fitness coaching – Flight Training Fitness

Muscular Endurance vs. Cardiovascular Endurance

If you’re working muscular endurance, aren’t you also working cardiovascular endurance? You could be, but not necessarily. These two similar terms actually describe different processes in the body and specifically in the muscle fibers. So, today let’s break them both down a little so that we can train for the goals we need when we need them.

Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to endure repeated contraction over an extended amount of time.

This might mean hanging from a bar for a minute, or it might be lifting a light to moderate weight for a higher number of repetitions, let’s say more than 12. In either case what is actually happening is that the contractile units (muscle fibers) are repetitively firing over time. That’s right, you’re not just hanging on that bar, you’re muscles’ contractile units are re-firing over and over again. And their ability to do so requires a certain kind of efficiency of their cellular metabolism. Specifically in the one minute hang, the muscle fibers (cells) are mostly using glycolysis to break down glucogen in the body (stored in muscles and the liver) to make ATP to use for energy. And if we continue to demand the muscles to use glucogen for energy in this way, they will adapt to start storing more glycogen to convert into more ATP. Specificity matters. What we demand of our body is what it gets better at doing.

Cardiovascular endurance is the ability of the heart and lungs to maximize aerobic metabolism to deliver enough oxygen to your muscles and body during extended work times.

The heart and the accessory muscles of respiration do also build muscular endurance, but we are also going to see specific cellular changes here. One thing the muscle fibers (cells) will do is create more mitochondria in order to process the oxygen you’re using into ATP for energy. You’ll also of course be improving muscular endurance in the muscles that you’re using, for instance your legs when you’re running.

Aerobic metabolism is the body’s most efficient way of generating energy. The problem is, it takes around 1-3 minutes after you start an activity to start supplying energy. Before that, our body uses two forms of anaerobic metabolism (obtaining ATP for energy without oxygen). The systems providing this energy are the phosphagen system and the previously mentioned glycolytic system, which provide energy for the first 30 seconds or so and then up to around 1-3 minutes, respectively.

Without going into a bunch of details on that, we can oversimplify a bit and say that much of the short term energy we use in our aerial practices rely heavily on glycolytic metabolism.

Think about a typical training session in which you practice a skill a few times, resting in between, or where you string together a few tricks at a time as you choreograph, again resting in between. Most of your conditioning and flexibility training is also set up this way, with workloads divided up in short bursts between rest periods. Generally, if you’re not working to a level of being slightly out of breath and maintaining that for an extended amount of time as you work, you aren’t significantly working or improving aerobic metabolism. The one exception we see is in some forms of HIIT training, where while technically intervals are anaerobic, depending on the type of HIIT you’re doing, there may be cardiovascular benefits as well.

Taking this into the air, work only changes to cardiovascular endurance when we remain active the the air for longer than 2-3 minutes or so (again, I’m simplifying). Have you ever tried to run a demanding 6 minute routine for the first time after only choreographing it in bits, or working the skills individually in practice? Chances are, if you weren’t doing a lot of extended freestyle work at the same time as you were practicing individual components, you felt out of breath about halfway through. Similarly, if you weren’t working on holding onto that apparatus for longer periods of time, your grip probably bailed even more quickly (30s-2min) from lack of muscular endurance. Now you know why!

So, how do you constantly make sure you’re training to target the right balance of the aerobic and anaerobic systems at the same time? I recommend practicing new tricks in small flows to gain grip and general muscular endurance while also adding a session to just freestyle and dance for longer periods into your training week. Keep in mind, if you’re looking to run a race, you’ll need to train specifically by running and for increasingly longer times to gain the cardiovascular endurance required for that purpose. Conversely, your running training, while strengthening your overall cardiovascular health won’t so much help the efficiency of say your biceps to use oxygen for energy. Why? Specificity. Remember, what you train for, is what the body will improve at, all the way down to specific muscle fibers.

Not sure how to fit it all in with skill practices, strength, endurance, flexibility and aerobic fitness? Or do you want to assess your plan to make sure it’s right for your goals? Check out my custom training plans, and consultations at http://www.erininamarieness.com/flighttrainingfitness

Unsolicited Coaching

Online or in person, is it ever okay to “coach” someone who hasn’t asked you to? I’ll be the first to admit, I’m guilty of a minor version of this in the virtual world. I’m guilty of seeing an Insta-friend posting progress on a move that I’ve been watching them struggle through and work on improving, and they’re getting so close to finally nailing it. I get excited, and I’m like “OMG Yaas!! Just try (insert suggestion here), and you’ve got it!” Well intentioned, I promise, and definitely in the realm of “tuck your tailbone,” not “and then let go, flip and recatch.” But, the thing is, I’m realizing that even this small thing, assumes, at best, that the person doesn’t already know what I’m telling them. And at worst, it’s possible that they are in fact trying to do that very thing I said, and maybe not fully succeeding yet. And in that light, my comment could even make them feel less proud of their well deserved achievement. It could make them feel like they aren’t succeeding because I’ve declared that it isn’t happening, even though they clearly have improved at the thing (again, maybe even by doing what I’m suggesting they do more of). And because this isn’t happening face to face, things get left there irrevocably, because there may not be any follow-up. Now, if they were already my client, that’s one thing. Because I’d know and they’d know what we’ve been working on. But unsolicited, it may not be as well received, or as helpful as I intended.

