So say we all!

[@mu]

Summary for the quick reader:

Likes: pull / push / bend

Tools: body weight, parallettes, aerial silks, ball

Main focus: GMB Parallettes 2

 

Moving on with P2!

I completed GMB Parallettes 2 prep phase last challenge. I will now start Phase 1. It is supposed to be 5 weeks followed by a deload week. I'm pretty sure 5 weeks without a deload will be too hard for me (intensity level + I do other workouts). As suggested by the programme, I will tweak it a little bit and run Phase 1 for longer but I will deload every 3 weeks. It is a conditioning phase, it won't hurt to make it a tad bit longer.

 

Otherwise same ol' goals, including aerial training and stretching – I revamped the whole thing with a BSG twist (including my own cheesy poster! ).
Checking in for consistency, support (great community!) and hopefully some progress along the way!
 

Welcome to

With a slight Sin City overtone

 

 

In order of appearance from top to bottom:

1- G-Force training system

2-The Eye of Pythia, ok I made it up, I don't have the Arrow of Apollo, but the red ball is looking mystical enough

3- Nugget in training

4- Cylon Toasters – Models 1 & 2

 

Nugget training will include:

 

~ TOASTER BATTLES ~

 

Parallettes

• Battlefield: P2 phase 1 consists of 3 sessions a week based on 2 alternating workouts except deload week which focuses on 2 exercises at medium intensity for 5 days.

• Skirmish: Crow PvP and/or open practice (at my own pace because P2 is intensive enough).

 

~ G-FORCE TRAINING ~

 

Aerial

Pull conditioning and skills/flow practice on silks:

• Reporting to the CAG: Conditioning – 1x/week or more, I need to cover a bunch of drills during the week, I can spread them out if needed depending on fatigue/schedule.

• Party on the deck: skills & flow practice – 2x/week

 

~ PRACTICAL STUDY OF THE SACRED SCROLLS ~

 

“And the people of Kobol had a choice: keep up with alignment work and stretch themselves - or take the high road through the rocky ridge…”
 

Upside Down Alignment

• HS alignment drills (hollow, scapular pushes, belly to wall) – 1x/week

• Aerial invert alignment drills (rotations / shelf / tuck / straddle) – 2x/week

 

Stretching

• General stretching session with a focus on hips and shoulders - 1x/week

• GMB spinal flexibility and deeper back-bends - 1x/week

• Hall of shame: if I don't stretch after a strength workout

 

“And unto the leader they gave a vision of basil seedlings numbering two and ten, as a sign of things to come.”
 

The secrets of life: Basil

My basil seedlings are currently recovering on a botanical cruiser. Hope is having me using the plural but I can see only one survivor seedling from last challenge...
I will provide light and water resources, and guard them against the cat, which I suspect to be a Cylon agent

The goal is to, well, keep the basil alive! And eat some of it eventually.

 

SO SAY WE ALL!

 

I'm currently in the post prep phase deload week, I will start on Saturday.

Have a good challenge everyone!
 

[Mad Hatter]

Haha I love this challenge and the write up!  

[@mu]

 

This morning, I had a mixed ball of stuff at low/medium intensity (delooooad / prep week before boarding the battlestar)

 

Parallettes HS

 

Bent arm press to 1-legged crow, struggling with my leg position, this is still not a proper 1-legged crow...

Baby crow and many fails on crow to baby crow for the PvP

 

Cat was half intrigued half amused by all this crow stuff, but she didn't move / didn't interrupt

 

Aerial invert alignment drills: neutral to shoulder rotations, shelf hold, tuck hold and tuck pebbles, straddle shelf with frog legs and extension – that last one really needs alignment work, my back is still not in the right place

 

Silks: bar 1-arm hold to hip lock with mixed grip to sumo to crab to skin the cat LR -  but my apparatus is too low to get into a nice sumo even from a high hip lock, I keep ending on the floor, meh

Stretches

[raptron]

Ahaha, great theme. 

[Elastigirl]

More paralette fun, can't wait!

[@mu]

16 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

More paralette fun, can't wait!

And Crow PvP awesomeness!
 

So this morning was

Parallettes HS 5 5 5

One-legged crow variations (Crow PvP) with a great variation introduced by Elastigirl, it's tough but it should help!

GMB spinal flexibility + back drop + elbow stand scorpion focusing on longer holds rather than bending more
And crow headstand for the PvP again a little bit later

 

[Nymeria]

Following for the silks!  I'm still a total noob, so it's interesting for me to see what other people are doing.  

[dancezwithkittehz]

Following!

