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Post by aikibujin on Mar 9, 2017 18:50:46 GMT -7
I look like a bald gangly spider magically sticking to the wall. What's your secret?! I would like to magically stick to the wall too.
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Post by alexandra on Mar 9, 2017 21:01:41 GMT -7
today I tried to incorporate some of the suggestions I got regarding campusing, and paying attention to my form. Here is what I managed to look like. Even though I am going to work on the first move for a while until my form is better, I tried to also do a max ladder on the small ones to see if anything changed once I paid more attention to form. Please comment if you think it looks any different/better. Basic ladder on smalls: IMG_3265.MOV (613.38 KB) Max first move on mediums: IMG_3266.MOV (692 KB) and 1-3-4 ladder on smalls: IMG_3270.MOV (759.41 KB) I am not that great with analyzing my mistakes, so please let me know if you think anything improved and if I should still proceed by focusing on only the first move. thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it!!
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Post by MarkAnderson on Mar 9, 2017 21:37:42 GMT -7
I'll go in reverse order...
-There's a ton of improvement in the 1-3-4. It looks much safer, particularly your 1st move. Your right elbow is bent (good), and your shoulder stays engaged (great). It looks like you're starting to pull up a bit more explosively on Rung 1 (before you release your traveling hand), but you could still do a lot better with that. It looks like you're very close to deadpointing the first move, so you're doing much better with releasing at the right time, maintaining a lock-off, and latching before you're falling away. On the second move, you're still falling away as soon as you release. Could be that your Left Arm is stronger, or more likely, you're in a stronger lock off position (completely contracted) when making the 1st move. At some point (once you've mastered the other stuff), start working on pushing down with your low hand when generating momentum for the second move. That will enable you to get the Right arm completely contracted when making the second move.
-The 1-4-4 Max 1st move looks more like your last workout--your elbow appears locked or very close to it (not ideal), and your shoulder looks completely extended (not good). You can see at ~3.5 seconds you adjust your right hand and your COM rises a smidge as you pull your shoulder back in. That said, it looks much less jarring than what you were doing before (your head doesn't snap), so I think you've made some progress here. Still, it would be wise to hold off on maxing out this exercise until you're ingrained the habit of keeping your shoulder tight and your elbow bent.
-On the basic ladder, I don't see any issues that would cause injury, but your movement is very choppy and robotic. I see this in all 3 vids, but especially this one. Ideally your movement would be more fluid and continuous. This could be a by-product of thinking too much (focusing so much attention on your form). Anyway, the Basic Ladder is a great exercise to practice fluidity because the moves are relatively short and easy (compared to Max Ladders, etc). In your case, it looks like you're adjusting your hands after each latch, which is forcing the discontinuous movement. So you should work on two things. 1) do at least one Basic Ladder on larger rungs that you don't have to hit perfectly, so you can bound from rung to rung. 2) practice hitting the rungs more precisely so you don't need to adjust. It looks like you're plenty strong arm-wise, that you should be able to hit the rungs better (for example, on the 1-3-4 you don't adjust at all). This could also just be a mental thing, where you're used to adjusting all the time. If so, try to resist that urge, especially on this exercise.
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Post by alexandra on Mar 9, 2017 21:51:02 GMT -7
thanks Mark for the quick response and the tips that made me realize that I wasn't paying attention to my shoulders and neck at all before. I really start to converge on thinking that the lack of my one arm lock off strength is what makes the difference between first and second move. I would not think that finger strength is my issue, as it was mentioned in some other comment - what would you say? With this slightly revised technique, would you still recommend that I keep only working on (1) first move only (2) smaller ladders - or (3) start with my hands in different rungs and work on second move only, (4) combination of all of the above? I know that given my previous video, the last exercise (second move only) was not recommended, but maybe if I pay attention to the shoulders and tight form, perhaps this would be very beneficial for lock off purposes? I will definitely keep doing basic ladders and try to smooth them out.
