Swivel Hips & the Straddle Planche...

I was curious to understand how this progression helps development of straddle planche? I know every iM has crossover to everything else, and I also like the exercise as a mobility, but was wondering why it's so early in the progression and why it's a good idea to achieve full internal rotation before moving on to a forearm plank. It's easy to see the carryover for the other sPL iMs (i.e. all the prone leg extensions) but this one seems different from those. Thoughts?

Hey Patrick,

If your hips are too tight for hip swivels then you will have issues opening into the straddles required to develop the glute and lower back strength in the later progressions.

Can you elaborate a bit on this Everett? Swivel hips is internal rotation, but a straddle planche requires external rotation.

Aren't swivel hips both external and internal?

The element is hardly focusing on the external rotation part, as the stretch that Wesley Tan is demonstrating in the technical video is solely focused on improving internal rotation.

3 hours ago, Randeep Walia said:

Aren't swivel hips both external and internal?

They are, but my guess is that 99% of the people that are stuck on this element are deficient with internal rotation. That's why I was curious to know its importance, not in general, but for this specific exercise (straddle planche).

I "accidentally" went on to the next elements early on in my training (as I didn't do my homework to understand what "mastery" meant here at GB), and got a form check for the later progression of iMs and was told my form on those was good (I have decent strength in my glutes and lower back from powerlifting), even though I hadn't yet achieved mastery on swivel hips. I've since gone back to work on it.

But I am thinking about adding in some of the planks and reverse hyper iMs that are in the next elements after my workouts, on "play" time, because it seems like they will have good carry over to other sticky points (planks with pseudo planche PU, reverse hypers with Side Lever progressions)

I am not in a hurry to move on, I just like to understand what I'm doing.

In my opinion you should not let swivel hips hold you back here. If your straddle is wide enough for mastery of the later mobility elements that is fine. But I would maintain sviwel hips as part of your warm up and perform the stretch showcased by Wesley Tan.

During the development of the hips capsule mobility we should move in order to mobilize all the part of the capsule. Remember that when we approach the tuck variation we must be already able to tuck completely the legs to the chest. the swivel hips are a perfect combination of hips mobilization which permit to the upper leg to have move range of motion when it is pressed against the upperbody (like in a tuck planche). the internal rotation it a perfect mobilization of the upper / anterior hip capsule FIRST  then when the leg moves lower the internal rotation improves a bit both the anterior/upper and the inner capsule. this is not a case that the olympic lifters who show the best upper leg/upper body compression, they have the best swivel hips in the world. Upper/lower body compression actually it is more important for hips health then full internal rotation since bending forward for normal people is by far more common then squatting. people who need to catch something in the front, they bend forward they do not squat. restoring this hip range of motion is the first way to squat properly again. 

I do not know if I missed something Alessandro, but how is full internal rotation during the swivel hips important for achieving a straddle planche?

I completely agree that swivel hips is an important exercise for improving a multitude of things, but why should that exercise hold back same who actually mastered the later mobility elements?

Because it is not a substitute of the later exercises.

Internal rotation it is necessary for tuck the bent leg to the chest in fact this action in my right knee is limited and i'm so tight on swivel hips on the rx side. Are you going to perform tuck planche variation? yes, so you need to compress the upper and lower body in order to minimize the leverage especially if we are managing different people with different height and different weight, little difference results in high effort perceived, less compression means cog moved a bit away from the correct cog position. maintaining a correct balance between internal and external rotation it is necessary. remember that you need to consider who is the general fitness involved in foundations. Begin to look over foundation as an program to promote healthy body first and then performance at least on F1, planche development is a progression to build up healthy hips as Coach stated many times. We need to restore complete range of motion, no matter if after i'll use only a little part of it, it is better to have all rom than have a limited rom. hip works as a complex unit not separated units, limitation on one part will results in future imbalances.

13 minutes ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

Because it is not a substitute of the later exercises.

Internal rotation it is necessary for tuck the bent leg to the chest in fact this action in my right knee is limited and i'm so tight on swivel hips on the rx side. Are you going to perform tuck planche variation? yes, so you need to compress the upper and lower body in order to minimize the leverage especially if we are managing different people with different height and different weight, little difference results in high effort perceived, less compression means cog moved a bit away from the correct cog position. maintaining a correct balance between internal and external rotation it is necessary. remember that you need to consider who is the general fitness involved in foundations. Begin to look over foundation as an program to promote healthy body first and then performance at least on F1, planche development is a progression to build up healthy hips as Coach stated many times. We need to restore complete range of motion, no matter if after i'll use only a little part of it, it is better to have all rom than have a limited rom. hip works as a complex unit not separated units, limitation on one part will results in future imbalances.

