FL/PE5 plateau

Hey, I am just wondering if anyone can give me a sense of how long it should take a decent, committed athlete to move through this progression. Before finding GB, I made Regionals a few times in CrossFit, so I have a bit of an athletic base. I just bought the Handstand Series (exciting!), but have been working on the Foundations and Stretch Series pretty faithfully, week by week, for 18 months now, and am learning to love and embrace the struggle. That said, I have been working on FL/PE5 for months now and keep getting stuck on 4x60s. I'm very conscious to keep my lower back connected to the ground and my shoulders elevated. 

Two questions:

1. Should I be doing some sort of warm up to activate my core properly and increase the likelihood of success?

2. Should I be doing anything else to supplement my desire to build a front lever? I figure doing more core work would limit progress.

Thanks!

hey Chantelle, for the front lever you have to consider some point:

-the stronger are the hips flexor the more your abs must fight against them in order to keep the lower back on the floor. the stronger the abs the easier the exercise. so keep your psoas stretched and try to stretch it a bit before the FL work.

-if you have tight medium and lower trap plus tight erector spinae you will have to make a very great effort to bend your spine on the hollow body position.

Can you check please these 2 factors first?

You bet. Thanks for the tips.

Oh wow, tight hip flexors... yes, that's me, big time. I've been busting on extra core work thinking that was the weakness in my hollow position holds, but now I'm going to add in more hip stretches.

Thanks Alessandro!

And Chantelle, thanks for asking the question.