[@mu]

9 hours ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

Following!

Hiya!
 

 

10 hours ago, Nymeria said:

Following for the silks!  I'm still a total noob, so it's interesting for me to see what other people are doing.  

Ha no need for a disclaimer I did silks and rope intensively for a few years, then I had a break for 2 years and a half, and I no longer have access to classes or a proper aerial studio (only a low-height home rig). So here am I, truly hanging in there It's not like starting from scratch, but it can be very frustrating at times for that very same reason. Bah, I don't mind, it's still fun.

[@mu]

So today was a bit of G-Force training prep

 

Inverted pikes 5

Leg raises toes to hands 5

 

Meathook bent legs cycle from floor 2 2 2 2

I moved onto a new progression, working both the bottom entry and the exit of the meathook. My hips are weak / not very active, it should help for straddling up too.
 

Ideally it should look like this:

 

But yeah, I currently do it from tip toe on the floor, I touch the floor before the next rep and I do 2 reps per set

Sling straddle with ball 5R 5L

Long arm straddle up bent legs split silks 2 2

 

Foot-lock to vertical straddle sliding down from the floor LR x2
(it is supposed to be a vertical split but I don't have a split, and I did those from the floor because I haven't practiced the sliding down in a while and it's a bit hairy without decent height)
 

Straddle in front of silks to figure of 8 roll over to front balance LR x2

A few runs of bicycle climbs and mini monkey climbs

I took a video of the climbs because I had the intuition it would look pretty idiotic on the sort of height I have, especially the bicycle climb I did find a way to keep climbing without actually climbing, maybe I should call it the infinite bicycle climb. Here is the vid with appropriate comedy music and a speed up because otherwise it's pretty boring to watch somebody climbing to … well … nowhere

I'm happy with the monkey climb though even if it's a small one, I hadn't done it in a very long time and it looks very assassiney I think!
 

 

 

[raptron]

Ohhh, that thing you posted looks hard! And I love your infinity climbs. XD 

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

Nah the climbs look great! The upside down one is adorable   

[dancezwithkittehz]

Ahhhhh I so want to be working on meathooks someday. I don't quite have the core strength to be thinking about it yet. Also yay bicycle climb! I haven't done that in forever and should probably try it again soon!

[Norgaard]

You go to conqour those paralettes! I thought about doing P1 at one point, was it fun?

[@mu]

4 hours ago, Norgaard said:

You go to conqour those paralettes! I thought about doing P1 at one point, was it fun?

Yes a lot of fun! Highly recommend it! You will blaze through all the push-up variations I think but it moves quickly to more flow-y / dynamic movements, a bit like what we were doing in the parallettes PvP. The hardest bit is the bent arm press. You could also look at P2 prep phase. The only thing it does not have that is in P1 is straddle hold, which is like, your preferred move The prep phase is also quite static in a 5x5 sort of format. P1 is a bit more fun.
 

 

17 hours ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

Ahhhhh I so want to be working on meathooks someday. I don't quite have the core strength to be thinking about it yet. Also yay bicycle climb! I haven't done that in forever and should probably try it again soon!

 

Maybe you should try, you might surprise yourself! And there are lots of variations out there. I think it's currently one of my preferred conditioning exercises, in a sort of masochistic way. I like the twisty aspect of it.

[Norgaard]

8 minutes ago, @mu said:

Yes a lot of fun! Highly recommend it! You will blaze through all the push-up variations I think but it moves quickly to more flow-y / dynamic movements, a bit like what we were doing in the parallettes PvP. The hardest bit is the bent arm press. You could also look at P2 prep phase. The only thing it does not have that is in P1 is straddle hold, which is like, your preferred move The prep phase is also quite static in a 5x5 sort of format. P1 is a bit more fun.
 

 

 

Maybe you should try, you might surprise yourself! And there are lots of variations out there. I think it's currently one of my preferred conditioning exercises, in a sort of masochistic way. I like the twisty aspect of it.

 

 

Oh dear saucepans I hate straddle holds  maybe I should give that a go

[@mu]

20 hours ago, raptron said:

Ohhh, that thing you posted looks hard! And I love your infinity climbs. XD 

 

 

They are hard, and I have been at this for a few months (not priority training but still)
 

I'll take some progress videos for that variation. I can already see that my abs are doing a fair job (training wasn't completely useless...) but I'm still not placing / recruiting my back muscles the way I should and that's why my hips are sort of lagging behind. It wasn't so obvious in the previous variation but here on the first attempt the situation was actually pretty extreme.