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Post by Chris W on Mar 10, 2017 6:24:27 GMT -7
Alexandra, for what it's worth, I've progressed pretty methodically in my campusing. I never touched a campus board until I started my Rock Prodigy training (whenever the book came out, spring 2014?). I couldn't do either matching ladders or basic ladders on the large (Metolius) rungs at that time. For my first campus sessions, I only did matching and basic ladders on large rungs until I could complete them smoothly (most sets completed as well). Then I added max ladders to 1,3,4, then to 1,3,4.5, then to 1,3,5. Once I could do all of these on the large rungs, I started the process over again on the medium rungs. Once I could do the medium rungs smoothly, then I went to the small rungs. My last campus session was on Sunday, and I finally completed matching and basic ladders on all my sets on the small rungs. For my next session, I'll add 1,3,4 on the small rungs until I can complete those smoothly.
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Post by ehowell on Mar 10, 2017 6:57:16 GMT -7
I know I've seen others discuss this elsewhere on here, but I swear basic ladders are harder than max ladders! I rarely "send" the basic ladders on small rungs, but I'm fairly consistent on 1-3-4.5 max ladders.
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Post by alexandra on Mar 10, 2017 8:37:22 GMT -7
this is strange to hear. I find using the medium/large rungs at least as hard as using the small rungs. I also feel I can do basic ladders consistently (alas with choppy form/technique) on smalls without having the "shoulder shagging" issue, but when it comes to max ladders, no matter which rungs I do them on, the second move is not optimal or easy. In fact, I would say that I have a harder time using the large rungs than the small rungs, since I feel there is more area to "avoid" when going to latch a large rung, but this might just be a mental issue (probably I hit my hand on a large rung at some point when I was trying to latch it and now I am traumatized ;p).
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Post by ehowell on Mar 10, 2017 8:54:19 GMT -7
I find using the medium/large rungs at least as hard as using the small rungs. Yep, sounds like your fingers are game, but your shoulders/lats/stabilizers might be the issue. I have this issue as well to some degree, but I still think I'm on the up and up in terms of finger strength. For me, I think because I don't view the ladders as terribly important, I'm less precise (as Mark pointed out in his analysis) and by the time I get the top, my inefficiencies have caught up with me. It's not an issue on L and M rungs.
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 10, 2017 10:58:33 GMT -7
There's definitely a huge amount of improvement between your previous video and the latest one. The stuff that really concerned me is no longer there: your head is not snapping back, and you're not dropping down on your shoulder anymore when you latch a move. But there is still one more posture issue you need to work on before focusing on your technique. In all three videos, you start hanging on the campus board with your shoulders shrugged, and you maintain this shoulder position throughout the campusing exercise. See this article on why you shouldn't do that. Left: incorrect form; right: correct form As soon as you pull up on a campus rung, you should pull your shoulders down and away from your ears, open up your chest by pulling your scapula back (imagine you're trying to pinch a pencil with them). And you want to keep your shoulders engaged like this during the entire exercise. Assume you fix this issue with your form, I don't see any problem working different exercises now. But I agree with Mark and Chris, I think you should focus on making the basic ladder smooth and continuous. The basic ladder is really the foundation of all campus ladders. Think about it, if you're choppy on the basic ladder, then how can you hope to get smooth on the max ladder? I know the basic ladder seems like a boring exercise, especially when you can hit 1-4 really well. But in basic ladder you're really working on the timing, precision, controlling your center of gravity, using momentum, etc. The other exercises build on top of that. So maybe take an 8/2 approach, for every 8 sets of basic ladder (where you focus on improving your technique), you can do 2 sets of other exercises for fun. The reason you're choppy on the basic ladder is because you have too much side to side movement with your center of gravity and your legs, which is turn is caused by you pulling up too slowly. On your first move right off the ground, you had a good explosive pull up, so your CoG and your legs barely swung to the left. But starting from the second move on, you pulled up fairly slowly, and then basically throw your hand toward the next rung, which caused your CoG and your legs to swing to the opposite side to counter that throw. Once you start swinging, you