There is another side to the coin of course. There’s the fact that we live in a DIY world, where more and more people are learning things from the internet-which has as many disreputable as reputable sources of information to sift through. As trained athletes, artists, and coaches; it can feel like we have a responsibility (like paramedics at an emergency on their day off) to chime in when we feel that someone is being unsafe, or is missing critical guidance. And there are definitely times online, and in person, when saying something is in everyone’s best interest.

My personal example of self-reflection is probably not the hill we’re all going to die on regarding this issue, and thankfully not something anyone’s seemed to take any way besides positively, yet. But recently, I witnessed a friend get unsolicitedly “coached” online, not just technically, but aesthetically as well. It got me thinking about where the line is. Is it ever really appropriate to coach someone unsolicitedly? And where do I want to draw the line personally in my own practice.

Let’s start with a definite Nope example. So, of course, much of what I touched upon in my personal story above, in reference to the dangers of giving coaching comments online, applies to doing this thing in person as well. But when I told my fiancé (a professional modern dancer of 24 years) that I was considering writing about this topic, I was a little surprised by his enthusiasm for the theme. Until he dived into a story about the time he was practicing a yoga handstand in the dusty playa at Burning Man, when an overly excited stranger (who happened to also be a Ranger…) took it upon himself to grab him by the hips from behind and try to “properly align him.” I am saddened that we still have to keep saying that touching someone without consent (unless this is that “you’re going to die right now” situation described below) is absolutely NOT OKAY! No. It’s just not. On a side note, I was recently sexually harassed by a coworker who said that if I wasn’t open to being randomly touched by strangers without consent then I was going to have a really boring life. Um, let me just pause right here, to promise that has not been the case at all in my full 38 years of life, and unsolicited touching has not added definitive positive value to my life. Really. Besides being just uncool, and potential sexual harassment, there is also the fact that by grabbing an unsuspecting person (especially one balancing upside down), you’re more likely to cause a fall or an injury because they are startled or uncomfortable with your surprise gift of the touchy feelies.

On the other hand, the most obvious example of when an unsolicited intervention is more than acceptable, is in an actual “stop doing that immediately, you’re about to die” situation. Someone’s rigging is failing before your eyes, or they’re falling out of a handstand into a moat of fire. In this instance, I’d absolutely say, grab them, warn them, catch them, push them away from the moat now (unless that’s part of their act or something) and apologize for any breach of propriety later. But also note, the extreme of this situation. Where safety is concerned, I personally believe that there is such a thing as informed consent, and adequate preparation to decrease the level of risk. After that (and only after that), there is personal choice. None of us are getting out of this life alive and what level of risk we choose to expose ourselves to (exposing others is another issue entirely) is a matter of self-expression and self-determination. It is possible that in our desire to assist someone by exposing the dangers of an action to them, we don’t stop to consider that they may already be aware of and providing for the level of risk they are comfortable taking in regards to said dangers. Aerial arts, fire arts, pole dance, sword swallowing, and more are all dangerous. Anyone undertaking them thinking the opposite, or someone promising another undertaking them that this is not the case, is naive or untrustworthy respectively.

This is not to say that there isn’t a way to share our concern for safety, or offer our support, encouragement, expert suggestions, or even flat-out opinion to others. It all comes back down to consent and a little diplomacy. We see a thing and want to offer advice to help someone soar to greater heights, or to help prevent another person potential pain or death. Simply asking if we can offer some feedback, perhaps even in a private forum is the respectful way to go. “Were you aware that…?” can be far more tactful than “That trick looks scary to me, don’t do it.” By the way, saying it looks scary to you, is not the same as saying it’s actually being performed unsafely, especially if you don’t know anything about the trick. Additionally, taking the conversation off a public forum has the added benefit of ensuring that our urge to comment is less about us simply feeling the need to be seen and heard, and is actually about the intention that we are aiming for (guidance, encouragement, safety check, etc.). And asking if the person is ready and open to receiving our input, helps to ensure that we are in fact listening and showing concern for them. When we’re talking about approaching an issue involving safety, it has the added benefit of allowing our message to be heard with respect and not to come across like trolling or online bullying, which makes the dangerous thing much more likely to be corrected.

Finally, in my friend’s case, there was also the unexpected criticism of whether they should perform a certain trick in front of an audience at all, because it looked dangerous and uncomfortable (and I suspect not ‘pretty’), all of which are arguably personal artistic choices (again assuming that the trick is performed with all possible risk mitigation, and with fully trained professional-level execution). The fact that it might make an audience member feel uncomfortable, nervous, amazed, disgusted, etc. could all be feelings that the artist intends to evoke. Because that is one of the definitions of art, to evoke an emotional response. Other notable parts of the definition are to master a skill through practice, and to create works with imagination and creativity. Art, even aerial arts, pole dancing, and ballet do not always have to be stereotypically beautiful or look completely risk free. And you don’t have to like it or watch it. But, perhaps stop and consider if your opinion on how it “should” be (besides properly executed) is relevant artistic criticism.

