Maltese Cross without rings

I'm in a sort of awkward situation where I don't have access to rings on a regular basis. Just checking for some ideas and suggestions for working on a Maltese Cross without rings.

What I Have:

A solid planche on the rings (8-12 sec; <5 sec weighted at ankles)

An almost-solid Iron Cross and Inverted Iron Cross (~5-10 second hold on Iron Cross, but it's a bit high; <5 second hold on Inverted, but again, it's a bit high)

Handstand and other basic ring strength is all there.

A fancy gym with all sorts of free weights and weight machines.

Parallettes/Parallel Bars, High Bar, plenty of floor space.

What I don't have:

Maltese Cross

Front Lever (don't laugh! It's a work in progress)

Rings

What I want:

Exercises and tips that don't utilize the rings, but will still help me gain and maintain strength for a Maltese Cross.

What I've tried:

Straight arm dumbbell flyes. These are sort of like your typical dumbbell fly, except I keep my elbows 100% locked out.

Maltese dumbbell flyes. Basically the same thing as the straight arm dumbbell flyes, except I bring my arms down lower so they are in more of a maltese position.

Wide arm planches on parallettes. I usually take my parallettes and place them further apart, and slightly angled so they mimick the position of a maltese. I found that my 10 second planche turns into a 1/2 second planche when I do this. By placing the parallettes slightly closer together, I find that it makes it a bit easier.

Weighted Planches on the parallettes. I feel that since my Planche is already fairly strong, these won't help too much. But since I don't have much to do otherwise, I still work on them since there's not too many other options.

After 9 months of trying the stuff I have listed, my "Maltese Cross" definitely feels stronger, but it's not quite there yet. What I'm doing now is trying to get as much use out of the rings while I can, since in less than 2 months I'll be back to not having rings. I'll probably be able to hop on the rings a total of 5 times over the course of 9 months, but these will be during competitions. Any pointers from more experienced people? Things that I'm doing that wont help or things that will help that I don't have?

Why cant you buy or find rings? You could even make some with pvc pipe in a real squeeze

Anyways, not to sound mean or anything, but could you put up a video of your planche? It just seems crazy to be able to do a planche with the hollow but lack the strength for a front lever.

As for the maltese, if you truly have a good planche, check out the vid that coach uploaded on the maltese presses. im sure you could bend your legs to make the move easier

it would probably be best to just buy some rings, especially if you want to learn ring specific movements. if you're short on cash and can only buy on a budget, there's a set on amazon for $45.

if you check ebay, you can also bid on wooden rings that cost about $50-60 including shipping.

the homemade pvc rings will work, but the openings at the top can be uncomfortable on your forearms. so i'd recommend wrapping it in tape.

if you have access to woodworking tools, here's a great guide http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Woo ... fit-rings/

good luck man.

Hey thanks for the quick reply guys.

igm503 said:

Why cant you buy or find rings? You could even make some with pvc pipe in a real squeeze

gravy said:

-entire post-

I actually do have easy access to rings 3/12 months of the year. You'll see in my following videos that I have them mounted in the supports in the ceiling above me. The other 9/12 months in the year, I'm off at college. Nowhere to mount them in my apartment. The very few trees on my apartment's property are too small and flimsy, or too tall to support me. The trees nearby that are decent are usually in the lawns of frat houses and... well... I don't really want to tread into their territory. Not allowed to use them at our campus gym, so the only place I would be able to use them is a tree on campus. It would be kind of hard in the winter, though. Our gymnastics club at school does have rings, but last year, literally on the first day we set them up, they broke. It took 5+ months to fix them, and now that they are fixed, our sports director won't let us use them. She says we need to get some non-existant pulling machine to test the supports. Even when they get fixed and are usable, I would still like some exercises that don't use rings since we have to set up and take down our ring cage at each practice. It becomes very tedious and since I'm one of the only people who really cares about the event, we'll get is out at most once every 2 weeks.

igm503 said:

Anyways, not to sound mean or anything, but could you put up a video of your planche? It just seems crazy to be able to do a planche with the hollow but lack the strength for a front lever.

