Hll Advice

I've been working through HLL progression with surprising difficulty.

In general once I start to lift my legs above horizontal there is a huge amount of pressure on my shoulder joint and I just can't get all the way up.

Today experimenting with the Undergrip Grip HLL, which is the final HLL in the sequence, I found I could completely relax my shoulders, sinking a few inches lower, and to my surprise and joy, the feet easily went to the bar.

My best guess is undergrip totally disengages the lats and on the normal grip my lats are fighting my abs keeping me from lifting.

Any advice on how to improve the normal grip would be appreciated, or is it best just to be happy with the Undergrip HLL?

FWIW the same holds for Circular HLL.

usually, as the grip is closer between the hands, you can involve more the lats and also you need more shoulders flexibility (i think this is the weak point of most people), i've tried to increase the hands distance using only the knowledge that my lats strength with wide grip is less than close grip. as i generate less strength in pull movement the assistance of lats decrease..so this was a good thing. but the real execution of hll wants to isolate the core with close grip so..just i tried to eliminate the amount of assistance from the lats by removing the thumb from the normal grip and and use only the last 1-2 phalanges of the fingers to remain in suspension.

also putting something behind ma back so that the lats are over elongated (and the max generation of strength is not at the ponit of max elongation) and also i can't use the head in order to make some cheating.

try in this way, maybe you can solve the problem!

A way to disengage the lats and make sure your core does all the work would be to only hang from 1 arm. It's harder on the grip but it makes sure you aren't using your back to pull.

Message sent Cole.

Simply hanging by the finger tips during your HLL work will disengage the lats to a large degree.

 

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Something else you may want to try is a handstand press type shoulder extension. 

 

When doing this, close your eyes and concentrate on using your deltoiids to lift your arms straight up into the ceiling. Now, keeping your eyes closed, take one hand and touch the other side of the body where you feel the contration. If it is right next to the acromion process and not next to the deltoid tuberosity (the bottom of the triangle of the deltoids, just above brachialis attachment) then that's your problem: You're not using your deltoids to extend the shoulders, and specifically the middle and rear deltoids.

 

If it happens just sitting around trying to extend into the handstand arm position, you can be sure that it is also happening when you have your full body weight hanging off off your arms.

 

This works for me but may also only be an issue for me due to the incredibly screwed up motor learning in my right shoulder. I thought I was flexing my shoulder, but it was... something else. I ended up putting my finger on the acromion process. I think it was supraspinatus.

 

In order to find my deltoids I think of flexing my biceps and triceps. I know, it's ridiculous, but that's how it is on my right side. Relearning is going pretty quickly now that I know even more of what's going on, and this seems to have primary control over my trap utilization as well. 

 

Anyhow, perhaps that will help as well.

Keep in mind Cole is dealing with an elbow issue. So arm angle will have an impact on the stability of the joint.

That's also a really good point! He had joint mice, so I'm not sure if there's really much of an issue post-op from that issue, but maybe that is also an issue.

 

To me, if supinated grip works then stick with that for main work while you try to figure out if there's a way to make pronated grip work.

How is it on rings or with a neutral grip? Makes me wonder if something is up with the shoulder in question.

 

Besides undergrip, we also used to do them in L/eagle grip to disengage the lats. Good for flexibility too.