 

At the top it should look like this, with the back actively supporting the hips:

I look like this:

 

While flexibility/compression might look like a cool asset, it's a freaking pain sometimes. For meathook, this is very poor form and probably the most inefficient/injury-prone way to do it... I have the same issue in straddles although not to that extreme level. Everything is connected... Hence the new inverted alignment work. That was a light-bulb moment from last challenge really and I have a LOT of work to do, to open up and start using that back.
 

[Mad Hatter]

Oh that's a really interesting comparison. When I do inverted pike pull ups I definitely look more like your picture rather than the first picture. On pole I think I'm somewhat better at using the correct alignment because at some point last year I discovered I can get into knee hooks much more cleanly and without sliding if my hips are closer to the pole.

[@mu]

52 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

On pole I think I'm somewhat better at using the correct alignment because at some point last year I discovered I can get into knee hooks much more cleanly and without sliding if my hips are closer to the pole.

That sounds like the right feeling yes!

I'd really recommend the manual on alignment from McKenna with comments from Cirque Physio. It's expensive, but the picture and video references are good really. There is a full chapter on pike.

I don't have good pics on pike, but here is my straddle effort so far, you will recognise the exact same problem:

In February:

From earlier this month:

I'm still not there. My back needs to be perpendicular to the floor basically (edit: for straddle not for pike though) so that I can stack my hips on top of it, closer to the silks. And my chest needs to open up too.
And when it's there, the position is much easier/lighter to hold too, the difference is crazy.
 

[Mad Hatter]

I can't really justify buying the manual now, but when I start doing more aerial again I'll keep it in mind. But I agree, the difference in feeling is crazy! It's a teeny bit harder to get there when it's not in the muscle memory, but it makes it so much easier afterwards.

[RogueLibrarian]

Following for aerial circus and cat photos!

[raptron]

3 hours ago, @mu said:

They are hard, and I have been at this for a few months (not priority training but still)
 

I'll take some progress videos for that variation. I can already see that my abs are doing a fair job (training wasn't completely useless...) but I'm still not placing / recruiting my back muscles the way I should and that's why my hips are sort of lagging behind. It wasn't so obvious in the previous variation but here on the first attempt the situation was actually pretty extreme.

 

At the top it should look like this, with the back actively supporting the hips:

I look like this:

 

While flexibility/compression might look like a cool asset, it's a freaking pain sometimes. For meathook, this is very poor form and probably the most inefficient/injury-prone way to do it... I have the same issue in straddles although not to that extreme level. Everything is connected... Hence the new inverted alignment work. That was a light-bulb moment from last challenge really and I have a LOT of work to do, to open up and start using that back.

I'm not very familiar with these kinds of inversions but it looks like your butt just isn't getting high enough so you are probably having to compensate with extra compression to get it over to the other side? Is that what you guys are talking about? Do you think that is mostly just body awareness? Or is it maybe obliques weakness trying to get up that high in the first place? Just throwing thoughts out there about things I don't know about...

[@mu]

1 hour ago, raptron said:

I'm not very familiar with these kinds of inversions but it looks like your butt just isn't getting high enough so you are probably having to compensate with extra compression to get it over to the other side? Is that what you guys are talking about? Do you think that is mostly just body awareness? Or is it maybe obliques weakness trying to get up that high in the first place? Just throwing thoughts out there about things I don't know about...

Alas getting the butt up is not enough, it has to stay up there /cry

I could more easily correct the pike and the tuck, in straddle I got into a more severe habit of drooping back + sort of protracting, it will take a bit longer to correct. I'm working on a drill specifically for straddles that has me actively engaging the back + opening the chest, but it will need many repetitions to undo that bad habit

[@mu]

2 hours ago, RogueLibrarian said:

Following for aerial circus and cat photos!

I'm pretty confident the cat will not disappoint

[Mad Hatter]

3 hours ago, raptron said:

I'm not very familiar with these kinds of inversions but it looks like your butt just isn't getting high enough so you are probably having to compensate with extra compression to get it over to the other side? Is that what you guys are talking about? Do you think that is mostly just body awareness? Or is it maybe obliques weakness trying to get up that high in the first place? Just throwing thoughts out there about things I don't know about...

I don’t think it’s harder per se, it’s more like the very compressed pike is the first comfy “resting” position in the invert and that’s where I often stay. The second position is equally comfortable to me, but I have to concentrate on pulling past that first point to get to the second point. It does take a bit more energy as you have to pull for longer, but since it’s not the most strenuous part of the movement I think it’s more a question of body awareness.