tuck planche for 60 secs?

[Guest marktb68]

First, I am very frustrated by my lack of progress.

With that being said, just recently Coach stated that one should not even attempt a tuck planche until the L-sit is mastered. This is the first I have heard of this "Requirement" since the beginning of Coach's postings. His original article that started it all says nothing about this. This bit of information, I feel, is imperative and shouldn't have been left out.

I would love to know the % of people who can do a 60 sec L-sit and for matter, a 60 second tuck planche. I've been practicing this movement for 4 years and still am nowhere close.

I am now thinking that these goals and exercises are for very advanced gymnasts who started at a very early age, and not for the 40 year old who still cannot master the beginning level despite being an advanced athlete.

Mark

[LJoll]

I don't think a 60 second L-sit is necessary, but you should be able to hold it comfortably for a few seconds at least. I don't think that not mentioning it leaving out a vital piece of information. The fact that you will be able to hold an L-sit before a proper tuck planche is just a common sense detail that follows from the fact that an L-sit is much easier than a tuck planche.

I have done no gymnastics and was not especially strong before I started, but now can do a good muscle up and am close to holding a solid front lever and advanced tuck planche. I feel the problems you are having are to do with effectively programming your training routine rather than his exercises being unrealistically targeted, which should be solved when coach sommer releases his books along with the WODs on the site.

[Coach Sommer]

I certainly understand your feelings of frustration. It has taken me many years and thousands upon thousands of hours in the gym to develop the effective method of physical preparation that I have been pleased to share in part through my many articles and now this website. I am glad that my first article has been eye opening for so many, however a complete system of Gymnastic Strength Training™ should not be construed from one article. If that were the case, then it would not have been necessary for me to take four years to write five books detailing my system!

Be patient for just a while longer. The first book is currently at the printer and will be available shortly.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Guest marktb68]

Coach,

Thanks for the reply. Its like walking thru the woods with blinders on to get to the treasure on the side and you keep losing your way.

Mark

[Blairbob]

Hello Mark, currently I can do a 60s L sit though the rest of my strength numbers are not very impressive. When I was a lot stronger, I don't think I ever trained to go past this benchmark, but I'm now shooting for 90s to 2m+ at some point ( slowly ).

I'm pretty hopeless at the tuck planche currently, but I can do a tuck front lever for pretty close to or 60s. I have not moved on to advanced tuck yet.

Right now I'm around a 1.75BW back squat, and pretty close to a 2BW DL. Currently I'm at 11 pullups, and 15-20 on pbar dips, maybe around 10 on rings. Pretty close to a MU except for the dip transition. HS on wall is give or take around a min like the L sit.

Then I'm again I'm 5' to 5'1, so I'm not nearly as tall as most people. I do have long limbs for my size, but those would be shorter than anyone past 5 and a half feet.

[chauinc]

I started doing the planche and the L seat at the same time, the most i've held the L seat for is 5 secs while i have held the tuck planche for 30secs a few times. I've been training for about a month now and my progress is pretty slow.

[Blairbob]

Chauinc, do you work the L sit as much as the tuck planche. Even when I got out of shape and working out as much, it was far easier to not lose as much of lower and mid body strength compared to my dip and pullup strength, thus even when my dips into 8-11 and pullups 5-7, I could still do an L sit for 30-45s.

Last time I was able to do the tuck planche in 3 reps for 60s

, I was around a 12-13 pullups and 20+ dips I think.

[Gregor]

1.I'm doing iron cross for 20 seconds and I can't do push to support.

2.Now i'm doing an iron cross for 40 seconds and still can't do push to support.

What's the problem???????

1.It is not all in the longnes or endurance. So If you are doing JUST endurance don't expect, that your power will go up (in some point yes, but there is a limit here).

2.In progressions muscles are doing some a little bit diffrent, harder and also OTHER muscles and one more problem is INTRA MUSCULAR COORDINATION, wich you can train just with the specific exercise.

3.the spotter or spotting is something werry important for advancement. With spotter you train the simulation of THE exercise. That is good for intra muscular coordination.

4.Train both: strenght and endurance, don't neglect either of them.

To eleborate my words:

When I was younger, I holded an iron cross for 10 second and done a lot of progresion, like kip to croos, swing to cross and homna to cross. But still I didn't done form cross to support and azarian. And then I holded an iron cross for 20 seconds and stil the same, no push to support and no azarian and that is 100° increas in endurance. That came later when with spotting and trying to do alone (endurance then vas just 25 seconds so just 25% increas of endurance).

