October 19th, 2006

A New Look

Decided the page needed a revamp, so here we go. Reworked the Tutorials page as well so that it's quicker loading, easier to navigate, and hopefully better looking.

I also have an RSS feed right here ->   XML   I've had a feed for the entire life of the page, I just didn't advertise it much.

Anyways, let me know if any links are broken or if something looks funny on your computer.

And yes, new tutorials in the works (as always).

Train hard. Train smart.

October 6th, 2006

THE PLANCHE!!!

I can not believe it... I'm finally able to hold a planche. It's only for about two seconds right now, but it's a solid two seconds. I'm not just extending and dropping - there's a nice little hover to it.

Over the past month or two I had been working on my chest muscles, as I felt they were the weak link holding me back. I also felt that I wasn't recruiting my chest muscles as greatly as I could. Well, about a week and a half ago I really focused on pressing down with the chest. This made all the difference. Two days later I brought in my camera and grabbed a shot of this:

I now feel the skill throughout my shoulders and chest. In training before, I had felt it mainly in the front of the shoulders and not really in the chest. The whole thing actually feels quite similar to pressing up at the top of a weighted dip.

I'm getting a better idea of where my body is in space, but the camera still always helps. When I'm in position, it still feels like my body is lower than it should be, but I just assume I need to get use to things. Now it's going to take me awhile to increase the time held and of course work toward pushups!

Advice for the skill now? Lean forward - a lot. Each progressively harder planche position requires a greater lean. As I mentioned above, pressing down with the chest is key. If you only feel the skill in your shoulders, then you're not using all the muscles you can.

Last piece of advice? I'm thinking heavy weighted dips are a bread and butter exercise for getting this skill.