Thanks for this explanation, Alessandro..

I understand the importance of swivel hips, thank you for clarifying, but it seems like we are going in circles. People will be stuck on PE 1 for months to years if they need to fix their internal rotation deficit right away before progressing further in the planche progressions. That practice is what I do not understand.

Personally, swivel hips (the stretch that Wesley showcased) is a stable part of my warm up. It improves slowly along with the rest of my planche training.

Here is my theory for the strict adherence.  If coach said you know what move on even though you can't do swivel hips but make sure you keep working on it.  There are lots of people like me who would move on but not continue to work on swivel hips.  I know myself enough to know I'm lazy and hate working at things that are hard.  And that is exactly why I love this program, I have to either get busy and work on my issues or quit and let them get worse.  I refuse to be defeated by swivel hips.

8 hours ago, Alexander Egebak said:

I understand the importance of swivel hips, thank you for clarifying, but it seems like we are going in circles. People will be stuck on PE 1 for months to years if they need to fix their internal rotation deficit right away before progressing further in the planche progressions. That practice is what I do not understand.

Personally, swivel hips (the stretch that Wesley showcased) is a stable part of my warm up. It improves slowly along with the rest of my planche training.

I definitely see the point of addressing deficits in internal ROM right away, the question is just to what extent. Maybe I'm overthinking it - I do remember seeing a coach say somewhere that a tiny bit of distance between the glute and the ground is OK. Obviously you don't want to proceed if your knee is 6 inches from the ground, though.

Would advancement in the Middle Split or Front Split stretch courses translate to progress with Swivel Hips?

It's been my personal experience that doing the swivel hips and swivel hip stretch daily has gotten me to mastery ROM in about two months. A ten-second hold of the stretch on each side and then a couple sets of ten of the swivel hips. The key here, though, is to focus on getting the knee to the floor and then letting the hip/glute come down. Doing it in a reverse way put a LOT of strain and grinding on my internal part of my knee (forgive my anatomical ignorance). So, for the stretch, were you to have less than optimal ROM. Bring the right and left knees down (say over to the left side) and put some of your weight on your left hip/glute with the right hip/glute actively trying to stretch and reach to the floor while still keeping your knees in contact with the floor. Performing them in this way without straining and over time has drastically improved my ROM on these. Now to master scap shrugs and then on to PE2. 

I have been doing the stretch that Wesley showed with a 10 kg dumbbell instead so that I could better relax into the position. By holding the position for 2 x 120s with pulses after my workout with 10r swivel hips afterwards secured me almost full rom within 1 month. Still grinding the last 3-5 centimeters though.

1 hour ago, Alexander Egebak said:

I have been doing the stretch that Wesley showed with a 10 kg dumbbell instead so that I could better relax into the position. By holding the position for 2 x 120s with pulses after my workout with 10r swivel hips afterwards secured me almost full rom within 1 month. Still grinding the last 3-5 centimeters though.

 

Yeah, I've just been using my knee. Likely it's more gradual and less intense, but going hard was what caused a lot of niggling injuries to begin with. Glad that worked for you though in your case. 

2 hours ago, Daniel Taylor-Shaut said:

Yeah, I've just been using my knee. Likely it's more gradual and less intense, but going hard was what caused a lot of niggling injuries to begin with. Glad that worked for you though in your case. 

The key is to start out by going easy. It required some experimentation to the perfect amount of resistance; the right amount of intensity while still feeling "safe" in the position.

What exercise of Wesley's are you referring to? Is it the one where he says to couple the legs to add additional pressure? I'm having trouble picturing:

Bring the right and left knees down (say over to the left side) and put some of your weight on your left hip/glute with the right hip/glute actively trying to stretch and reach to the floor while still keeping your knees in contact with the floor.

Any pictures or videos would be really helpful as I've seen only minor progress over the past few months and I've supplemented the exercise with some stretches. Thanks for the help

5 minutes ago, Antonio Fernandez said:

What exercise of Wesley's are you referring to? Is it the one where he says to couple the legs to add additional pressure? I'm having trouble picturing:

Bring the right and left knees down (say over to the left side) and put some of your weight on your left hip/glute with the right hip/glute actively trying to stretch and reach to the floor while still keeping your knees in contact with the floor.

Any pictures or videos would be really helpful as I've seen only minor progress over the past few months and I've supplemented the exercise with some stretches. Thanks for the help

 

 

Go to the foundations page for swivel hips. Click on the second video Wesley. The motion I'm describing is simply to do the swivel hip but to focus on bringing the knees down first AND then while the knees are still in contact with the ground, drop or float the hips to the furthest ROM possible that you can managed that is comfortable while also providing a stretch. 

Okay, understood. I will give that a try. Thanks for the clarification.