Sure thing brah. I understand. In hindsight I should have uploaded a few videos. If somebody else has posted what I had posted before and I read it, my first thought would be that they are actually bending their elbows on the planche!

Don't mind my false grip or minor form breaks in the videos. I feel like it helps to take the stress off my elbows some. In the long run, I know I want to work on losing it.

The first video is from ~6 months ago.

The second is from just a little bit ago.

The third video is my attempt at a maltese cross. This just sort of shows where I'm at right now. My back arches and I fall below where it's acceptable. Regardless of how bad my form is, I can barely even hold it.

The fourth video is of my front lever, just for kicks and giggles.

igm503 said:

As for the maltese, if you truly have a good planche, check out the vid that coach uploaded on the maltese presses. im sure you could bend your legs to make the move easier

Mind posting it for me? Did a bit of searching but couldn't find what your talking about. I've tried bending my legs and it definitely helps. Unfortunately it only helps when I'm using the rings or parallettes. I was sort of hoping for some weight lifting exercises or other bodyweight exercises that I would be able to perform more readily.

Anyways, not to sound mean or anything, but could you put up a video of your planche? It just seems crazy to be able to do a planche with the hollow but lack the strength for a front lever.

Well the planche is a push oriented move and the front lever is a pull oriented move so I don't think there is much carryover between the two. A back lever would have much more carryover to a planche than a front lever.

Mind posting it for me? Did a bit of searching but couldn't find what your talking about. I've tried bending my legs and it definitely helps. Unfortunately it only helps when I'm using the rings or parallettes. I was sort of hoping for some weight lifting exercises or other bodyweight exercises that I would be able to perform more readily.

Sorry I don't really know how to embed it, but you can find it at the "Coach's Corner" subforums called "How to Begin Building Maltese Strength on the Rings". You can also use paralletes for the board maltese presses.

If you can find a spotter then you can do spotted malteses on the floor or paralletes, just an idea.

B1214N said:

Well the planche is a push oriented move and the front lever is a pull oriented move so I don't think there is much carryover between the two. A back lever would have much more carryover to a planche than a front lever.

There isn't much carryover, but they are opposite of each other, if I'm not mistaken. I think that they don't really help each other much if you work on them, they just won't hurt each other. For example I'm not working on a front lever to make my planche stronger, but rather so it won't limit my planche stength. I could be wrong though.

B1214N said:

you can find it at the "Coach's Corner" subforums called "How to Begin Building Maltese Strength on the Rings". You can also use paralletes for the board maltese presses.

If you can find a spotter then you can do spotted malteses on the floor or paralletes, just an idea.

Awesome thanks. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.

hooligan8200 said:

There isn't much carryover, but they are opposite of each other, if I'm not mistaken. I think that they don't really help each other much if you work on them, they just won't hurt each other. For example I'm not working on a front lever to make my planche stronger, but rather so it won't limit my planche stength. I could be wrong though.

Bench and row are eachother's opposites, but improving your lat strength with rows surely helps when benching.

I would imagine there's something alike going on with planche and FL. Planche needs lats for protraction if I'm correct. FL improves lat strength.

Just because two movements are 'opposites' doesn't mean they don't have any carryover. Tricep strength from dips transfers well to HSPU, so if that's your weak point, dips can help. In general, you'd want to do movements more closely resembling the skill you're trying to achieve (so in our HSPU case, if your shoulders are lacking, you do handstand wall runs), but not exclusively. Dips being a good example.

Also, you need to keep everything balanced. If you are deficient in pulling strength, your body will sense this imbalance and inhibit pushing capacity. So if you bring up your pulling strength, you 'magically' get stronger in pushing.

It's good to be focussed on a small number of goals, but you have to make sure you're shoring up weaknesses and imbalances along the way, or it will take much longer to reach your goals.

Wow you definitely have a planche

As Rik said, the lat strength developed by a fornt lever should help a good bit with your protraction during the planche, I believ Slizzardman said something about expecting nasty lat contractions during a perfect planche.

