Regarding some words from DragonDoor

[Skippy]

We've all read the article on building a gymnastics body on dragondoor at some point, where it talks about how to progress for planches and front levers.

I was just reading over it again now and noticed it mentions that static holds can be performed every day.


Static holds can be performed each day for maximum benefit. However it is also possible to obtain excellent results with other workout schedules. The traditional Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday work well. My personal favorite that allows maximum work combined with substantial rest is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Everyone’s recovery ability is different. Simply experiment with the various schedules to see which suits your individual needs best.


I was wondering if anyone on here has any thoughts on this, would this not be considering over training to any degree?

I've been training bodyweight for the last 4-5 weeks now, originally it was for my Circus Audition but now I plan on sticking to it whether I get in or not. If I do get in then my conditioning will just be whatever they want, if I don't then it'll just be preparation for the next year.

So any opinions or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated, I can advanced tuck planche and hold V sits without much problem for about 6-8 seconds, but I only really do them specifically once per week, if I could hasten the progress by doing them near enough everyday that would be wonderful ^.^

[JimmyKewl]

i tryed doing planches every day, even if after first few days the core muscles get fucked up and strength levels go down i still forced myself to do it, i can say that after few weeks of doing it and the some days of rest my strength increased, but not much and i can`t say if i had done better in same time with not everyday training. Still i would like to try some period like month or two of hardcore everyday planches and stuff like that just to see if that would trigger body to adapt like shit after. so please try it out and tell results :P

[anfeyd]

You can do it daily as long as you don't overdo it the day prior or else your performance will drop. Something that you may want to try it have one day where you really hammer a lot of attempts at a challenging variation and the day following go for time on an easier variation. The subsequent day would be a rest day.

There are a lot of ways to go about this. If you want to get better, do them more than once a week that's for sure.

[Jackamaideshwang]

I did them everyday when I did gymnastics for a short period, and seemed to progress to the advanced tuck planche quite quickly. Gymnastics was only Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'd do about 2 attempts at the planche a day, which was probably 2 10 second holds. It seemed to be enough to ilicit strength gains without being too heavy as to require a longer rest period. I'd say this would be an effective way of training strength in general - every time I've done it, it has improved my strength more than normal training.

[JimmyKewl]

jackamaide i really start to love you :P~
the bad think about my everyday training surely was that everyday was heavy day
i am now watching all sorts of strong animals how they maintain they physiques and i learned that, except while young, animals spend very few minutes every day for exercise trough vigorous playing activities, so i think i should do that too. Everyday few moments of concentrated explosive "gymnastic" madness. As i think about it i got my pull ups to 20 reps just buy doing 1-2 reps everyday

[Jackamaideshwang]

Hahaha. But yeah, the method seems quite promising. Relating back to nature/whats natural is often forgotten by science- even though it provides almost the perfect reference point for living.

[tpvlyrm]

Any time I try to train something "every day", I go backwards fast after about three or four days. I improve the fastest when training once or twice a week (per exercise). Interestingly, this schedule applies to many non-physical skills and hobbies, too.

I could, of course, "train every day", if the load was light enough. But, for me, it being light enough to let me train every day is being far too light to make any progress from it.

[Jackamaideshwang]

It's interesting how much people differ in training approaches and how much people vary in the results of a program, there must be some reason for it that people are just ignoring.

[JimmyKewl]

if you just focusing on one goal like strenght or hypertrophy the split day routines work best i think, but if you want overall power, agility and just be like wild beast, totaly dominating any physical activity i think the everyday little, fun and hardcore training is best. I just started few weeks ago (16 days to be exact) and still can`t say that it is sure the best, but in only 16 days my planche went from 2 second hold to easy 10 seconds. I was training like 5-10 min a day, all other time just sitting and not doing much other activities. I feel great. I am not sure if my strenght gains are from my hard training month ago or of my new training(i would call it 'awesome beast mode'), but we will see in future :P.

if we look to pure power beast like leopard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhLKNQyVXI
it sleeps about 16-17 hours a day, and has some moments of about 10-15 min of intense explosive fooling around, ofc humans because of intelectual activity dont sleep that much.
example of adult wild leopard playing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQocvPa_ehE
u can see some really tough explosive moves.

if we look to more endurance type wild beast, the wolf. it plays more runing and chasing games about 20 min a day, ussualy one wolf of a pack gets some stick or smth in his mouth and runs while others try to catch him, social connecting + endurance training.

