Quest for a Back Walk Over

In the past, I've always limited myself in regards to what I can accomplish physically.  This started as a child and followed me along thru adulthood.  It wasn't until about a little over 4 years ago that I finally made a change.  And it didn't take long for me to realize what I really could be capable of.  Never would have thought in a million years that I would be able to do even one chin up...now I can do double digit dead hang pull up reps.  Didn't even know what a dragon flag is, now I'm trying to find ways to make them harder.  Well when I was younger and I would see someone do a back walk over, I wished I could do one and resigned myself that it would never happen.  These days I know it is absolutely a possibility if I put my mind to it and work hard.  So one of the many things I want to develop the capability of doing is back walk overs.

My Plan for Progression

Bridge Ups

Obviously need to be able to do these.  Currently I can, but I'm not very comfortable in that position plus my hands/feet are pretty far apart.  I need to get comfortable before I can start working on the next step in the progression.  In order to become comfortable, I'm going to initially target 5 sets.  First 3 sets will be 5 reps for 10 second holds.  Once I can do that, I'll increase it to 10 reps for 10 second holds.  The last 2 sets will be static holds...for as long as I can hold it.  I'll eventually be looking to be capable of doing 5 sets for 60-90s.  Also during this time period I will be working on increasing my back flexibility so that I can get my hands / feet closer together.  I will do that while practicing bridges, but I'll also do that when I'm doing sit ups on the GHR machine.  I'll basically try to hold and pull myself closer towards the machine each rep.  Using the GHR machine, I'll only be able to do that once a week...at most.  But the Bridge Ups, I want to target 2-3 times a week.  Once I've managed to get pretty comfortable doing these, I'll be onto the next step of the progression.




Bridge Wall Walks

This is basically where you position yourself with your back to the wall.  You then arch back and slowly walk your hands down the wall until your hands touch the floor and you are in a Bridge position.  After that, you walk your hands back up the wall.  With these, I would probably want to target 5 sets of 5 reps before I moved onto the next step of the progression.  While doing these, I can also start working on the kick over aspect of the movement


Elevated Kick Overs  

For these, I'll basically be doing a bridge, but with my feet elevated on some surface.  I can even use a wall at first if I need to walk my feet up in order to get my feet over.  I may also try these where instead of kicking over while my hands are locked out, I may start off kicking over into a back roll by rolling over my neck.  I'm fairly used to doing that thanks to Jiu Jitsu, but maybe I can leverage that as a way to progress with these as well.  Anyway, I'll try to keep the set/rep range to 5/5.  And work on reducing the elevation that my feet start at.  Once I get it to the point where I can do the kick over from the standard bridge up...all I need is the ability to fall into a bridge.


Elevated Bridge Falls

Excuse the terminology...I don't know if these are called something else, but this terminology makes sense to me.  With these, I'll be working at falling into a bridge from different heights.  Once I can get to the point where I can fall into a bridge where my hands are touching the floor, I should finally be capable of doing the Back Walk Over and from that point it will just be a case of working on improving the technique to the point where it looks easy.


I will be posting updates in regards to where I'm at with this progression.

Bench Press

The Bench Press is one of the weight lifting exercises that I've been trying to master.  I have already gotten to the point where I can bench press my body weight, but I have a long term goal of being able to bench press 135 lbs with confidence (i.e. a few solid paused reps).

The problem is I've hit a plateau. I can do 120 lbs comfortably with a pause, but beyond that I get stuck. I believe it is not only a physical failure but also a mental failure. I do have a horrible tendency of psyching myself out when I bench. This is also very evident with my benching...especially the descent. It will be so horribly slow, that I'll end up wasting a lot of energy. For some reason that only seems to effect my first rep and last rep. Usually the other reps, the descent is nice, smooth and with a good speed.  Given that, I know I'm dealing with a mental block that is keeping me from progressing.

