MN/PE6 struggles…

I've been trying to get my feet to the top rung for a while now. The booty feels heavy and it doesn't want to get up. I keep working and maybe one day I will. But reading some other forum post made me think that maybe I have some deficiencies from PE5?  In the video, I am showing my current try for PE6 to get my feet up, and then a few reps of PE5 (which I feel pretty comfortable with, but maybe I am wrong?). Curious to hear if you have any tips? So appreciated… 

hey Suzanna,

in my pov your pe5 is looking good and i dont think this is your limiting factor on pe6. pe5 works mainly your hip flexors while pe6 you also need good compression strenght. this is were you need definitely some work. 
maybe you can add pe1-3 to your warm up before you do pe6, and really focus on bringing your legs as close to your chest as possible. also the handstand challange day 9 (pike lifts) works really good with compression strenght.

just keep working hard, the day this will be easy comes sooner or later!

Good tips from Daniel, it definetely helps going back and refine the basics and make sure to compress as much as possible! 

Keep working on it, looking forward to see how you progress on these  

Hi Suzanna, actually the range of motion it is not enough, the dyanmic lift at the beginning in the tuck position must finish higher so that if you extend the legs you can touch the pole of your hands.

Thank you, @Daniel Jackowicz, @Pauline Taube and @Alessandro Mainente!!! I will work on my pike strength. I definitely need to improve that. My passive pike (FSS) is getting pretty good, but active is far far behind. I will add those extra PE1-3 exercises as well… And @Alessandro Mainente, I actually started to add some extra exercises where I work on trying to bring my knees to my face (like in the exercise video) and just work this part of the movement. Great to hear from you that my thinking is right. I will post my progress soon again. 

Hi Suzanna

Yes, try to bring your knees to your ears and let the momentum carry your legs to the bar with the knees still bent then try to trap them under the bar and extend them. Pike pulses should definitely help.  Good luck!

12 minutes ago, Petri Widsten said:

Yes, try to bring your knees to your ears and let the momentum carry your legs to the bar with the knees still bent then try to trap them under the bar and extend them. Pike pulses should definitely help.  Good luck!

Thank you, Petri. Knees to ears is a great beginning. I will work on that one. I supposed only abs should be firing, not using lats, right? I think I read that in all the other threads before. Eventually, once I am able to hook my feet under the bar, I can work on the nicely slow negative

9 minutes ago, Suzanna McGee said:

Thank you, Petri. Knees to ears is a great beginning. I will work on that one. I supposed only abs should be firing, not using lats, right? I think I read that in all the other threads before. Eventually, once I am able to hook my feet under the bar, I can work on the nicely slow negative

The back support should prevent the lats from providing much assistance but I suppose that if you can't bring your knees even close to your face you could train on a pull-up bar (with pronated and supinated grips) to develop compression strength with help from the lats and then try the same with back support.

I'm not at this PE yet Suzanna but have found these two exercises that the GB facebook page posted to be of interest for working compression for my PE1-3

Since you can do PE3 I imagine this one might be a better option for you:

Good luck!

I think I've mentioned this to you somewhere else: try to see if you can find someone to do the last bit of the ROM for you (help you up) and then just do the negative. That was huge for me. 

Another thing to do would be to just do a lot of volume and frequency of other progressions, e.g. 3x10 of tuck HLL and horizontal HLL and then 3x5-10 of the best negatives you can do right now. I also second the idea of making those tucks as high as possible. The cue I use is to "try and poke your eyes out with your knees"... 

Last not least I would also agree that doing them on a pullup bar for a few weeks could help.

3 hours ago, Trevor Lewis said:

 

I'm not at this PE yet Suzanna but have found these two exercises that the GB facebook page posted to be of interest for working compression for my PE1-3

 

Thanks, Trevor, I will include these too. The first one, I have never done before. The second one I did in the HS Challenge just very recently. I will use both to make myself stronger in the compression. 

1 hour ago, Kai Ewert said:

I also second the idea of making those tucks as high as possible. The cue I use is to "try and poke your eyes out with your knees"... 

Last not least I would also agree that doing them on a pullup bar for a few weeks could help.

Thanks, Kai… Yes, getting the knees to my ears is going to be big. My booty is heavier than my current strength for it, so I need to keep working on it. On my stall bars or sometimes on a chin bar… luckily, my mom is visiting me from Europe for a few weeks, so I will hire her as my booty-lifter, so I can work on the negative part  :-D 

16 minutes ago, Suzanna McGee said:

luckily, my mom is visiting me from Europe for a few weeks, so I will hire her as my booty-lifter, so I can work on the negative part  :-D 

Hahaha, i hire my husband to stand right behind me as a wall. There are many good suggestions already. One very easy thing to try (if you haven't done it already) is to lay flat on a mat, and reach the toes to the floor behind your head. Basically the same idea as a toe to bar but flat on the floor. It helps your mind to register how much you need to compress your body to reach that range. 

Lifting the booty def help to increase the range, but i think the ultimate goal of toe to bar is to just use the compression with minimum booty lift. The idea is to have your toes right below the bar (and not over it) when you reach it. That takes a lot of strength and flexibility, and I don't think that's required for mastering this one. But keeping it in mind helps to really work on that compression.

5 hours ago, Suzanna McGee said:

Thank you, @Daniel Jackowicz, @Pauline Taube and @Alessandro Mainente!!! I will work on my pike strength. I definitely need to improve that. My passive pike (FSS) is getting pretty good, but active is far far behind. I will add those extra PE1-3 exercises as well… And @Alessandro Mainente, I actually started to add some extra exercises where I work on trying to bring my knees to my face (like in the exercise video) and just work this part of the movement. Great to hear from you that my thinking is right. I will post my progress soon again. 

pulling strenght helps something here. my suggestion it is to pull strongly with arms so that you can lift the hips very high and then reach the pole, use the toes to hold the bar and then lock out your knees and let the butt to move down, THEN perform the negative.

For some students and I also found it helpful to work on quad activation to help getting the toes to touch the bar on top, and also ensure locked knees on the negative part  I found SLS PE8 iM helpful and pike leg lifts to but make sure you're fully lock your knees to ensure quad activation. 

3 hours ago, Suzanna McGee said:

 

Thanks, Kai… Yes, getting the knees to my ears is going to be big. 

In fact it's just a cue. You don't actually need to get them even close to get your toes to the bar but the cue puts you on a suitable trajectory.

The knees to eyes cue though is just about achievable. My friend's daughter who is doing competitive gymnastics gets dangerously close, that's how I came up with the cue

On 1/27/2017 at 9:44 PM, Suzanna McGee said:

… luckily, my mom is visiting me from Europe for a few weeks, so I will hire her as my booty-lifter, so I can work on the negative part  :-D 

Love this --- Your mum is always there for you! 

5 hours ago, Samin Ishtiaq said:

Love this --- Your mum is always there for you! 

She's been here for 8 weeks and refused to work with me, lol… I still struggle to get that thing up. Patience, patience….