MN/PE6 Negative Hanging Leg Lift

Hi,

I've been hammering away at the Foundation One exercises, and I've hit my first weak-link thats presenting me considerable difficulty at MN/PE6: Negative Hanging Leg Lifts. After playing around with it for three sessions, slowing the motion down to a crawl, I've pinpointed my issues and would love to get some of your insight on how to work past it.

With the two videos on the website, it was less evident when I followed the video with Claire as she has an amazing pike compression that she can keep her tailbone quite low. However with the male athlete he first lifts his tailbone to horizontal while remaining in a tuck before extending his legs to pike, and then lowers down slowly. I'm stuck on the tailbone-lift part, and my tightness/weak-link can be felt in my lats and intercostal muscles beneath my 3rd rib on both my left and right sides. The preceding progressions MN/PE4 and MN/PE5 don't require much tailbone lift at all from the stall bars, hence didn't trigger this issue at all.

Could anyone suggest any exercises that isolates the contractions in the lats and intercostals that's less intense than a negative hanging leg-lift, to serve as an intermediary step towards it?

Cheers, Larry.

Hi Larry, 

Thanks for reaching out. 

You should not use your lats to pull in this exercise. Could you please submit a form check so we can give you some personal feedback? 

Good job on hammering your Foundation workouts. Feel free to post your training on the forum! We'd love to follow your progress  

17 hours ago, Larry Wong said:

Hi,

I've been hammering away at the Foundation One exercises, and I've hit my first weak-link thats presenting me considerable difficulty at MN/PE6: Negative Hanging Leg Lifts. After playing around with it for three sessions, slowing the motion down to a crawl, I've pinpointed my issues and would love to get some of your insight on how to work past it.

With the two videos on the website, it was less evident when I followed the video with Claire as she has an amazing pike compression that she can keep her tailbone quite low. However with the male athlete he first lifts his tailbone to horizontal while remaining in a tuck before extending his legs to pike, and then lowers down slowly. I'm stuck on the tailbone-lift part, and my tightness/weak-link can be felt in my lats and intercostal muscles beneath my 3rd rib on both my left and right sides. The preceding progressions MN/PE4 and MN/PE5 don't require much tailbone lift at all from the stall bars, hence didn't trigger this issue at all.

Could anyone suggest any exercises that isolates the contractions in the lats and intercostals that's less intense than a negative hanging leg-lift, to serve as an intermediary step towards it?

Cheers, Larry.

One thing I can say, @Larry Wong is by all means try to see PE6-PE9 as completely different animals when compared with the first five PEs of manna (excluding PE2 which is quite a problematic animal as well).One thing that will determine whether or not you can reach your toes to the bar is your pike mobility more so than your ab strength. Claire's mobility is the standard for this exercise. PE6 is 85% pike mobility and 80% core strength (I know, that adds up to more than 100% but it is my best guess at what's important and why).

So if your pike mobility is not quite there yet, get cranking (albeit patiently but with consistency) and hopefully you'll get there with time. This mobility will help with PE7, 8, and so forth as well, so it's very fundamental.

@Larry Wong, I just touched my feet to the top bar for the first time, yesterday… (I posted a happy picture in the forum). It took me 5.5 months  :-)  I have a long torso, and my tailbone lifts up too. What I did the last several (many) weeks, I added extra hip strengthening so I can increase the active pike range of motion. My passive pike was ok even before. Making the active better helped a lot. 

This is an incredibly hard exercise for me too! I can just about roll up then straighten my legs to touch the bar but there is not really much left in the tank for the negative phase and my legs drop more or less immediately down to an L level again. I too wish there was some kind of intermediate level for this one.

Hi all.

I am still very much stuck on the negative hanging leg raise progression and so decided to try a different progression to see if I could build up more strength to then go back to the negatives, seeing as I could not even get one rep.

I have a few questions re this progression. On the example video and in general the hands are slightly forward of the body , however in my gym as you might be able to see in the video my hands are directly above my shoulders(the actually go back a cm as it´s not a completely straight line. Therefore for me to get toes to bar, I need to get my legs much further back than if the hands were set forward. Could this be a factor in my struggle with this element?

Also any critique on this element would be great,

thanks!

Anyone?

Great work so far!

Marcus, that is true that having hands behind you decreases your range of motion (10cm or so), but I would prefer you not use it as an excuse. You need to keep working on your compression and be able to do it with the tools you have at hand. 

To refine your form I would like you to keep your legs 190 degrees straight throughout the movement.

Nice progress so far Marcus

On 5/19/2017 at 4:07 PM, Luke Searra said:

Great work so far!

Marcus, that is true that having hands behind you decreases your range of motion (10cm or so), but I would prefer you not use it as an excuse. You need to keep working on your compression and be able to do it with the tools you have at hand. 

To refine your form I would like you to keep your legs 190 degrees straight throughout the movement.

Nice progress so far Marcus

Thanks. Do you mean increases the range of motion rather than decreasing?

Hey Marcus, absultely Sir, that's exactly what I mean because when you do get to an actual Stahl bar the range of motion will be less and will be easy for you! 

So I finally did one rep!!! Only taken me about 5 months lol.

How is my form please?

thanks!

Very nice work, Marcus! Point your toes hard