Wrist preps

I've been doing these on my own for a while now. It's probably good to give it all a sanity check whether or not i'm repeating/reinforcing bad habits.

Wrist push up: I'm at 4x2r right now, but combined the first two sets into 1 while I feel the freshest. I realize there's still too much momentum in the push up. Should I go back to the kneeling version?

First knuckle push up: anything to improve?

Wrist rock: ROM ok? Is there too much movement in the hip when the wrists are rocking forward?

Kneeling FTP: hopefully i corrected the cupping hands here. good enough to move on?

Thanks so much!

Hi coaches, please let me know what you think. Thanks!

@Alessandro Mainente @Everett Carroll @Leo Trinidad

Hey Jin,

-wrist push up, independently on the variation, the slower it is the rep the better it is.

-FKP: keep the resting part of the fingers ALWAYS STRAIGHT. 

-WRISTS ROCK , nice range of motion, again do it slower. the returning in the starting position should come from wrist flexion and extension rather than shoulders. try to push against the floor!

-FTP: nice work here.

35 minutes ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

Hey Jin,

-wrist push up, independently on the variation, the slower it is the rep the better it is.

-FKP: keep the resting part of the fingers ALWAYS STRAIGHT. 

-WRISTS ROCK , nice range of motion, again do it slower. the returning in the starting position should come from wrist flexion and extension rather than shoulders. try to push against the floor!

-FTP: nice work here.

Thank you, coach

I've just started doing these movements on the floor without the push up and it's hard to imagine doing them with the push up, so thanks for sharing your videos Jin Liu. I love to see the progress of athletes ahead of me in the programming to inspire me to keep going. They will get easier as we get stronger.

1 hour ago, Jennifer Marie said:

I've just started doing these movements on the floor without the push up and it's hard to imagine doing them with the push up, so thanks for sharing your videos Jin Liu. I love to see the progress of athletes ahead of me in the programming to inspire me to keep going. They will get easier as we get stronger.

They will get easier. When I just started, I couldn't imagine doing them with a full push-up. But here I am today. Still not fully there yet but I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Hard work always pays off. Just gotta be extra patient with the joints

Thought I could progress the finger tip push up from being on my knees to be on my toes. Man I'm wrong. Can't push out 1, maybe a half with the help of my thumbs. Darn it! Here are my thoughts:

- Did I miss anything in the previous PE?

- Should I increase the number of reps for the previous PE to maybe 10 or 20 in a roll in order to develop enough strength for the full finger push up?

- Should I practice the negatives? Meaning in a full plank position on my finger tips, then lower my palms as slow as I can, like those 10s negatives. 

What do you think coaches? Any thoughts or ideas will be greatly appreciated!

@Alessandro Mainente @Everett Carroll @Leo Trinidad @Jeffrey Bittner

hey Jin instead of increasing the reps you are welcome to act on the tempo. slower eccentric and concentric.

I've been stuck on the transition from kneeling to full on FTP, FKP and WP for months now! As with @Jin Liu I was surprised that despite being able to do the kneeling versions 'well' I couldn't do any full FTP and FKP, and only a couple of WP (with the help of body momentum).

In a separate thread I was also advised to take the kneeling versions more slowly--just as @Alessandro Mainente has suggested here--and that is really helping. I still haven't moved on to the full versions, but I can feel the strength building.

Anyway, the reason for my comment is that having spent a lot of time at this particular coalface I've noticed a few things about these exercises as a result of slowing them down, which I thought might be useful for @Jin Liu as well. Here they are:

* It's worth moving the hands so that they get closer to alignment with the shoulders. I've had plenty of occasions where I felt I'd mastered everything, and thought 'surely now I can do the full version', but the full version still didn't come. I found if I moved my hands closer to my shoulders even by just an inch, it was back to being tough. I see in @Jin Liu 's FTP video that there's a bit of an angle between where the hands are and the shoulders, so it might be worth a try to move the hands back towards you a little. Now that I've realised this it kind of makes sense--you'll put more and more weight on your hands as you get the arms closer to a right angle.

* By taking the FTP and FKP exercises in particular really slowly you start to feel the transition of the body's weight off the heel of the palm to the fingers or finger tips. I found that if I used even a little bit of body momentum I wouldn't get that moment of transition. When I try the 'full' versions I can feel that this is what I'm lacking--the ability to get off the heels of the palms and onto the fingers or finger tips.

* By slowing it down you also notice that you can cheat if you're not symmetrical with your movements! I found that as things got more difficult I would ever so slightly have a lag between one hand and the other; one hand would take the body weight whilst the other 'transitions', and then once that hand is in place the other would 'transition'. It was very subtle and it happens really quickly, so it took me a while to notice--definitely easier to see when you really slow things down. But the good thing is that now I know, I really pay attention to being symmetrical, and again, it puts more pressure on the fingers, finger tips, etc.

I still can't do the full versions, but I can really feel the strength building now that I'm being much slower on the kneeling versions.

All the best!

Mark

Thanks so much @Mark Birbeck! It makes sense to me. I also had the same observation regarding hands out in an angle in the kneeling FTP. I'll keep bringing them closer to my shoulders. One more point regarding the finger strength is that my fingers are not used to holding me in a full plank position. They may have gotten used to the kneeling plank, but they still need to adapt to holding more weight. So I will practice the kneeling FTP with a much slower tempo, and I think it'd also be helpful to just hold the plank on my finger tips. 

Another question: do people have a referred surface for FTP? What I found with transitioning from kneeling FKP to full FKP is that the hard floor is much better for full FKP even though I practiced kneeling FKP on a soft mat. The hard floor provides more support, which helps stabilize the hand at the top of the push-up. I'm wondering if it's the case for full FTP. I'd love to hear from people who have experience. But either way, I'm going to try the finger tip plank on a hard floor.

@Jin Liu, a while ago (many months), some of the coaches, maybe it was Everett, but I am not sure, wrote that he went back from the full plank wrist exercises to kneeling ones and doing them slowly. I thought, well, if he can do it, I will do that too :-) so I backed off to my knees and doing them really slowly. What a completely different experience. So I thought, why to rush to the plank and jerk my movement, if I can stay on my knees, go slow, and give my wrists and ligaments time to develop. I do the HS and Foundation both twice a week, plus my pole, so it is a lot of work on/with my hands and wrists… I am still doing the wrist exercises on my knees and just taking the time and doing them nicely slowly. You may enjoy the slowness too :-) 

@Suzanna McGee I think I know who you are talking about :). I believe it's Alessandro who said that he had yet to see anyone doing the WP without any momentum at all, and he was still doing the kneeling WP with no momentum. I remember cuz it kept coming back to my mind when I do the WP with momentum. Felt like I was cheating :). I will do more of the slow kneeling push-ups.