Program revision : warmup and prehabilitation

[Joshua Naterman]

Every day(At least every workout day):

Full body mobility

wrist pre-hab (you called this wrist prep) 1 set 10-20 reps

Shoulder pre-hab (all basic shrugs, 1 set, perfect form only; basic scapular isometrics, wall slides(wall extention))

Rice bucket

Hip Extension

General stretching, especially active flexiility. That should be a part of your warm up, and the most important stretches(Pike, straddle pike, and bridge) should be repeated for much longer right after the workout. Of course, that's for maimum improvement. You may not have the time for that. IF time is an issue I'd suggest starting with pike, then when you have a great pike work on straddle pike while maintaining your basic pike. Maintenance is easy. The best way I have found, which is working quite rapidly for me, is to use standing single leg pike stretch followed by weighted pike stretches followed by supine active flexibility. This should take about 15 minutes, and is just for the pike. I have not started working on straddle pike and the only thing I have on my list for that stretch is standing weighted straddle pike. I am sure there's more, but I haven't put thought towards that yet.

Every workout day:

FSP

PB Support

XR support, start following the elbow prep for Iron Cross progression

Planche leans 60s one hold, move hands back slightly every 6-8 weeks. I prefer one hold with fingers back followed by one hold fingers forward, but that is a personal preference designed to build bicep tendon strength and to lengthen the wrist flexors. That's why the order is what it is.

2-3 times per week:

Cuban presses

Bent-knee abducted external rotator work

supraspinatus work

Bridge Wall Walks (You CAN do this more if it is a priority)

Once every 7-12 days (If you look at the WODs, this is how these get spread out):XR handstand time block (10 minutes work time)

Wall Handstand 10 minute time block (Short blocks like 3-5 minutes could be used more often)

HS Wall Runs

*****The above should really happen once a month each, seoarated more or less evenly. If you pay attention to the WODs, that's how they end up being. Don't screw with that, these are all very tough on the shoulder girdle and doing them more often will lead to at least a temporary drop in performance until your body adapts. It takes a LOT of time to build your work capacity to where you could do each of these once a week.*****

I don't know:

Shoulder stands - I DO know that extended time here is extremely good for building the ability to do a full ROM HSPU. You should do isometric holds here first, and then on PB try to stretch here. It is tough, but I can do it for about 45s right now. I am not spending time on much shoulder girdle work until I complete my rehab work. It is going quite well!

There is ankle, knee, shoulder, and elbow prep along with some additional wrist conditioning that you should do once per week too, but you'll have to get to the seminar or wait for Liquid Steel™ to learn that.

I will tell you this for now: One day a week of EXTREMELY HIGH REPS for each joint, I'm talking like 30-100+ reps, will significantly help your tendons and joints. Obviously, you will need very low resistance. For many, bodyweight is enough. That is basic knowledge, so I don't feel bad giving that out. Specific work, well... I can't share what Coach has shared. Still, this is enough to give you a fantastic base!

[Joshua Naterman]

Wow! Thanks a lot Slizzard, talk about being helpful!

Shoulderstand: I can push from bottom up to 3" below the top of my head and got my HeSPU up to 1" elevated, so I only have a 2" sticking point preventing me from doing full ROM HSPU. Maybe I should do holds in that range instead of SS?

Bent-knee abducted external rotator work, do you mean like fire hydrants?

High-rep day: On the last workout of the week (2 consecutive days of rest afterwards) after the strength work or in a second session, would that be ok?

Can't wait for liquid steel™...actually I wouldn't have minded it coming sooner then the other books

On the shoulderstand, I'd probaby do both. Don't bother with the static at your sticking point if you can't hold it for 10 seconds at least. Lower down a inch or two and then hold.

You don't need to do a ton of those either, just 2 holds a day 3-4 days a week is plenty, and perhaps too much at first. Just make sure you abandon ship safely as soon as you lose position, even if it's by 1 cm. If you start doing slow negatives you'll be doing a ton of damage and will need a lot of recovery. True isometrics done properly require almost no recovery.

External rotators: Sit on the ground, right leg in front of you. Put your right elbow on your right knee, so that your elbow is 2-3 inches lower than the center of your shoulder. Now take 4 seconds to go down as far as possible, and then raise up a bit faster, around 2 seconds to lift all the way to vertical. Repeat for reps! You want to be doing at least 5-6 reps per set here, and stay with the same weight until you can do 8 reps. Go up by percentages, not more than 5% at any one time. Make sure you can repeat the performance for a few workouts before you up the weight. Rotators benefit from strength work but they seem to benefit the most from a cautious approach. There really isn't any maximum limit here, though practically speaking you'll probably never go past 40 lbs.

Posture is super important! The scapula should be retracted and depressed for the entire movement. There will probably be some slight movement at the bottom, but not much.

I believe liquid steel™ is the lext book to come out, but I don't know that for sure. We'll know when it's announced!

[James Portillo]

Very useful info, thanks slizzard. Been looking for a good list of prehab/rehab/mobility exercises to do as part of my warmup.

To be honest, the few that I do already take up a lot of time when added to my workouts. (My workouts on average range from 1hr45min to 2hrs and sometimes more , and I feel like that's too long =/)

Question about the cuban press.. I've seen a video on how to do it but I'm still not sure if it's the proper way.. and I'm unsure as to what weight to start out with--I know it should be relatively low but I don't want to go too low or high, you know?

[Joshua Naterman]

THe weigth should be whatever you can do correctly for at least 4-5 reps.

The strictest explanation of form is that you start at an arm hang with retracted and depressed scapulae. Then you pull the upper arms to parallel with the ground, and rotate the arms so that your forearms and the bar rise in a semicircle from your chest to eye level. At eye level, you start pressing up and finish the rotation. On the way down, you keep forearms vertical until the bar is at eye level and upper arms are parallel with the ground. Then you rotate the arms so that the bar and your forearms pass in a semicircle all the way to your chest,and then you lower. That's one rep.

It should take you 2-5 seconds for each half of each rep.

[Josh Schmitter]

Resurrection of old posts indeed. There are way too many repeat posts on here as it is...so let me preface this by encouraging replying on an old post instead of starting a new one. It does get moved to the front page regardless as far as I know.

I just had a question about adding in prehab exercises. Currently I have just reached the point where I'm doing 3x_seconds of the beginner FSPs(Plank, Rev. Plnk, Hollow, Arch, Dead hang, PB sup.) along with Ido's shoulder stuff x2 a week and the wrist prep every workout day. I am finally comfortable with this, but feel like adding much more in the actual workout would burn me out. I'm aware certain prehab exercises are paired intentionally(I.e. handstand day/wrist pushups...hip extensions after leg day), but if I were to add some wall slides or hip ext...would it be just as beneficial to do this early or later in the day, or to stick them in the workout, cutting the reps(i.e. just do 5 reps instead of 10). I'm slowly adding more stuff in, just checking in on anyone else's experience. Thanks in advance.