Workout 4.12.10

This workout was on top of eight miles bike riding and two hours of Parkour training in City Park which made for quite the full day.

Warmup

False Grip Pullups: 8 reps

The other day I felt a breakthrough in my false grip and it has made all the difference as I work towards a proper unassisted muscle-up.

Dips: 8 reps

Handstand Pushup: 8 reps

Rather than just doing handstand pushups on the ground, I laid out two cinder blocks about a foot and a half from each other and did my handstand pushups on them for a larger range of motion. Definitely made them that much more challenging.

Statics

Back Lever: 22 cnt, 10 cnt

My longest back lever hold so far.

Front Lever: 12 cnt, 10 cnt

L-Hang: 10 cnt, 6 cnt

I decided to add the hang to my statics for a change instead of the L-Sit. Pushing forward into the hands as I hang from them and maintaining the L position I think will be a good addition to other piked exercises later on.

Planche: 15 cnt, 10 cnt

Probably my best planche hold yet in an advanced tuck position on the rings.

Dynamics

I decided to add a semi-crossfit style workout back into my repertoire for the day as I’ve been focusing almost entirely on gymnastic and ring training lately.

Lawnmowers: 16 reps

Narrow Rows: 10 reps

Doing a set of rows with both hands on one ring instead definitely shook things up a bit.

Narrow Rows: 8 reps

Same as the former but instead of gripping the bottom of the ring I gripped the sides of it to work on grip strength.

Strap Hang: 6 cnt

Got bored and decided it’d be fun to do a little more grip exercise hanging from the strap for my rings instead of the rings themselves. Sort of like a rope climb.

Pistols: 5 reps right, 5 reps left

A set of pistols while holding a stone weighing about 12lbs out in front of me. Felt more balanced on the pistols with the counterweight of the stone although the extra weight was noticed in the press back up.

Pull Press: 6 cnt right, 6 cnt left, 8 cnt right, 8 cnt left

More experimenting with the rings. Had the two rings set about 32 inches different in height and was pressing down with one arm and pulling up with the other. Switched sides and then repeated the whole thing. An interesting isometric working two both pulling and pressing at the same time. Felt great with the contrabody tension across the back.

Parkour 7.11.10

To call today a parkour session only is akin to calling a marathon a morning jog.

The session was uptown at the Tulane & Loyola campus, so that meant a six mile bicycle ride there to start, and a whole new environment I hadn’t ran before. We worked wall runs, vaults and precisions over fountains and up and down concrete stairways. All in all a good session, although I felt that I didn’t really take the edge and slam it down. I played it all too safe and didn’t get out of my comfort zone.

Concrete can make your comfort zone much harder to get out of.

Perhaps the most inspiring part of the session was watching Justin Ganguly, a traceur for four years having returned to New Orleans after training in France, etc., float and flow over obstacles, twist and balance in ways that make professional dancers seem clumsy. Here’s a video of him doing some balance training in City Park.

After the parkour session I bicycled the six miles back home to meet up with Giselle for an hour of lindy hop aerials practice, rested for about an hour, then biked back out to the CBD to meet two stunt people on their way to the gymnastics gym for training.

In my first two hours in a gymnastics gym I went from watching and wondering to executing clean (enough) back and front tucks, finally nailing dash vaults and high obstacle dive rolls, getting some uneven bar training from Justin, and more from a whole group of awesome people.

So in total, that’s about 3 hours of parkour training, 16 miles of bicycling, 1 hour of aerials training, and 2 hours of gymnastic training. Not a bad day at all.

Workout 5.11.10

A little mixer of a workout.

Basic Ring Series 1: 3 reps

False Grip Pullups: 20 reps, 20 reps

Squats: 40 reps, 40 reps

Ring Dips: 15 reps, 15 reps

1/2 Iron Cross Pull-up Static Hold: Left: 8 counts, 6 counts, Right: 8 counts, 5 counts

Basically doing a pull-up to the top and holding while having one arm extended out fully sideways. I found this actually put far more isometric load on my bent arm than on my straight arm which is a position that is most likely weak as is. It would be good to hold at the top of pull-ups for 1 or 2 seconds to get that little bit more out of that edge.

