Handstand update

Did another bodyweight workout on Monday night.

Hit my handstand balance point awesome, and stayed up for over 5 seconds a few times.

Feelin' a bit shit today... might have to forgo tonight's workout.

J

Change

I've decided to alter my workouts again. I'm aiming to do two strength session per week at the gym, and one session at home.
Sessions at the gym will be carrying on with my pullups focused Starting Strength style workouts, but my home sessions will be focusing on bodyweight skills such as handstands, planche progression and the like, utilising my paralettes and rings where I can.

I am yet to finalise a strict routine for these bodyweight sessions, but if/when I do, I'll post it up here.

Last night was the first of these session and it went something like this:

Warmup:
500m jog, dynamic stretches and some quadrupedal movement.

Workout:
10 minutes of handstands including rests. I'm still fairly shit at these, and if I'm lucky I can stay up for 4 seconds or so... I just realised however, that looking directly at the ground during handstands makes it heaps easier, so I expect to improve soon. Also working on consistent kickup.
Annoyingly I have a muscle knot or tense spot in my back to the right of my upper spine just above the shoulderblade, which gets very sore fairly quickly whilst in a handstand. I believe it is created from all of the computer based mouse work I do every day. I am trying to break it down by getting into it with a tennis ball jammed in between myself and a wall and giving myself a "massage" - torture more like it.

2 minutes total held in tuck planche on parallettes. Mostly in 10-15 second bursts. When I can do 1 minute at a time, I'll progress to the next stage of this skill.
Due to forearm pain I am unable to do this skill with the parallettes parallel to each other, but have to have them turned out more than 100 degrees from each other for it to be comfortable for me. This means my fists are angled across my body rather than up and down my body... I'll post pics.

2 minutes total held in tuck front lever using rings. Mostly in 10-15 second bursts.

Also did some back tuck lever work, but mostly just playing around on the rings.

That's about it. We'll see how it goes...

J

NatSoc

Went to NatSoc (National Social) on the weekend.
The annual gathering of Traceurs (more than 60 in all this year) from all over Australia (and a couple from NZ) happened in Canberra this year. It's a good chance to get together with people from all over, to train, and to share ideas & techniques, basically and have a good time.
People began arriving in Canberra part-way through the week, so training started early, but I only attended the official training days on Saturday and Sunday.

We trained at many of our best spots, mostly in Civic, but I there were sessions run in Belconnen and Woden also.

Much good training was done, and I progressed in my precisions and arm jumps. Also pulled a couple of muscleups on a nice tree branch at the Family courts.

I'm keen to train more with the Canberra guys using the momentum created from this great weekend.

On another note, I turned 27 yesterday... and am in the best shape of my life.

J