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Post by mr potatohead on Apr 7, 2019 15:48:58 GMT
........ broomstick twists ..... I do that too. Plus I twist during a lot of the exercises I do. I twist just to twist, like the Qigong arm swinging/twisting I do. Pete Wagner says that if you're not twisting, you're not exercising and I think he makes a good point.
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Post by mr potatohead on Apr 8, 2019 2:33:35 GMT
The twisting I do seated is at the computer desk on my swivel saddle stool. I put a wrist, straight arm against the opposite thigh and up near the knee, and reach back and up with the thigh side arm ..... maybe 30* above horizontal? ..... while pressing the opposite way with the wrist on the thigh to twist my spine. Feels great.
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 8, 2019 16:12:48 GMT
I got some elbow pain from all the knee raises I did on the dip bar with my arms almost fully extened. I guess the elbows are not used to holding my whole bodyweight. Now I just hold myself up with my forearms flat on the bars... and without the stabilisation work my arms used to do, the exercsies become so much easier. I stopped doing knee raises altogether and switched to leg raises. I gotta say though I cheat a little. I use some momentum to get to the L-sit position and try to work against the negative motion as long as I can. Basically an explosive concentric motion and a slow eccentric motion. The goal is to get to a point where I can do leg raises with slow and proper form until I'm strong enough to hold the L-sit. Right now it's 5 cheat leg raises, 1 minute reverse plank, 30 second side plank each side of course. I do that several times throughout the day. Maybe I will post a picture each week so I have something to compare as I get stronger from week to week.
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 8, 2019 16:50:20 GMT
Alright Week #1 completed:
Gotta get more meat on there!
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 8, 2019 16:57:56 GMT
Damn you are much stronger than me thinman how old are you again?
I also feel like I should stretch a helluva lot more before doing leg raises, L-sit attempts etc. Do you stretch before doing those exercises?
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 9, 2019 15:39:15 GMT
Hahahaha only 9 days in, abs respond very good to the training. I don't think I've made improvements on any other muscle so fast. 8 1/2 more weeks to go. I think I'm gonna get there guys My routine right now is as follows: 5 leg raises 30 seconds side plank both sides 1 minute reverse plank in between some stretching for the hip flexors I do that several times a day Next week I'm gonna up everything by 100%. The week after I'm sure I'll be able to hold the L-sit already. Progress is going much faster than I thought it would. What I would like to know though, should I keep training abs even though they're a little sore? Or should I wait it out? What's the best way?
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Post by josepz on Apr 10, 2019 8:00:44 GMT
Hahahaha only 9 days in, abs respond very good to the training. I don't think I've made improvements on any other muscle so fast. 8 1/2 more weeks to go. I think I'm gonna get there guys My routine right now is as follows: 5 leg raises 30 seconds side plank both sides 1 minute reverse plank in between some stretching for the hip flexors I do that several times a day Next week I'm gonna up everything by 100%. The week after I'm sure I'll be able to hold the L-sit already. Progress is going much faster than I thought it would. What I would like to know though, should I keep training abs even though they're a little sore? Or should I wait it out? What's the best way? Good job! Keep at it if it works. Simple routines are often the most effective ones. The consensus when I read muscle magazines in the 90s was that abs and calves are the 2 muscle groups that can be trained daily without any risk of overtraining, but that might have changed.
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 10, 2019 10:35:45 GMT
I noticed that it's over 1000 views on this thread so I figured it's not only the forum members reading this but other people too. Here is some advice for everyone who wants to achieve one of the coolest feats of core strength, the L-sit: -Proper form: keep your legs STRAIGHT. -If you do leg leg raises or try the L-sit it's important to make your feet point forward, otherwise you bring yourself in a position where a lack of calve flexibility will prevent you from keeping your legs straight. You watch professional gymnasts that's how they do it.