Workout 3.11.10

On top of Parkour training once a week and my regular gymnastic training I also have about four hours of regular dance practice every week that have their own strength/cardio warmup on top of the dancing itself. Add to that social dancing once or twice a week, yoga every other day or so, and cycling nearly everywhere and I realize I’ve got a pretty active life.

Yet I’m still not where I want to be at in terms of skills in gymnastics, rings, and Parkour training. So, always finding that edge and seeing what I can do with it.

Today I started with a basic series of chest, arm and back warmup on the rings.

Military Pushups: 20 reps

Wide Grip Pushups: 20 reps

Rows: 20 reps

Wide Grip Rows: 20 reps

Rows and pushups work well as complementary exercises alternating pressing and pulling the various muscle groups. Not a very intense warmup but focusing on nice form and clean movement really keeps things interesting.

I followed up my warmup with a series of static holds on the rings. Static holds, or isometrics, are great for building maximal strength in a certain position and particularly gymnastic ring statics are often effective at building maximal strength in a 30° or more range of motion from the static position (front lever and back lever being optimal cases).

Press: 20 counts, 10 counts

1/2 Lowered to Iron Cross: 4 counts, 5 counts

This was more an experiment in an eventual goal to be able to hold an iron cross. Starting from a press lower to 1/2 way between a press and an iron cross (arms at a 45° angle or so to the body) and hold it.

Front Lever (adv. tuck): 20 counts, 12 counts

One of my best front levers so far. I felt confident in maintaining the advanced tuck. It really helps to think about engaging from the shoulders down through the back and core to the hips to maintain a rigid body. Not doing this probably why my front levers have been so shoddy up until now.

Back Lever (adv. tuck): 17 counts, 12 counts

Same as for the front lever, focusing on a rigid body more than on the press into my hands helped solidify the back lever.

Planche (adv. tuck): 11 counts, 5 counts

Definitely improving my lockout here and the first one was much stronger and stable than prior planches on the rings.

As a little final push I setup on the rings and worked the muscle-up transition point which is definitely the hardest part of the muscle-up, going from a pull-up to leveraging the body over the hands and shifting to a press. This was more working technique than counting for repetitions, so no real data here.

Workout 21.10.10

After nearly a week off the rings I hopped back up on them for a basic set of exercises.

Four Corner Balance Drill: 3 reps left leg, 3 reps right leg

I asked Andy Fossett of Gold Medal Bodies for a bit of advice on some leg exercises and he suggested these. Interesting, slightly odd, and honestly not as intense as billed. Even in a full squat they feel like simple bar exercises that dancers do all the time. More like a warmup for mobility than a training exercise.

Adv Tuck Flanche: 4 reps x 8 counts

Added a rep and really trying to improve my lockout in the arms and not letting them bend.

Bulgarian Ring Dips: 4 reps

Adv. Tuck Yewkies: 3 reps, 2 reps

Much better technique doing this exercise for a second time.

False Grip Pullups: 6 reps

Felt much better about my false grip in this set.

Basic Ring Series 1: 3 reps

False grip pull-up, to inverted hang, to back lever, to inverted hang, to front lever. Really worked on my technique moving between the various positions.

Full Back Lever: Held at 45° for 2 reps of 4 counts

Really glad to be back up on the rings after five days off of them. Definitely feeling my progression and improvements, although small sometimes, are very noticeable.

Getting My Footing

I’ve taken a few extra days off this week from working out because I rocked my body with a 3 hour parkour session on Sunday. Added to that, I stressed my left elbow, most likely the bicep tendon, doing more than my normal share of gymnastic training on the rings last week and agitated it by doing cat jumps in parkour.

So a couple days off, but I have to say that parkour training was a full body powerhouse of a session. I was sore in ways I haven’t been since I trained capoeira back in Montreal.

I’m excited to get into something I’ve been putting off for a long time mostly due to the stress of injecting myself into a new social scene. It’s rewarding though, making myself uncomfortable, because I’m more than physically adept at jumping, running, climbing, and springing my way over and around urban spaces. I just needed to break the mental barrier to get to it.