So i think as we humans dont have very different muscles from other mammals, could learn from them. You can choose more endurance way or more power strength way. You wont become body builder, but i am doing this now and my strenght and power are increasing tremendously. I belive it`s all very logical that human body should get strong esealy as it is esential for survival.

[Jackamaideshwang]

You have to be a bit carefull when directly comparing against other species, as a whole number of factors come into play that may explain their maintainance of athletic ability. Differing hormone levels, muscle growth regulation levels, very different pattern of eating (intermittant fasting) and cats especially are quite unique with their neuromuscular patterns.
I think you've got using some edurance - like walking long distances, and some power and strength work as a pretty good match of what 'natural' human exercise patterns would have been like in many cases- although some actual research into the matter would prove quite usefull. You may have to match other factors such as sleep, diet and sun exposure to get the same "natural" effect.

[Ashtar]

You don't overtrain if you grease the groove, DD loves that concept so my guess is it applies to these planche holds.

It's pretty natural since you really can't hold them very long anyway.

[JimmyKewl]

fuck guys XD the beast mode training fucking works XD i never was so strong in my life. 5-10 min of some crazy shit like u are trying to kill someone or escape from death a day and it fucking works XD. my muscular mass did not grow at least yet so if u just want muss its probably very slow and you wont get so massive as with weight lifting, but my vertical leap, runing speed, pullup reps, planches, handstand pushups with no wall, basicaly i can run on my arms now XD, everything improved tremendously in just 17 days i will continue my exploration and will try natural beast mode in other endevours too :P

[Ashtar]

Crazy. Anyway I think the whole 'you don't become muss' is part of Pavel's selling line because he markets to martial artists and stuff who want to remain smaller. He called it 'bear training' or something for people who want size, apparently by upping volume/reps/diet or something.

[anfeyd]

Wow guys training at a high intensity actually gets you results ! ! !

[Counterfeit Soda]

I don't think I've ever seen someone post on a forum about overtraining, who I actually thought was capable of overtraining.

[Ashtar]

I think it was Antoine who said 'there's no such thing, just under-recovering' or something like that? In that respect, over training is relative. It's possible for anyone to under-recover.

[Origional]

I honestly think I overtrained once. I was trampolining 40+ hours a week, for several weeks(almost a month). Moreover, I was on a diet and was not eating nearly enough. To sum it up, I have never felt shittier in my life. Everything constantly hurt, especially my spine. My spine hurt to do everything - even breath. I was moody, but was also a pushover. I dont even think I had the energy to make a proper arguement. When I finally realized I just could not keep this up (and trampolining became unberably painful) I managed to tear myself away from the trampoline. I then took up competative SSBB for a little over a month (I managed to enter in a few tournaments). When my controller broke I remembered my trampoline. Within two weeks of coming back I learned my first trick. The next day I learned another. - and that as they say, is that.

My point is this: overtraining is possible. However, if you overtrain, you WILL know it. I knew it before I even knew what overtraining was. Moreover, overtraining is near impossible to achive without a HUGE amount of volume. I didnt feel shitty until the third week. Worrying about overtraining is silly unless you are trying to peak for something else (weightlifting, a really good trickig session ect.). Even then you are not worrying about overtraining, just being fresh.

[Ashtar]

Merge those posts! Arg! Anyway, trampolining sounds as fun as sex to do it until that point.

[frenzy]

I think good way to incorporate static hold exercises is to do them first thing in the morning before breakfast. I currently do L-sits and planche progression - it only takes me about 10 minutes (not very much but still it sums up 60 hours per year). It doesn't interfere with my normal training and I also improve in another area.
Also if you do them everyday you have to vary all the parameters (intensity, sets, reps etc) not to overtrain..

[Ashtar]

The problem with L-sits is they stretch out your spine and make you taller! So it gets harder and harder to stay off the ground as you decompress! Also, it makes you weaker for stuff like deadlifts since your back is longer and has worser lever edge!

[Jackamaideshwang]

So your spine can decompress within a short time, but can't recompress with deadlifts aye. I really doubt the miniscule decompression would have any impact on performance anyways. They also train antero-posterior stabilisers in around the same range of motion as the deadlift, so I'd say they would help the deadlift rather than hinder it.

[Ashtar]

Oh deadlifting would totally-recompress it just fine I think, so long as you began at the top of the lift. If you're lifting right off the ground then it wouldn't be able to do it in time for the first lift.

The miniscule compression could be 1-2 inches, if someone's hitting their max or whatever it would make a difference. But then, someone doing that will probably warm up with some lighter weights which will help to recompress them so it should be fine.

You're right about the other stuff, you mean the arm muscles like scapular depressors right?