Intro and prehab ?

Hey guys I'm new here.

I used to do gymnastics back when I was young. I never got into the male stuff because my gym didn't teach that. I did beam, floor, uneven bars and horse. Uneven bars were my favorite.

That being said, that was years ago, and I'm now 31 years old and can't do any of that stuff now. I do have a lot of experience body building. Of course, that has to do more with looks and less with actual usable strength and control.

I've also been on a break for about one and a half years. So I'm getting back into it with a gut. I've been doing P90 and Taebo to get my body back into shape. I usually do that before I switch to free weights. But this time I'm interested in going the gymnastics route. Ideally I'll get into shape again, and have more control and flexibility. If I get good enough with that I'd like to move towards doing free-running.

A friend of mine has the book, and I've been reading it over. I'm not that far into it, maybe pg 50 or so.

What I am worried about most is getting a prehab in order. From what I can gather the book doesn't go over it much. And there's no clear list that I can find on this forum for doing prehab to go along with the book's exercises.

I have been looking at Ido Portal's prehab stuff. Namely his wrist and ankle video. But I am curious what else I should be doing.

I know my wrists are tight, and weak. I also know I have had shoulder issues before with lifting.

Any help would be great.

As a side note, any one here make their own rings?

Agree that prehab is very important. Here's what I'm doing, but I'll let mods or other veterans jump in if they having something better.

(1) Prehab wrists, elbows, shoulders, back. Once per week for each joint.

(2) Intensity should be low. 25 reps, and at a difficulty where the last rep is at about 5-6 out of 10. Think discomfort, not failure.

(3) Joints should feel clean by the time you get back around to it next week. So if you're elbows are feeling any discomfort at the joint next week, you're going too hard.

(4) Because the joint work is going to be generally pretty easy, it might be tempting to up intensity too soon. Don't. Stay at the same intensity level for 12 weeks. At least. Don't up the intensity until it feels really easy, like 2-3 on a 10 scale, by the time you get to the last rep.

Wrists:

Put fist in a rice bucket, rotate 25x clockwise and counterclockwise. To increase intensity, use open palms instead of fists.

Put fist in rice bucket, keep fingers together, open and close fist 25x

Wrist pushups

Pronator/Supinator muscles, extend arm utnil fully straight. Hold a hammer in hand with the bottom of your hand at the bottom of the hammer, turn the hammer so the wood is vertical with the head closest to the floor. Now keeping arm extended and straight, rotate wrist 180 degrees. Do 25x. Change orientation of wrist and do them 180 degrees in the other direction. Choke up on hammer to less intensity. Get bigger hammer or big wrench to go hard.

Elbows:

Diamond pushups x 25. If you're like me, you'll have to modify them so they're *easy*. Do them on your knees. Want easier? Do them on a park bench or a table. You can even do them up against a wall at angle. I'm still at a point where I'm doing them standing at wall, but with only 50% range of motion, stopping when elbow is at 90 degrees

Shoulders and Back:

I'll let the more experienced guys talk about this. Still trying to figure out how to make Ido's routine at the righ intensity.

Thanks JManDetroit.

so only prehap each joint once a week then.

What would you call Ido's Video on wrist and ankles? Would that just be regular stretching? From what I gathered, I could have been reading it wrong, it was something that was done every day before a regular workout.

it was something that was done every day before a regular workout.

Depending on what you mean, I'm gonna defer to the vets on this one. In my experience, you're gonna have to listen to your body to find out. There are guys on the board who talk about doing MU transitions as warmups. If I did 3 MU transitions every day, assisted by a band giving me a 80 lb. boost, my elbows would be fried in a week.

I do prehab before every workout, but I don't do all 4 joints for each workout. One day shoulders, one day wrists, one day elbows, etc.

I could be wrong on this...but this is the first time I've sustained a 4 month period of training with no overuse and tendonitis. So if I should be doing it 2x per week per joint, I'm gonna have to get there gradually.

This is Ido's routine I'm talking about.

It's not really described enough for me to understand if this is daily or something else

http://idoportal.blogspot.com/2009/08/basic-training.html

The wrist routine is at Wrist Pushups

BY the looks of that site I am guessing I'm supposed to do A1 through A6. All in one day. From there I get lost, with the B1, C1 etc. Not sure if those are in one day as well, or seperate days, or variations. I think they are not variations as he says A5 either this or this, giving two possibilities for A5.

Any one have a clue as to how he intends for this routine to be done?

By the looks of the dates on the blog he hasn't touched the site in a year.

For ankle prehab, try this: http://gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=670&p=2468&hilit=ankle+tennis#p2468

found these

Shoulder prehab

Back pre/rehab