[Blairbob]

Sounds like by training only the isometric portion of the strength hold you missed out on the ability to move through certain ranges of motion in the element, Gregor. This is where I think, dynamic moves come in to play since isometric holds only train strength in a small, finite range of motion (+/- 15 degrees if I remember correctly ).

Sounds like needing to set up a harness rig, bands, or have a spotter to help through that range of motion would have helped.

I was just talking the other day that someone stated that Coach Sommer's planche/lever progression seemed to have gaps. Many people end up inputting dynamic movements like pseudo planche pushups or push/pulls, planche lean and falls/walks for training these. Or they come up with straight frog stands/tuck planche with knees inside of elbows as intermediary steps or simply a pushup position that planches heavily to help bridge them between movements.

There is only so much I think Coach Sommer could originally put in those articles. Training the isometric holds is simple and easy to program versus the wide variety of drills he seems to have in his toolbox. Some of the stuff I have seen before or come up with, but some is very different from anything I've seen at other gyms or during what little strength clinics there are at Congress ( generally isn't too much ).

[Gregor]

Sounds like needing to set up a harness rig, bands, or have a spotter to help through that range of motion would have helped.

That's I'm talking about+all other things togheter. You must combine the exercises:with spotter full move, alone, endurance, progresions from easy to heavy.

[chauinc]

If anything i do more work on my L seat then my planche. I'll try the L seat again after my rest days and see where i'm at, i might just be fatigued. Also it might have to do with the kenjutsu (martial arts utilizing a katana) that my upper body is strong then my lower. I didn't do alot of lower body work before, it was mostly upper body. Also i'm pretty under weight as well I'm 5 foot 2 and only 95 pounds.

[Blairbob]

Kenjutsu in general will not develop your core/midline to the same degree as men's gymnastic apparatus or weightlifting. Sure it can do some great thing ( check some of the verts on some kenjutsu and iaijutsu/do sensei ), but it's just not as much load.

It will be more taxing through the shoulders, even though you shouldn't be muscling your kiriotoshi, kiriage, kesagiri, or dogiri suburi. Obviously more load if using shinken or suburito.

You might want to test your L sitting on a day different than planche. Planches and levers do stress the midline. Generally I do some sort of pulling movement and planche stuff one day. Another day is general body positions like V hang, L sit, handstand, pistol hold, releve hold, squat hold, etc

Getting back to working that midline or core in kenjutsu, fashion on some yoroi and you will definitely be working that midline much more! Too bad yoroi costs so much, A weight vest and weights on the thighs and shoulders can simulate it, especially if you have a heavy helmet like a kabuto.

Wow, you are fairly light built. Kenjutsu or iaijutsu will build decent strength in the legs and posterior chain, so it isn't lightweight in those regards, but again it just doesn't build the midline like rings moves or gymnastics/weightlifting.

[chauinc]

Wow you know way more about kenjutsu then i do hahaha, I usually only do the basic cuts these days now that my kenjutsu teacher went into a vegetative state a while back. I use a suburito bokken it has a pretty nice weight. When i do my kenjutsu work i usually go for repetitions and technique not so much for strength purposes. I also do some drawing practice every blue moon as well.

What are "pistol hold, releve hold, squat hold"? Yeah i'm pretty happy with the leg strength kenjutsu gave me, i was able to do pistols on my first try because of it. Though i'm still quite weak, i still can't Dead lift or bench my weight yet.

[Blairbob]

Pistol hold, are what I call it, is holding the bottom of the pistol for time. It's a good warmup drill. Releve hold is being up with straight legs on the forefoot like in dance ( think tip-toe ).

Kenjutsu is very good for leg strength, especially flexibility from tate hiza or seiza ( which is kind of something new if you consider the context of kenjutsu but that's neither here nor there ). Especially if you have to jump out of these positions. Jumping duckwalks anyone?

[Okami]

Neat!!

Do you guys belong to any specific ryu-ha?

[chauinc]

Pistol hold, are what I call it, is holding the bottom of the pistol for time. It's a good warmup drill. Releve hold is being up with straight legs on the forefoot like in dance ( think tip-toe ).

Kenjutsu is very good for leg strength, especially flexibility from tate hiza or seiza ( which is kind of something new if you consider the context of kenjutsu but that's neither here nor there ). Especially if you have to jump out of these positions. Jumping duckwalks anyone?

Now that you mention it kenjutsu did give me quite good leg strength, at one point i was able to dive roll over a height of my head. Is ryu-ha the school? If so i don't remember the kenjutsu school but the ninjutsu school i was at was called bujinkan. The grandmaster before the current one was pretty wicked, he was able to tear bark off trees with him bare hands.

