Straddle/Full Lay FSP-Training and Maintenance Hold Times

This is more of a question for Coach and Dillon, but others should feel free to chime in

First I'd like to thank Coach Sommers and the amazing members of this wonderful community for getting me to where I am today. About a year ago, my FSP hold times were:

FL flat tuck - about 10 seconds

BL flat tuck - about 10 seconds

Lsit PB low - about 20 seconds

Manna - non existent

PL - frog stand about 40 seconds

Straddle L pb bent - about 20 seconds

With no specific training in full lay positions and only training flat tuck levers, I somehow managed to be able to hold full lays for 10+ seconds. And I am still training flat tuck levers until I get to 60 seconds in one set. It just shows that steady state indeed does WORK, and you do not need to move to the next progression to get the progression after that.

Now they are:

FL - full lay - about 10+ seconds ( have to retest)

BL - full lay - about 10+ seconds (have to retest)

Lsit hands flat on floor - about 35 seconds (have to retest)

Manna - non existent, haven't started

PL - working on tucked for 20 second working sets (haven't tested max in a long time). Straddle PL - 2 seconds

Straddle L pb bent - about 40 seconds ( have to retest)

I can feel myself getting stronger day by day, and I just recently accomplished full 360 pulls with no momentum!

So now I would like to start training FL and BL in straddle positions since I'm pretty sure my flat tucks are now at 60 seconds (or should I skip straddle because my full lays are over 10 seconds?) . If I were to do that, how long should I be training straddle ? I 've seen posts saying that we should only train for 15 seconds. Is that training for 15 seconds or is that the maintenance hold after we have gotten the full lay?

So my two questions are:

1) What is the calculation for training times for straddle and full lay? ie: SSC for tuck is max time / 2 with max time being less than 60 seconds. And then do that number of sets to hit 60 seconds total. So in the straddle case, what is the max time we are looking for? Do we divide this time by 2? And what is the aggregated time of all the sets?

2) When does training front lever and back lever in the FSP turn into just a maintenance hold? Is it after hitting 15 second solid full lay? And if so, do we just hold the full lay for 15 seconds in the warmup and we are done?

Thanks,

Erich

Unfortunately I do not have answers to your questions but just wanted to congratulate you on your awesome progress.

15-20s is what you want to shoot for in the straddle, 1/2 lay, and lay positions. Once obtained, 1 set can be done as maintenance and then working the next progression. Should you hit the lay position, it would probably be a good idea to keep doing 2-4 per warmup as maitenance. You could also do 1 set and then work an exercise that requires the position to move through a plane of motion. For front lever, say front lever pulls, back lever>reverse cranks, planche>tuck PL pushups.

Were you able to do a full 360 pull in lay/straight body position.

Your results are possible.

I would just take a week to retest everything after your cycle is done. Be thorough. These weeks are actually harder than they would seem as they sap your CNS.

You shouldnt skip any of the positions

So Blairbob, you mention

Once obtained, 1 set can be done as maintenance and then working the next progression. Should you hit the lay position, it would probably be a good idea to keep doing 2-4 per warmup as maitenance.

How long should that maintenace hold be? I would like this to be a "warmup" FSP so I would imagine that I wouldn't want to wear myself out doing a 15 second hold in the warmup. Do I do 2-4 sets of 7 second holds (half of 15)?

And then for training times, say I only have a 10 second full lay front lever, what would my training time be? 5 seconds for 12 sets? That seems a bit ridiculous right?

Element, are you referring to me skipping the half lay? I have found that half lay and straddle are of equal difficulty for me.

Oh and yes, 360 full lay straight body from german to hang

Oh and yes, 360 full lay straight body from german to hang

10s is too short, need 15-20s.

4 sets of 7 or work an embedded FSP/FBE. Something like pull to FL, hold for 7, pull to invert.

So my two questions are:

1) What is the calculation for training times for straddle and full lay? ie: SSC for tuck is max time / 2 with max time being less than 60 seconds. And then do that number of sets to hit 60 seconds total. So in the straddle case, what is the max time we are looking for? Do we divide this time by 2? And what is the aggregated time of all the sets?

2) When does training front lever and back lever in the FSP turn into just a maintenance hold? Is it after hitting 15 second solid full lay? And if so, do we just hold the full lay for 15 seconds in the warmup and we are done?

For maintenence you should just cut the volume of work to about 1x a week and do a couple holds.

The crossover you'll get from other pulling work substituted in will help maintain any hold you wanted.

There's no reason to go back to straddle front lever to maintain a full FL hold unless you wanted to make it even stronger by starting to add weight or work one arm front lever.

Blair,

5-6s is not really too short. You just cut total volume to about 40-45s instead (so maybe 8 sets) and consider it like an 8x3 set of strength work which is not out of the ordinary. Other exercises will help pick up the slack (if any is needed at all), and hold times should increase week by week if the quality of work to force adaptations is good enough.

However, this is a moot point given the above explanation of maintaining strength.

Steve, I tried the 6 holds of 5-6s and noticed it burnt myself and I think it may have burnt out some of my guys, especially when such holds are on the higher levels of intensity.

Again, this is sticking to the SSC protocol for FSP's, hence if you do 15-20s holds as worksets when you can actually hold 20-30+ seconds, you never get burnt out. I really have appreciated this on my current program now as even when I haven't ate or slept enough I can get through.

However, now my eating and sleeping habits are a lot better due to the fact I'm making more money and eating better. I'm trying to hit 150-200g of protein a day and my stress levels are way lower, etc.

Working at that high intensity just burned me out besides my elbow always being irritated. Now, I simply release it with some mobility work and can work out and it's all good.

Yeah, that's 5-6s with 10s max hold so not full intensity

Ahh, hence my folly.

Alright, I have a question on something I can't make my mind up on based on maintenance hold stuff. Currently, I have a 10sec or so full BL. I don't care to extend that hold; however, I do want to be able to pull out of german hang with straight body, which i can't do now. What should I do in my warm up in regards to BL with this in mind?

-Justin

Perhaps 1-2 reps of each prior progression as a warmup. I played around with this and liked it.

Hmm what I did to achieve GH pull to invert was tucked pull out to invert, to flat tuck, to one leg, to straddle then to partial ROM from back lever straight up to invert or partial rom gh to bl.

Erich, did you implement that within your FSP or did you do that separately? I currently do the WODs and so there is some GH pull to invert work but it doesn't seem to be frequent enough. Thanks for you help by the way.

I just did it every once in a while. Never trained it specifically. Eventually I just did it one day.