Non-linear progression and Planche/lever training

[George Launchbury]

Hi all,

Hope everyone had a good weekend!?

I was asked by my brother why I was talking about working up to 0:60 in a given planche/lever progression before moving up to the next level, since I had previously stated that strength was best built in short intense efforts, along the lines of 1-3 rep max in a greater number of sets with plenty of rest.

I then remembered something I read in another thread (here)...

Increasing physical strength can never be a simple straight linear progression. The body is not a machine and requires periods of overload (heavy strain), load (medium level effort) and underload (light comfortable recovery oriented). The body has a set physiological window of recovery and recuperation of the various tissues that cannot be exceeded. Most of us tend to focus on maintaining too much work in the overload portion of our training, too little in the load and far too little in the underload.

...which got me thinking along the lines that it might insert some kind of periodisation, without the need to conciously plan it? I had briefly thought of it as consolidating strength gains before moving on, but not really in any depth as to what it meant, how it worked and/or whether it was to do with acquiring skills, strength, conditioning or giving connective tissue a chance to adapt!?

Am I way off base in thinking that in the initial phase when you're working in sets of 5+ seconds it's primarily strength, and the nearer you get to the goal of a single 60 second effort, the onus becomes less of strength and more of endurance?? Then when you get to your next progression, you're back into shorter strength-based efforts?

I would guess that this kind of works for 'overload' moving into 'load' ...but not having completed my first progression (i.e. frog stand) I couldn't say from experience if it gets 'easy' enough (in strength terms) to call it 'underloading' since the strength requirements would still be high? Saying that, if you can hold the position for 60 seconds, it must be a long way from your 10 second max ...but is it going far enough from pure strength work as to be classed as 'underloading'?

Anybody got thoughts and/or experience that they might share on this? Even if it is just how they felt regarding how overloading, loading and underloading might have applied to their progressions of Planche/Front-lever, etc?

Maybe I should change my signature to "Too much thinking, not enough training"

Cheers,

George.

P.s. Joking aside, I do have a history of overtraining, and I find if I am least thinking/reading/obsessing about training, it helps me stay 'immersed' in it when I am struggling to wait long enough to recover properly!