Yuri's Training log

haha either be a specialist or an elite gymnast

anyway, I got some work ahead of me. Back to the basics it is

New video featuring training clips from the last couple months and a little bit of editing

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Supernice!

how long have you´ve been training?

Wow, Yuri. You have so many great places to train at.

Loved that split legged back flip (?) at about 1:38. That's really smooth!

thanks patrick

cdx said:

Supernice!

how long have you´ve been training?

messing around maybe 6 years

but the latter two of those years actually training more seriously while knowing what I'm doing(somewhat to a degree)

Dude, how you divide your time between tumbling, stregth work and balance work? :?

Mikael said:

Dude, how you divide your time between tumbling, stregth work and balance work? :?

it's hard but I try my best. Right now I am really trying to get back to basics with my tumbling and fix the mistakes and bad habits I've learned

I do handstands at least 6 days a week, usually in the early afternoon, and in the evening after work I'll do some strength

I go to open gym twice a week at two different gyms where I'll work tumbling and strength

so basically: handstands every day, strength a few days a week, tumbling a couple days a week

Wow nice! Thanks for the reply... I'm doing free handstand right now (I'm just starting) and I've a max of 15-20 seconds in good straight line right now. You have any tip for who's starting, like how many work time per day, how many time add every month, these kind of thing? One of my goals in the future (really far away haha) is get the one arm handstand. And about planche, you train this with your hand balancing or with your strenght training, or depend?

Good Question.

I don't consider planche hand balancing so I stick it with my strength training. Even handstand pushups I still rarely train during a balance session.

As far as getting better at handstands goes, it's all about accumulation of hours. The more time you spend on your hands the better. Obviously you have to work around your limitations and increase volume only when your body is ready to handle it. Make sure to take care of your wrists as you increase handstand training volume.

I don't think of it as an exact science. It's more of a journey of self exploration. The most important thing is to be persistent. Keep training; hand balance progresses slowly but is easy to lose from lack of training. Enjoy your good days and put up with your shit days

Thanks again for the reply. I just have another question, about the hand balancing (handstands, elbow levers, etc), you think is better do it in a separate session of the strength training or it can vary of person to person?

It definitely varies. My handstand practices can be pretty long so I try to focus more on the technical aspects of the balance.

If you are only doing handstands for 20 minutes or so I'm sure you have plenty of energy left to do some strength work. I usually like to end my handstand session with a bit of pulling, to counter all the pushing I just performed.

When I end up paying for a 3-hour open gym session, I pretty much work everything, warming up with handstands, jumping, and ending with various strength. It all depends on your work capacity.

Just remember that handstands are a skill so it's best to be as fresh as possible when training them.

I want to be you when I grow up, Yuri. Awesome video. You get a lot of height on your tumbling as well!

Hey Yuri, what exercise did you used to open your shoulders in your handstand? Did you simply tried open them while maintain the balance or you did a specific exercice for that?

haha both. Bridges and basic shoulder and lat stretches will help( i actually should be doing more of those) but ultimately handstands require active flexibility.

I usually do a shoulder traction series with the jump stretch band before I do handstands to help open up my shoulders but there are lots of those you can do to help it out.

One drill I like that Yuval showed me a while ago is to stand with your back completely flat against a wall. now while maintaining the flat back raise your arms until they are overhead as far as they will go. In the beginning you ccan scoot your feet out a bit from the wall to help keep flat

Also remember that the balance is going to feel different with more open shoulders. The more you open the more you will have to flatten your back and get straighter.

But yes, consciously trying to open your shoulders will be a big help as well

Dude, thanks a lot , will really help!

Hey Yuri, I'm thinking about cut some things of my training like l-sit, back lever and even flag, because I want focus on handstand and planche, but also I think that I'll maintain the front lever along with these two. You think that's a good "trinity"? I want do this because if I training these three they can irradiate to other easier things. What do you think? What do you most train in matter of statics, besides hs and planche?

Interesting thought. Really you shouldn't have to slack on your strength because handbalancing is skill work. Ultimately, handstands should take very little strength and effort to hold; of course to get to that level is a different story.

I am naturally strong in back lever so I never really worked it much, I include it in my strength sets on rings and that's about it. I should be doing planche more now than I am, but lack of access to pbars makes me a bit lazy in it. Same with MSH or advanced L, which I would pair with planche for balance.

I need to go to home depot and make some paralettes.

I try to work front levers pretty frequently because I am so weak at them. I've also been doing rope climb a couple times a week in more recent times.

yuri said:

I am naturally strong in back lever so I never really worked it much, I include it in my strength sets on rings and that's about it.

Oh boy, I don't thought about that! I'll pair the easier statics with the push/pull elements! This way I'll let more time for the hard ones like planche and handbalacing things. 8)

Moreover, what kind of ring sets you doing? Basic Ring Strenght 3, this kind of thing?

A typical set will look something like this:

Wide arm muscle up, L-sit, press HS(either straight arm straddle press attempt or bent arm pike press without feet touching straps), hold HS for a while, slowly lower to shoulder stand, slow negative reverse muscle up, back lever, front lever couple times, several pullups

I vary it but that's a typical set for me. Sometimes i go HS, lower to bent arm maltese, lower to back lever instead of reverse muscle-up

me goofing around on the rings at the end of a gym session a couple weeks ago

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Phew! How you feeling after that reverse meathook rolldown pull to meathook then hanging one arm split thingy? I think even the cameraman was a bit winded after that.

feels fine once you get used to it. I'm still muscling the movement though, would like it to flow better

but not too bad considering I just play around with this once in a while

Improving my shoulder internal rotation helped a lot with the one arm flag

wow really nice, keep it up man. hope you land cirque one day.

OK, time to start updating this thing again

Apologies for the lapse to those who kept track.

Saturday, june 9:

work during the day, open gym at night

During open gym I worked some basic tumbling, capoeira movements, and strength on rings.

Rings work included a few one arm sets of flag and meathook, several sets of handstand with feet off the straps before doing some serious work in reverse MU. I was inspired by coach's video of Dillon(also it reminded that I can put my feet on the straps) and after doing a bunch of slow negatives and half curls with feet off the straps decided to try it from the inverted hang.

Success, and I was able to do reverse MU consistently though it was a bit ugly and I used my feet on the straps quite a bit. Still not bad for never really trying it from the bottom

Another interesting experience tonight, I actually crashed a standing backtuck for the first time in many years. I was teaching my friend how to spot and had him spot me on some lazy tucks. Normally, I am very good at being able to pinpoint and demonstrate every possible mistake in the tuck. After being spotted on a few, I went and tried to purposely do a bad one.

Being self taught, I had never really been spotted on anything before so I never realized how lazy it makes you. No wonder cheerleaders crash them after getting spotted all the time. Now I have to completely rethink the way I teach standing tucks, probably will be a more strength based approach.

Right now I focus more on proper jumping mechanics and power development to create the necessary rotation, but I will have to tinker and play with the whole system, especially how much and when to spot.

For me, this gives my teaching style of spotting as little as possible more validity while further discrediting the style of some off my peers who spot everything all the time. I agree it has it's place, but after experiencing today what spotting does to someone pretty conditioned like me, I can only imagine how much the effect would increase for others who are not as strong.

Of course I have other reasons for spotting as much(little) as I do compared to my coworkers at the gyms I'm at, but that is a topic for another day.

It's late and I should end this rant.

Expect more posts on this log though, for those who follow it

You taught yourself how to backflip? MORE ON THIS!