need to control it before your next move, that's where you get the stop and go motion. To fix this, instead of think of it as throwing your lower hand toward the next rung, focus on pull up explosively and throwing your CoG toward the next rung. I also found that bending my knees and keeping my feet behind me helps with keeping the swing in control. Personally I would get that movement down on the large rungs before moving to the medium and small rungs. Maybe your fingers are strong enough for the medium and small rungs, but learning moment is best done at the easiest level first, before making it harder. The large and small rungs may FEEL the same to you, but moving on large rungs is going to be easier than on small rungs. Watch Sean McColl doing the basic ladder (1:22 - 1:52), notice how little he is swinging from side to side. He makes it look very easy and smooth, but the way he was doing it is actually very hard. On the 1-4-4, you have the shrugged shoulders and fully extended elbow that Mark mentioned. You're also dropping down on your shoulders when you match on the top rung. So maybe dial it down a notch and do 1-3-3, but focus on keeping the shoulders engaged and pulled away from your ears the whole time. I'm not too concerned with your elbows on the 1-3-3 since that seems to be well within your reach. But again, I think you should focus most of your practice on the basic ladder now, and maybe throw in a couple of 1-3-3 from time to time for fun and to gauge your improvement. By the way, pulling your shoulder down and away from your ear is the very first movement in an one arm pull up. Seeing how you're not pulling your shoulders down on the campus board, this could also be the reason why you're having a hard time with the one-arm pull up.
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Post by alexandra on Mar 10, 2017 20:44:19 GMT -7
thanks for the suggestion. I will try the correct shoulder form next time. In retrospect it seems obvious that this is the right form, but how did I not think about it myself???
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Post by alexandra on Mar 13, 2017 5:45:39 GMT -7
It turns out making the basic ladder "smoother" is no trivial task! Sean McColl makes it look way too easy in that video!! Any advice on what it takes to make the ladder look like this? (up to some large factor of approximation)? What to focus on mostly?
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Post by tetrault on Mar 13, 2017 6:44:21 GMT -7
Looks to me like he is doing 1 arm pull-ups all the way up!
As I will unlikely ever be able to perform a feat of such strength, being this smooth will take lots of practice to execute very well timed, accurate dead points, moving my CoG enough to create some momentum, but only as much as it HAS to move, as aikibujin describes in the paragraphs before the McColl video.
As far as posture goes, I know it has been said a bunch of times, but note at 1:36 when McColl starts his second lap, he purposely re-engages his shoulders down/back and gets a little bend on the elbows.
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 13, 2017 9:35:36 GMT -7
Looks to me like he is doing 1 arm pull-ups all the way up! As I will unlikely ever be able to perform a feat of such strength, being this smooth will take lots of practice to execute very well timed, accurate dead points, moving my CoG enough to create some momentum, but only as much as it HAS to move, as aikibujin describes in the paragraphs before the McColl video. As far as posture goes, I know it has been said a bunch of times, but note at 1:36 when McColl starts his second lap, he purposely re-engages his shoulders down/back and gets a little bend on the elbows. Good analysis! I agree, as Sean McColl mentioned in the video, he's trying to make the basic ladder hard for himself by not using momentum. I used his video as an example of what's possible, but you probably can't do that unless you have his beastly strength. For most of us, making the basic ladder smooth (or as smooth as we can) is about precision and timing. Since most of us can probably hit 1-4 or 1-5 on the first move, it's actually hard not to overshoot it on 1-2. We need to modulate our power to hit 1-2 at a deadpoint (precision), then pull as fast as we can to the next move (timing). I think the basic ladder in Eric Horst's video shows a pretty good example of what to aim for (4:10-4:35). The girl in the opening credit of the same video also does a good job on the basic ladder (around 0:14, unfortunately you only get a couple seconds of it). Notice how they all keep their knees bent and their feet behind them to minimize the swing from their legs.
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Post by alexandra on Mar 13, 2017 10:15:20 GMT -7
ok now I feel a bit better. When I touched the rungs yesterday and tried to do a ladder like McColl, I thought to myself that this is impossible. Glad to hear there is a more tractable way
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