Range Of Motion – Strength’s Holy Grail.

ROM memeSo, surprisingly I have found that I have some strength gaps or should I say skill gaps in my requirements for the movements I have been attempting. For the planche and lever I have found that my strength is not deploying in the right range of motion to achieve the holds I am trying. My strength is very much mid range strength and unfortunately the back lever in particular requires strength beyond the regular range. Front lever is far more dependent on core strength than I had anticipated so I am working on my sheer strength of core, not as a stabilizer but as a contracting force for my body alignment. Front planche is being hampered by my wrist pain but also by the fact that my balance sucks and my lower back is weak preventing me from keeping my body aligned. Handstand is the  most successful so far which only means I have actually done one. My balance seems nonexistent when I am upside down even though I have pretty good balance when I am upright. I know in the back of my mind that a lot of the “strength” that gymnasts exhibit is stabilizing strength coming from extremely powerful smaller muscle groups but I hadn’t really realized just how much ROM comes into play when trying to do these skills.

So for now I am back into strength development in order to facilitate better attempts at the skills. Full ROM strength development which is very hard to do because it’s the most painful way to work out along with top contraction hold and slow release. I am experiencing pain so something is changing but it was quite a wake up call to realize that as strong as I thought I was, it wasn’t enough.

I leg pressed 16 plates again yesterday just because my ROM workouts made me feel weak 🙂

 

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