-Stretch yourself before leg raises or L-sit attempts. The lack of flexibility in my glutes and hamstrings (and the lack of hip flexor strength) is what's preventing me personally from doing the L-sit with straight legs and proper form. It's not so much a lack of ab strength. Solution: put two weight plates below your heels, bent over and try to touch the ground, this simulates the L-sit position and stretches your glutes and hamstrings, lower back. Your goal is to touch the ground, not only with your finger tips that's how girls do it, no, touch it with your palms. If you can do that you should have enough flexiblity. Do your leg raises or L-sit directly after. -Not only your abs need to be strong but your hip flexors too! Very simple but hard exercise that kinda isolates the hip flexors: sit on a wall (it's required otherwise you will cheat yourself) place your hands on the ground wherever you feel strong, now just lift your STRAIGHT legs off the ground or TRY to. Doesn't matter if it's only a couple milimeters this will improve your hip flexor strength very fast if you do it daily. This is MUCH harder than you think. -Stretch your hip flexors. Short, very tight hip flexors will pull your hips forward and make your lower back arch. Most people already have short hip flexors without even training them, hours of sitting will do that to you. Now if you actively train them it will make things even worse. You need to stretch them otherwise you will get back pain and walk around with a duck ass who wants that? Solution: Watch the video, it's important to activate your glutes to really get a good stretch in the hip flexors. Also, never stretch them directly after working them out, you will get some serious muscle soreness. I usually stretch them after I get up and before I go to bed. -Train the antagonists. That's why I do reverse planks, they train my glutes, hamstrings and lower back, everything your average ab exercises don't train, gotta keep things balanced! If you think your abs are weak your backsite is usually even weaker. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm not making these things up, I collected this information from watching tutorials from gymnasts, fitness experts and merely repeat it in compressed form for everyone reading this thread. Those seem to be the most important factors.
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Michael
Caneguru
He cuts down trees. He wears high heels, suspendies, and a bra?!
Winner of Twatformetrics Spartan Challenge
Posts: 5,288
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Post by Michael on Apr 10, 2019 10:52:58 GMT
JRG,
You pretty much have a six pack already. I would just look at Your training as strengthening them. Anyway, Good Job! Question, How do You sit on a wall? Just my opinion, if You read what You wrote about stretching the hip flexors. Your hip flexors get trained by accident, really no need to train them specifically. You don't want tight hip flexors from extra training, You're asking for back trouble. If I remember right, my biggest challenge was the hamstrings which would cramp up. With steady stretching this went away.
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 10, 2019 11:06:53 GMT
JRG, You pretty much have a six pack already. I would just look at Your training as strengthening them. Anyway, Good Job! Question, How do You sit on a wall? Just my opinion, if You read what You wrote about stretching the hip flexors. Your hip flexors get trained by accident, really no need to train them specifically. You don't want tight hip flexors from extra training, You're asking for back trouble. If I remember right, my biggest challenge was the hamstrings which would cramp up. With steady stretching this went away. I took this exercise from the tutorial here: To be honest I feel like it's really the hip flexors that prevent me from holding the position. If I stretch before the L-sit I have pretty good flexiblity, I don't think that flexibility is my biggest problem. If I try the L-sit, I feel it even more in the hip flexors than my abs. At this point I think my hip flexors are rather weak. I think the reverse planks train the antagonist the glutes enough to compensate for strong hip flexors. I also stretch the flexors a lot. I will just keep training them and see if it helps me get to the L-sit. I will keep you guys up to date on whether it helped or not Btw, what's the longest you can hold the L-sit Michael?
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Dave Reslo
Caneguru
Not quite severely obese
Posts: 1,465
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Post by Dave Reslo on Apr 10, 2019 11:13:54 GMT
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 10, 2019 11:21:03 GMT
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Post by gruntbrain on Apr 10, 2019 13:12:43 GMT
In spite of what experts say, I'll continue to use grip assistance while doing ab work with highbar hangs .
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 10, 2019 13:24:23 GMT
In spite of what experts say, I'll continue to use grip assistance while doing ab work with highbar hangs . Can you personally hold the L-sit when you hang on the highbar?
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Post by justregularguy on Apr 10, 2019 13:25:29 GMT
Sometimes during Yoga class we do the L-sit with hands on Yoga blocks, doing it on the end of DB's is tricky to keep them balanced coz of the small surface of the rubber coated hex DB. My arms are long so can do them on the floor.
Goddamn thinman you besting a lot of guys here. Didn't know you can do the L-sit ! Most guys half your age cannot do it
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