I tried to skip the Frog Stand; big Mistake

[chingyvang]

I started my Planche progression about one months ago and decided to skip the frog stand and just start with the planche tuck. After a month I noticed that I was dealing with lots of abnormal pain and my feet was barely off the ground so I'm not even doing a planche tuck. So now I'm starting with the frog stand and I can barely hold 30 seconds so far. All thanks to some smart guy on another forum saying the frog stand was useless so just start with the planche tuck.

[Dillon Zrike]

Never skip progressions. Coach has chosen the exercises proven to work. Some people are beasts and can skip some things, but that does not mean they should. They would probably see better results if they followed the progressions too. I would say everyone should go reread their book and see if they can perform the first exercise for every progression. Then test whether you can do the exercise for the prescribed amount of time or reps. I'm curious, who here worked up to a 60s tuck planche on floor before moving to advanced tuck?

[chingyvang]

yeah i learned the hard way

[Newguy]

Yeah I made the same mistake, I would be alot farther if I had not. I tried to skip the Adv Frog stand, because I could do a 15 second poor form Tuck PL :? I did not see much improvements for a long time, so per advice of slizzman I went back and did the Adv Frog. And now I am starting to so some good progress

[Razz]

I skipped tuck and adv tuck pretty much..just moved on to straddle planche. I'm correcting that mistake right now!

[Blairbob]

I've been doing the frogstand again and noticed I can feel the balance checking in my wrists and I imagine it will increase my hand strength.

Quite some time ago, I was able to skip frogstand and advanced frogstand but that was some time ago. Most of this work was on my "parallettes." Aka my 25lb DB turned out. But nowadays I'm damn weak. I do wonder what if I can do the tuck planche on PB but haven't tested it yet.

[Nic Scheelings]

Personally i did the frog stand once or twice held it for about 45 sec so I just skipped it, maybe shouldn't have but oh well.

[Joshua Naterman]

  Dillon Zrike said:

Never skip progressions. Coach has chosen the exercises proven to work. Some people are beasts and can skip some things, but that does not mean they should. They would probably see better results if they followed the progressions too. I would say everyone should go reread their book and see if they can perform the first exercise for every progression. Then test whether you can do the exercise for the prescribed amount of time or reps. I'm curious, who here worked up to a 60s tuck planche on floor before moving to advanced tuck?

Yes, yes! I humbled the heck out of myself when I stopped screwing around with L sit holds and went back to tuck L sit. I couldn't do a 60s hold! Weak sauce. Now I am practicing the tuck and it has improved quite a few things. I'm not even messing with planche until I have my 60s L sit. I'm tired of doing htings the hard way!

[Blairbob]

Well, I was able to do L-sit to tuck planche on the PB. As well, the advanced frogstand on PB was not difficult by any means.

I got bored watching the girls do poor ROM PB dips and found out I can do russian dips a lot better than I could say 6 months ago, and this was with no warmup. Then again I did 3 ugly MU the other day in a row before I stopped as it was done cold too and I am concerned about my elbows.

Still, I'd like the hand strength imparted from the frogstand and as I do feel my hands microbalancing it's probably a good exercise for just hand balancing in general.

Lately, my L-sit work sets have been 45s; so I think I can manage the 1m L-sit especially considering what goes down in my WU (lots of support and hang stuff and it seems to wear out my core). Being lighter is helping, too, I think. I can pseudo-planche on the ground for work sets of 45s with my hands under my ribs, but the frogstand on hands is showing it's difficulty.

[Blairbob]

As a final note, I got bored yesterday at gym and was playing with frogstands with the rec boy's classes.

I can do an advanced frogstand I found out on hands, and a tuck planche from kneeling on floor. It is lower than it is on PB. Maybe, I'll try to film them today to make sure. This was done cold but so was the tuck planche on PB so more than likely it means as we have long suggested, that doing them on PB is easier than floor.

I doubt I would compete a planche on PB, but I could see myself wanting to do one on floor besides rings, one day so floor it will be. I'll be transitioning the L-sit to fingers then palms as well. However, I realistically don't think I'll ever L or straddle on floor well enough to do anything with them.

[Paul Gray]

Guys

I know everyone is hammering on about working up to a 1minute static exercise before moving on to a more difficult variation.........but is this one minute your MAX time or is the 1minute your actual work set time? e.g your max would be 2mins.

I'm pretty sure everyone will say 1 minute max time.........but just wanted to clarify it because i haven't seen this brought up on another post.

Sorry if that's a dumb blonde question!!! 8)

[Cole Dano]

Not a dumb question at all.

I take it that if you can do an FSP for the minimum time you are ready to begin to seriously work on the next step. So it can be your max.

The 50% rule is due to the fact its your warm up and you don't want to blast yourself and of course for injury prevention. Honestly i go by feel, some days i do push beyond 50% but thats also because i'm mostly working the lower level elements where there is much less chance of injury.

So lets just say you are working plank, you've been working it 3 x 40 secs. You test and manage a minute, then you are ready to progress, and will in the future do plank for 1x 1 minute, and work harder on the next element.

This is my understanding but i'd love for anyone else to weigh in....

[Joshua Naterman]

I'm pretty sure you've got it right, Cole!

Part of why you don't want to be pushing too hard in the FSP, aside from them being done near the beginning of training, is that pushing to the limit in training is the fastest way to stall out. You should feel strong after a workout, especially the strength portions. If your strength work tires you out you are doing it wrong. That would mean you're temporarily depressing your nervous system and probably doing a lot of eccentric work with high resistance that is damaging the intramuscular connective tissues (I am grouping the titin protein in there since it is not contractile but more of a molecular spring) which will reduce the amount of tension your muscles will let themselves produce.

You only want to do something like that to a muscle once a week or so, more than that is just not necessary and will actually be counter-productive. The rest of your strength work for any given muscle for that week (or so) should minimize the eccentric work and concentrate more on true isometric and concentric work, using both moderate load with moderate tempos and a lower load with an explosive concentric. Coach does a really good job of structuring the WOD cycle this way.

Anyhow, 60s does not refer to work sets, it refers to your max effort on a reasonably well rested and well fed day.

[David Beckerman]

Well I learnt today that skipping progressions leaves areas of weakness. I was wondering during the last ring strength WOD why my grip was so weak and not improving as well as my FL tuck. I tried a chin up dead hang and I couldn't do it!!! So back to the basic FSP next SSC and I'll work this:

Dead hangs

Hollow hold

Arch hold

HeS

GH

XR support

Frog stands

L-sit

Planche and reverse Planche

Lessons learnt

DB

[Cyaneus]

Hmmm, I was under the impression that if you could hold a position for over 15 seconds you should go to the next step in the progression. Could someone correct me if I am wrong?

[Tarun Suri]

That applies only to straddle and above variations. The more basic ones recommend a full minute.

[Cyaneus]

Thanks RandomHavoc, I found further reference to that in one of the stickies. In the FL, BL, and PL, build up to 1min in all of pre-tuck, tuck, and flat tuck progressions. When you reach the straddle and/or half tucks, progress when capable of holding for over 15 seconds.

[Seiji]

I hope it wasn't me saying it was worthless because I think I remember saying it lol