I’m going to resume normal training on the rings tomorrow after giving myself an extra three days for my tendon to recover but it’s hard not to get up there just to be on the rings. I’ve been feeling really good about my progression but I don’t want to set myself back with a real injury, so today it’s going to be some stretching and yoga to keep my body moving but nothing strength focused.

Workout 15.10.10

More exercises from the GymnasticBodies forum today, most with strange names. It is thus dubbed the nonsensical workout.

Crank: 2 reps

So a serious abdominal exercise which I performed in an advanced tuck variation. Start in a hanging L Sit, rise to a front lever, then to an inverted hang, then back to front lever, then back to hang. Link here for a video of it.

Yewki: 3 reps, 3 reps, 1 rep

An interesting and difficult multi-plane pulling exercise where I performed the front lever section in an advanced tuck. Starting in a hang, pull up towards a pull-up then lean back while pulling to a bent arm front lever, then reversing. Link here for a video of it.

Galimores: 4 reps, 2 reps.

Another dynamic exercise that is a combined pull press exercise with another front lever (which I did in tuck format again). Beginning from a straight arm support on top of the rings, lower down to a bent arm support and then continue lowering on into a tuck front lever. Upon reaching the tuck front lever, lower your feet to the ground and jump back to support. Repeat for the desired number of repetitions. This is actually just the starter sequence to prep for a real galimore.

Ring Front Lever Pulls: 3 reps, 2 reps

Same thing as I did yesterday.

False Grip Pullups: 5 reps

Inverted Hang (tuck) Rows: 8 reps

Straight Arm Tuck Planche: 4 reps of 8 count holds

A first for me, I find the tuck planche easier on the rings than on the ground because of the strain on my wrists on a flat surface; perhaps a set of paralettes or parallel bars is in order.

Bulgarian Dips: 4 reps with 1 second hold at bottom

Still like these a lot, added a static hold at the bottom before pressing back up.

I’m really enjoying these gymnastic workouts on the rings and rather than knocking out higher reps or intervals I’m done in 3-5 reps usually on an exercise. I think I’ll start combining these into my larger routine amongst the interval and CrossFit style workouts.

Workout 14.10.10

Inspired by the discovery of the GymnasticBodies forum I dug in to some of the sequences and exercises they suggest for developing on the rings.

No warmup today, instead just dove right into a ring series.

Basic Rings Series 1: 3 reps, 2 reps

This series is basically a muscle-up, an inverted hang, lower to back lever, pull back to inverted hang, lower to front lever, pull back to inverted hang; that’s one rep. I did a pull-up as I’m not getting enough strength to really do the muscle-up consistently yet. My levers are at a straddle back lever for 8 counts, advanced tuck front lever for 5 counts.

Bulgarian Dips: 5 reps, 3 reps

I actually felt more control on these than standard ring dips. Here’s a link to see the difference.

Muscle-Up Assisted: 5 reps, 2 reps, 2 reps

I’m feeling more confident in my muscle-ups using only minor assistance now and I find the biggest trick right now is getting my weight to shift forward over the rings which makes all the difference.

Ring Front Lever Pulls: 2 reps, 2 reps, 2 reps

I’ve done pulls with front lever on the rings from straight arms but decided to try these from the top of a pull-up position and turns out they’re much harder. Here’s a link to see them in action by someone far better at them than me (although he’s on a bar and I was on rings).

Ring Dips: 3 reps, 2 reps

While not my highest number of reps these were perhaps my best in terms of form with a nice straight body from top to bottom and smooth movement and almost no shaking.

L Sit: 5 counts, 3 counts

I added this at the end to work another press on the rings into my short routine. I pressed to the top of a dip then raised my legs to the L position. First thing I noticed was that to get a good balance on the rings with my legs not dipping down I shifted my hips back which raised my legs but put a lot more pressure on my arms. Will need to look up more technique on this one.

Overall, happy with my little foray into a bit more intense gymnastic exercises on the rings for a change from the CrossFit style drilling I’ve been doing lately. Perhaps more to come tomorrow.