As for the maltese development you could use a similar setup to the one shown in coaches video and hold malteses with your weight across your arms, kind of like using massive cross trainers I cant think of anything else though.Im nowwhere near your level :shock:

Thanks for your help guys. I always knew that my front lever held back my planche and maltese, but I didn't know it affected it THAT much. I also noticed my front lever got a bit stronger while I worked primarily on my planche and maltese. Hopefully the reverse will be true. I'll definitely work more on my front lever over the next year since I have the necessary equipment, and hopefully my maltese will get stronger as a result.

hooligan8200 said:

I'll definitely work more on my front lever over the next year since I have the necessary equipment.

Equipment necessary to work front lever: tree

:roll:

I know that everyone wants to help, but it's usually a good idea to not add comments that you're not positive are accurate.

For example: If anyone wants to tell me how a muscle that attaches to the spine and the upper arm, which can only bring the upper arm towards the spine, can possibly protract the scapula (to which it is not attached) I would be game to hear it.

Nothing wrong with saying "I know that being able to use your lats in planche helps a lot, at least that's what X and Y say and what gets taught at the seminars), so it would seem that FL work might help"

Does that make sense?

It is a lot of work for the moderators to have to correct faulty assumptions. Many of these can be avoided by thinking about the anatomy and mechanics of what you are saying. Just food for thought.

The lats help stabilize the humeral head in the shoulder socket, enabling the prime movers to exert more force. Basically the lats take some pressure off of the shoulder socket so that your pressing muscles will be allowed to work harder.

Strength work is important, but the primary thing is to learn to use the lats in the maltese position.

Your planche is really nice for a few seconds and then you start arching. I do think that continuing to work perfect planche holds and not allowing yourself to continue once you start to arch will help, but aside from that and what is listed in the Coach's Corner concerning Maltese, all I can say is this:

1) the floor maltese work is probably a good idea if you keep perfect shape.

2) the dumbbell assistance work is good, but make sure you're staying hollow. You can do the same thing prone on a bench with the freemotion machines for a different feel. Both are good, and feel very different. I suggest both.

3) get advice from Gregor and/or Coach. They are pretty much the only people here who know exactly how to develop a maltese. I can't tell you anything beyond what I have so far... that's beyond the scope of my knowledge.

Hey Josh,

Thanks for the insight. I don't know a whole lot about anatomy. If I got anything out of the post, it was probably to just focus on my lats, and probably pectorals/chest during the maltese a bit more. I gave the maltese another try today and it seems like it's closer than the last attempt. I think it's a pretty good improvement for just 24 hours! I probably owe it to focusing on my lats and pecs. The arch thing I do at the end of my planches is just something I do when I reach my point of failure. Instead of falling down, I give one last push and try to squeeze out as much as possible. I know it's not something I want to do in competition, but it'll work itself out in due time.

Here's a quick video of the maltese attempt I did earlier. I know all about the little form breaks I have (below parallel, too high, false grip, piked, etc, etc) but I'll work on this over the next few months. Do you think a semi-decent maltese is plausable within 2 months? I'd probably like to get it by then, that way when I say goodbye to the rings I'll have somewhere to work from. After that, it looks like it's going to be a lot of dumbbell and parallette work for me.

Joshua Naterman said:

I know that everyone wants to help, but it's usually a good idea to not add comments that you're not positive are accurate.

For example: If anyone wants to tell me how a muscle that attaches to the spine and the upper arm, which can only bring the upper arm towards the spine, can possibly protract the scapula (to which it is not attached) I would be game to hear it.

Nothing wrong with saying "I know that being able to use your lats in planche helps a lot, at least that's what X and Y say and what gets taught at the seminars), so it would seem that FL work might help"

In my defense I said "if I'm correct" which would indicate that I wasn't positive that I was correct. But now that I think about it, lats would be able to do very little for protraction. Pretty stupid, I should've thought of that.

In any case, thanks for the correction. I'll pay close attention next time.