Edit: This is the guy i was talking about

http://www.bloomingtonbujinkan.com/takamatsu.html

It was actually the teacher of the current grandmaster, the current on is the founder of the school.

Here is another little blurb on how he became so powerful aswell

http://www.yotsumedojo.com/Bujinkan%20Yotsume%20Dojo/bujinkan.htm

Also sorry for directing the thread to martial arts

[Okami]

Yes, a ryu-ha is an organized tradition/school. Possibly Kukishinden Ryu Biken no ho. You most likely developed the leg strength from the low kamae . Cool! I apologize for the thread-jacking

[glwanabe]

At 46 yrs of age I'm trying to do these static moves. I can not do a proper tuck planche, but my time in the frog is getting better. I have now broken my workouts into two different days of work.

One day I stress push type moves. Frogs, pseudo planche pushups, rings pushup type moves, flyes on rings, dips, dumbell side laterals, L-sits

The next day I stress pull type moves. Leg raises to 90' and to bar overhead, levers, chins of various grips from medium wide to shoulderwidth, including some underhand.

I do a little for legs on both days, mainly squats of med weight high reps.

My strength is getting better every week. I can do moves now I could not do a month ago. For moves I can't do, I just work on dynamic moves to build the strength.

As an example, I get up on my dip bars and get into as good a tuck planche as I can. It is nowhere near a real tuck move, but it does stress the muscles and make them work. Not quite the same as the "Germans" that Coach documented, but along those lines.

The last couple of months of doing this training has been the most rewarding training I've done, ever. That includes my time in the Military.

[Coach Sommer]

The last couple of months of doing this training has been the most rewarding training I've done, ever. That includes my time in the Military.

That means a great deal to me. Thank you.

I certainly understand how you feel. My first gymnastics experience came watching the 1972 Olympics (at 9 years old, in the middle of the night, in the dark except for the flickering bluish light of our old floor console television, with the rest of the house asleep - I couldn't get enough!) and wondering who those Japanese supermen were and how did they do such amazing things. A few years later I walked into my first gymnastics gym and have basically never left. Now over three decades have passed and I have still never found anything else nearly as challenging, rewarding or productive. My fascination with gymnastics has continued unabated to this very day.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[glwanabe]

The last couple of months of doing this training has been the most rewarding training I've done, ever. That includes my time in the Military.

That means a great deal to me. Thank you.

It's my pleasure to say so.

There is another aspect of this that makes it rewardig for me. My youngest daughter is working with me. Since this is mainly bodyweight moves we can take turns on the lat tower, or the rings. I do have some light dumbells that she uses for a few moves, but for the most part it is the rings and high bar.

She really enjoys doing supine rows, and I spot her doing chins. She can't hold herself up in the rings or do a dip as of yet. A few more weeks of basic strength moves and I think she will be able to do some ring pushups off the floor.

She can hold a leg raise at parallel for about 5 seconds, I have her doing sets for a total of about 30 seconds. All of her sets are done just till she starts to feel a little tired.

[Blairbob]

That's a very cool story, GLwanabe. Maybe have her work some skin the cats, she'll enjoy them if she doesn't already do them. I used to have skin the cat contests with my boys to see who could hit the most reps.

[Ortprod]

Wow, I haven't heard those phrases for about 2.5 years now. Bringing back memories of sweating in a heavy hakama and almost losing my sword while cutting, lol. Once, in my iaido class, a guy used a sword after thoroughly cleaning it but he didn't put the menuki/mekugi back properly. The blade FLEW OUT and stabbed into the floor. :shock:

Blair, you definitely know your vocab!

Sorry to fall off subject.

[Blairbob]

Wow, freaky. There was a time we swore our friend nearly lost it in a do giri when we were standing about 15 feet towards the end of his cut. Very scary when working the camera.

I've heard about bad mekugi accidents impaling people. Yikes.

Heavy gi always made me sweat but a nice cotton lightweight hakama is a pleasure to work in. Even for gymnastics ( halloween ). Just tie it rice paddy style when you need to tumble.

Getting back to the conversation, I recently got my MU back and I'm pretty sure I can do a 60s+ L sit. I can do a single leg front lever and hold a high front lever under 30 degrees above horizontal for 1second+ maybe. Tuck planche is still a bit far off though. Tuck planche is 15-20s, but it might be a bit lower than horizontal and rounded.

[chauinc]

Wow quite a lot of people here took martial arts.

i tested my Lseat and tuck planche today after my 2 days rest. I got 10 seconds for the L seat and 25 seconds for the tuck planche.