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Audio Title: Parallettes Exercises for Straight Arm Strength
Audio Duration: 0:08:07 Number of Speakers: 1
Transcript
Hi. This is Ryan from Gold Medal Bodies. Today I would like to talk a little bit about straight
arm strength, what it is, why it’s important, and as well I’m going to give you one movement
that you can use to help you in your straight arm training.
When we work out, typically we use a lot of bent arm movements, movements like a chin-up,
like a push-up, movements where we bend our arm. It’s pretty obvious, right?
Now when we’re referring to straight arm training, what we’re talking about are particularly
holds and for today’s video, I’m going to be referring to the parallettes, straight
arm work that we perform on the parallettes. So an example of a straight arm hold would
be the top position of a push-up with your arms locked out.
Another example could be for example in L-sit. That is also where you have your arms locked
out. A lot of people miss what we’re trying to accomplish when we’re working on our
straight arm training and so that’s what we’re going to talk about a little bit.
Why is this important?
Well, if you want to work towards advanced movements, and let’s talk about the parallettes.
Today we will just refer to the parallettes. Even though you can’t perform these movements
on the floor or even with rings, if you’re working towards an advanced movement, you
can’t just jump up and try that advanced movement. It’s going to be tempting to do
that but you always have to focus on working on the basics. Building a foundation in order
to progress up and building a proper foundation is especially true in our straight arm work.
If you don’t have this proper foundation, if you don’t have the basics of straight
arm strength training down, and you try and perform some of these advanced movements,
you can hurt yourself and that’s not what we want.
So that’s why it’s very important to make sure that you use progressions in order to
get you to these advanced movements.
Now growing up, my sport of choice was gymnastics. So I spent a lot of time in the straight arm
position. We would be drilling this pretty much every practice but it wasn’t that we
were just focusing on straightening our arms.
It was that form, focusing on the basics, making sure that whatever movement we were
performing, we were keeping good form and when I was young, I trained a lot in order
to make sure that I had these techniques down.
However, I took a huge break from my training. I took a really long break and so even me,
I have to go back and work on the basics of the straight arm strength training in order
to make sure that I don’t get injured and that I’m doing things properly.
So what do we do? Where do we start? Well, a good example to kind of feel if you’re
doing something properly and making sure that you have your arms locked out is by using
a chair, a chair with arms on it.
So you put your hands on the chair and you push down and really push, push, push with
your feet on the ground, raising your body up and locking out your arms. Now hopefully
you feel this not just in your triceps but also in your biceps and the front of your
arm.
A lot of people when performing a movement like a plank hold, the top position of a push-up,
won’t feel it in the front of their arms and their biceps. The reason for that, it’s
because they don’t have that elbow pit turned forward.
So when we’re working on straight arm strength training, this is the key point and this is
something that we’re going to look at today and I’m going to give you just a very basic
movement, plank hold as a matter of fact.
But we’re going to lean with it, making sure to keep our elbow pits forward. What
this is going to do is help us get a feel for where we need to be when we’re working
on our strength training in regards to straight arms.
Straight arm movements and holds might be quite uncomfortable for a lot of you but that
just means that you don’t have the straight arm strength just yet. Don’t worry. You
can get it and this is an exercise that you can use to help you get that straight arm
strength.
This plank lean looks pretty simple but looks can really be deceiving and if you’re doing
this properly, it should be tough. This is a movement, this plank lean, this hold part
of me is what I use to help people in working towards the advanced movements like the Planche
and even working up to being able to do even more advanced skills like straddle hold, press
to a handstand, lower down to Planche and movements where not just a hold but a hold
in movement in motion is necessary.
Without this plank lean, this starting point, if you don’t have this down, you’re not
going to be able to get where you need to go properly. So let’s take a look at this
plank lean. Make sure that we have it down and use it to help us get strong in our straight
arm training.
The plank lean begins in a push-up position, making sure that we squeeze our body and rotate
our elbow pits forward. From here, we’re simply going to lean forward. Key point is
to make sure that when performing this, that we keep our elbow pits facing forward. This
is very important.
Really focus on pushing down into the parallettes as you lean your body forward. Make sure your
hips aren’t too high and also make sure that your hips don’t sag. Remember, lock
those arms out, keeping your elbow pits forward and lean forward as far as you can.
Once you get the hang of this or in other words you can hold it for an extended period
of time, you can start working on taking one leg up off of the ground.
Make sure that you’re not raising your hip higher on one side. We want to keep our hips
flat to the ground and extend our leg while keeping that forward lean with the elbow pits
facing forward.
In the beginning I suggest focusing on holding this for up to three seconds. Once you get
there, add a couple of seconds to it and each time, focus on your form. If you feel that
your form is decreasing while holding this, cut down on the seconds, go back, and reevaluate
your form.
Work on mastering this plank lean and it’s really going to help build that solid foundation
necessary to help you progress towards those more advanced movements.
I suggest working a plank lean on the parallettes in the beginning. Once you get comfortable
with that, you can feel free to take it down to the floor.
I’m going to cover in the next video why I feel that working on the parallettes before
you go down to the ground is important and will actually help you to get better in the
tricks that you’re working towards.
So remember, if you want to get those advanced movements, you got to have the proper straight
arm strength. Make sure you start at the beginning. Work on those progressions. Once you get the
foundation down, you can start adding things on top of that. But don’t just try and jump
to those advanced movements. That’s a sure way to get frustrated and also injured.
So be sure to head on over to www.GoldMedalBodies.com. Sign up with the Posse so that you can get
more free training videos like this one.
[End of transcript]