As for the physical side, if I can get past the mental block...I'll gain a bit more energy which may help to increase my bench, but I do also want to work on my physical weakness at the same time.  Last week while benching, I took a video to see where my sticking point was.  Turns out I have the strength to get the bar off of my chest, but after about 4 inches of movement, I'm stuck.  I can't seem to press it beyond that point when I'm a little over my max.


Plan of Attack:

So rather than continuing to bench and making very little progress...I want to try to attack both of my weaknesses head on.  I plan to utilize Pin Presses to try to work on my physical weakness at my sticking point.  For my mental weakness, I plan on doing several sets of singles at 120 lbs.  I'll start those sets with the goal of doing a pause...but the goal is really to work on speeding up the descent.  So I'm not going to be too critical of whether they are paused or TNG reps.  I'm going to give this a try for a month and re-evaluate to determine if I'm noticing progress and maybe even see if it has improved my regular bench.

Elbow Levers

I have been working on variations of the elbow lever since the end of October 2014.  It was actually odd how I came upon the elbow lever.  I was messing around on the mat after Jiu Jitsu class and I wanted to see if I could support my body with my arms.  I just rammed my elbows into my abdomen and started lifting my body onto my arms and eventually was able to get my legs straight.  When I got home, I was searching online to see if I could find anything in regards to what that movement was and I found out about elbow levers (aka peacock pose).  I must say, this was another defining point in my last few years of working out that gave me a new breath of fresh air.  The first time was when I was able to do my first chin up.  That was when I really fell in love with working out.  Seems that although I love weight lifting...the body weight stuff always seems to be what pushes me forward and keeps me going.  And it seems elbow levers showed me a new door that I really didn't even realized existed and it has been so eye opening.

I've actually come quite far with my elbow levers since last October.  I approached elbow levers sort of like lifting...reps and sets...but instead of focusing on weight, I focused on time.  I would approach the exercise two ways:  Short duration / More reps (this helped me to get comfortable getting into position) and Long duration / 1 reps (this helped me learn to hold the position).  This approached has been integral with all of my body weight work.


Basic Elbow Lever (on the floor / on the bar)

With the basic elbow lever, I started working with them on a bench.   I would grip the side of the bench which was a bit kinder on my elbows and made it easier to balance.  In addition, it allowed me to drop my head below the bench if necessary which again, helped with balance.  At the same I would also work with them on the smith machine bar.  Again, it was easier to balance by gripping the bar and easier on my wrists.  With the bar I found it to be easier to get into position because my legs had more room to travel...so if they dropped a bit they were still in the air rather than hitting the ground or bench.  But at the same time, it is a bit more difficult mentally encase I lose balance and end up falling over the bar.  Using both of these methods made it easier to master the elbow lever on the floor.

Currently I'm working on two more progressions with elbow levers:

• Elevating the legs
• One arm elbow lever.

Elevated Legs Elbow Lever

Trying to elevate the legs is very difficult on the bench or bar since it is much easier to face plant when raising the legs and I prefer to only face plant a couple inches rather than a few feet. So I have been working on the elevated legs on the floor. It definitely takes a lot more effort, coordination and balance to get the legs up higher than parallel to the floor, but I have been making some progress. I'd say right now I'm able to hold about a 2.5 foot elevation with my legs from the ground. But this is still a work in progress...I do want to get my legs higher.


One Arm Elbow Lever 

As for the one arm elbow lever...I'm not at that point right now. First off, I have to work on conditioning my core to handle the entire body weight to rest on a small surface area where the elbow contacts that abdomen. I remember when I first started doing elbow levers, that area on both sides ended up having a bruised feeling. While I'm building that conditioning, I am also working on developing the balance and coordination. With this one, I'm going back to the bar and working on one arm assisted elbow levers. At first I was working on moving the distance between the two arms...of course having the main arm supporting most of the weight. But in the beginning, the other arm also did take a bit of the weight as well. Now I've gotten the distance between the arms to the point where the other arm is taking very little weight (maybe a couple lbs here or there), but is primarily helping with balance. I haven't been playing around too much with separating my legs to help with balance but that is probably the next step I'm going to be working on to help shift the balance away from the other arm.