. It has completely sobered me. 

When Coach Sommer says that I am nowhere near mastery if it took me two hours, wow. That was mastery at 7 skills, how long should it take??  That´s crazy. I can´t imagine finishing it quicker than that right now! I shoud mention that I took at least 5 minutes rest in between each skill so say min 30 minutes rest time.

Why not do each PE+iM for at least one 4 week cycle? Even if you power through each element of F1, you'll "pass" within six months.

I've decided to really milk the program. I started from the bottom and have been at it for a couple of months. Just this Tuesday I noticed new technical points that made me want to redo the last four week cycle on a few progressions. That said, I'm "almost" ready to advance to PE2s on all of the progressions. (Damn you Swivel Hips and Hinge Row! *waves fist* ; - ) I've even decided to make sure that I'm really ready for the next elements by taking extra time and working up to doing the weighted elements with higher weights. I feel that my shoulders need that extra prep.

Despite all of the above, I've still seen changes in my physique.

BTW, there should be no rest between the different progressions from what I gather.

Thank you for all the help and advice guys. Maybe I did rush pe1 after all, and would be better to go back and redo them all for a month just to guarantee mastery. 

Technically speaking how would I do that?¿

Keep changing my workout schedule manually? Also what are the pro+ videos?

How do you guys upload videos to here? Youtube first and link or directly?

32 minutes ago, Marcus Patterson said:

How do you guys upload videos to here? Youtube first and link or directly?

Film yourself, upload to youtube as "unlisted" and then just copy and paste the link, the forum software should embed it automatically.

The pro+ videos are the follow along videos that appear when you click on start workout.

Basically, the way I understand it is this:

start the video and keep up. Only count the reps that you can do perfectly while keeping up with the video.

Once you finish an element, just take a few seconds to drink some water and log your reps and then move to the next element. One of foundation key elements is building endurance and work capacity. If you rest 5 minutes you are not getting one of the key benefits. So no rest apart from what you need to prepare the rings and start the next video, for example.

If you do that, the workout takes about an hour.

If your performance falls on subsequent elements, then it means that you don't have yet the capacity to handle an F7 workout, so you need to spend more time before advancing and maybe consider the split template F4/F3 (in one workout you do 4 element and in another you do 3).

3 hours ago, Greg White said:

GB is for some as much a process of healing as strength. You cant rush the healing process. GB is a long scenic journey on a train, not the rush hour commute to work. Sloooow down, enjoy it.

 

Nicely said, Greg.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

6 hours ago, Marcus Patterson said:

Wow to everything said. It has completely sobered me. 

When Coach Sommer says that I am nowhere near mastery if it took me two hours, wow. That was mastery at 7 skills, how long should it take??  That´s crazy. I can´t imagine finishing it quicker than that right now! I shoud mention that I took at least 5 minutes rest in between each skill so say min 30 minutes rest time.

So what do I do now?

I finished the sets and reps required for mastery, however I don´t have mastery. Should I go back in and change my workout logs to say that I didn´t finish so that it sets me back? Confused about what to do next.

 

Oh , and which ones are the pro+ videos?

The Pro+ Videos are the follow along ones found in your daily view (screenshot attached).

If you didn't follow the pace shown in the Pro+ videos, it doesn't do any good to change the previous workout logs since you would be guessing at how you performed at the proper pace. You've simply earned yourself an opportunity go back and do it the right way. I've set your schedule back to the original mastery tests for Monday (PE1 - Test Mastery Setting). Make sure to follow exactly as is shown in Pro+ and record the results. The system will adjust you from there.

5 hours ago, Cory Fair said:

The Pro+ Videos are the follow along ones found in your daily view (screenshot attached).

 

If you didn't follow the pace shown in the Pro+ videos, it doesn't do any good to change the previous workout logs since you would be guessing at how you performed at the proper pace. You've simply earned yourself an opportunity go back and do it the right way. I've set your schedule back to the original mastery tests for Monday (PE1 - Test Mastery Setting). Make sure to follow exactly as is shown in Pro+ and record the results. The system will adjust you from there.

Thank you Cory.

My only problem is that I do thse in my gym and its eating up my data limit watching the videos, is there a way to download them to my phone??

Thanks again for all the info, very useful indeed and food for thought. 

So which split for the week would you recommend instead of f7? I can train 5 times a week.

I would start on the 4 day split, which would mean you perform each exercise twice weekly.

I´ve set it to foundation 5, let´s see how I get on. Mastery will be over  two days now instead of all together, will that make a difference since intensity will be lower?

Might be easily solved, Marcus.  Does your gym offer free wifi that you could log into?

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

19 hours ago, Coach Sommer said:

Might be easily solved, Marcus.  Does your gym offer free wifi that you could log into?

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Hi Coach,

yes they do but it doesn´t reach to their outdoor gym where I train with all the bars and rings etc.(I asked this morning)

I will just have to keep going indoors to check it, no big deal.

I have chanegd my workout to foundation 5 so that I train every day but not all seven skills at once, seems a lot easier all ready and much more achievable. I can now give it my all for each skill, rather than getting most of the way through and having little left in the tank.