Planche and Front lever

Troy Kerr · 03-17-2011, 09:34 AM

With my wrist healing, I am looking to continue my bodyweight training. This time around I am looking to narrow my training. The goals I am pushing towards is planche and front lever development. As opposed to my previous routine of HS,L-sit, planche,bl, front lever. I will be doing this routine 3-days a week. With legs on T & TR. This fits into my schedule a lot better. I do have some questions I will post below.

Planche: This time around I will aim at getting stronger in PPPU as well as planche static holds. However I am wondering if doing a combination of static work, and using varying strength work to supplement. Say 30 seconds of static work, followed by 5x2 PPPU, 30 seconds of planche lean, or 5x2 straight arm tuck planche press ups.

Front Lever: I plan to do negatives one day, statics the next, and concentric work the next. So single leg negatives day 1, flat tuck fl holds day 2, and Tuck FL rows day 3.

I eventually would like begin working on SA press to HS. However I do not have the strength in my wrist to hold myself up that way. My HS work will consist of press to HS, and fresstanding balancing. I will also include RTO support holds to strengthen my shoulder extension. I will also include wrist and shoulder pre-hab. Tues and Thur will consist of Natural body curls, as well as some rower intervals, followed by stretching and foam rolling. This is about all my leg can handle as I await the results of my bone scan.

I am looking for critiques and opinions here. Like I said the overall goal here is to advance my strength in the planche and front lever. However instead of using primarily steady state static holds, I wish to use strength oriented movements as well as some static holds to accelerate gains.

Steven Low · 03-17-2011, 11:25 AM

What are your current abilities and what is your current training volume?

Are you plateaued that you need a change in training volume/exercises?

Troy Kerr · 03-17-2011, 06:34 PM

Planche I feel very stagnate in. I have been training bodyweight for over a year now, and even though there have been some obvious strength gains, I am not where I should be. I was able to hold and adv. tuck planche for 5-6 seconds in august, but i tweaked the same spot on my wrist that I injured a couple weeks ago. Since then I have been working strictly static holds, with the only pushing work coming from HSPU once a week either on paralettes, or rings in a 5x2. A tuck planche is difficult, and the knee on the elbow tuck planche is slighty difficult, with balance or my knees slipping off being the main issue. The parralettes still tweak my wrist a bit. In terms of pressing strength though I can do a RTO dip, 12-15 ring dips, and a fair amount of ring hspu.
As far as the front lever, I tried a crank tonight and was able to execute it. When looking at the video my legs are a tad bit higher. I can hold a FL for about 1-2 seconds.

Steven Low · 03-17-2011, 10:30 PM

What about current or rather the routine you were on?

Troy Kerr · 03-17-2011, 10:43 PM

My previous routine looked almost exactly like the ones you outlined in your article for bodyweight training. For planche I was using the adv. frogstand, front lever I was using the adv. tuck, and I was using the full supinated grip back lever. I made the mistake of doing close to maximum sets on the BL and it wore me out very quick. And concentric training was inconsistent. The length of the workouts was too long with my current schedule.

Steven Low · 03-18-2011, 05:18 AM

After you get to around the adv tuck or so like you realized you need more volume than just the isometrics. It would be a good idea to add in something along the lines of PPPUs on rings or something for example in a 3x5-8 manner rather than the 5x2 moderated towards your current ability levels.

I don't quite like PPPUs that much as opposed to things like dips/HSPUs.... one thing that rreally supplements planche well is straigth arm press handstands if you want to train those