Graffiti by Shok-1, photographed by Art of the State

There is also a time and a place for giving artistic criticism. Generally that is only when it is solicited by the artist while they are in process, or after the art has been submitted as a completed work to the public. I would argue that showing a work in progress online, while public, is not a completed work, and so not open for artistic criticism unless solicited. The process of creating quality art can be a delicate, vulnerable, emotional, and physically taxing journey. Giving feedback too soon, or unconstructively can kill great art before it reaches it’s potential. However, educated and well thought out criticism is also needed to polish rough pieces into brilliance. This paradox is why there actually are processes for guiding solicited feedback in the theater and other arts. I particularly enjoyed the version that has been developed by Liz Lerman. It is called the Critical Response Process, which I had the privilege of going through with the Arcos Summer Movement Intensive here in Austin, TX a few years ago. And it was blissful. And appropriately timed in my process. And solicited. I highly recommend the experience.

In closing, I’m grateful for witnessing the strangely angry responses to my friend’s post. It got me thinking about how I want my voice as a coach and cheerleader to appear online (and in person). I’m definitely going to keep shouting encouragement to my Insta Feed (you can’t make me stop!), and while I hope to be a little more aware of how I shout that encouragement, I’m certainly not perfect. None of us are. What I do hope, is that we all maybe think a little more about how we engage with each other, especially in the easy to misunderstand world of the interwebs.

How do you grip your Levers (or do you call them Planches)?

pull-up-grip-types

*Remember when we go upside down, an overhand grip will look underhand and vice versa.

Welcome! I’ve been wanting to start a blog for Flight Training, but have been sitting in the contemplation phase of creation, pondering what I would want to share. Well, grip position in moves like Lever (specifically for Aerialists) seemed like a good place to start. It has just the right balance of conflicting information and debate online, personal interest for myself and my clients, and the opportunity to geek out on movement mechanics. These moves (Front Lever and Back Lever), originate in Gymnastics, but have taken on lives of their own in the Calisthenics (bodyweight training), Street Workout, and Aerial Worlds.

Even the names of these moves morph across disciplines, causing confusion.

Front Lever

Back Lever

Planche

For instance, I call the positions in the first two images Levers (front and back, respectively), which seems to be the most used terminology in Calisthenics and Gymnastics. Yet, the Aerial world has adopted the term Planche for these positions. In Calisthenics and Gymnastics, a Planche is the third image, a move where your weight is supported on your hands on a surface or apparatus below you. The shape of the body in each is relatively similar until you look closely at the hands and shoulders. And in mechanical terms, all three are in fact levers. Want to nerd out on the physics of a Back Lever? Did you know that systems of levers enable all of your movement? Alright, back on topic, let’s talk about grip.

Let’s start with Front Lever, as it’s grip is less hotly contended. Front Lever is entered with an overhand (pronated) grip, or occasionally in the case of rings or parallel bars, a neutral grip (palm faced inwards). Two common entrances are to pull up into it from a dead hang, or to lower into it from a straight body inversion (Needle in Aerial terminology). The latter is definitely easier and is the generally prescribed entrance if you are still working on gaining the strength to hold your lever confidently, no matter what progression you are on. This variation also has an advantage in helping you to find the proper shoulder position (which I’m including because it’s intimately related to grip). In front lever, your shoulders are simultaneously trying to externally rotate, depress, and retract slightly. Here’s a quick anatomy summary if you need it.

Want more anatomy and physiology? Check out this book by the Circus Doc.

Now, let’s break that down. The best cues I’ve heard to achieve the advised slight external rotation, is to think about your hands trying to pull the bar apart or break it in half by bending the ends downward, or to imagine wrapping the triceps under and in. They can’t actually externally rotate fully when on a bar apparatus, but this puts them into a more supported, engaged position. For scapular depression, we’re thinking about the tried and true yoga cue to pull your shoulders down your back. And finally, the shoulders are actually in a neutrally engaged position and not fully retracted (squeezed together in the back), however the action of trying to keep the shoulders squeezed back and down as you lower from your inverted position, will steer most people to the right position (retracting fully while in a front lever is actually incredibly difficult). Like I said, there are less hotly contested issues of form in this position. The biggest debate I came across, was how hard to retract your shoulders. We’re sticking with neutral, or slightly retracted over here. What about the rest of your body? Think about your handstand position, or being slightly hollow. Keep excessive curve out of the low back, be fully engaged through the core, don’t pike at the hips, and the eventual goal is to be able to keep those legs squeezed tightly together. This holds true for both Levers, and Planche for that matter.

This brings us to the most debated form cue in lever training. What grip do we use in a back lever? Traditionally, male gymnasts use an underhand (supinated) grip when moving into back lever, with the shoulders slightly protracted and depressed. When transitioning on rings from a dead hang (straight arms, facing forwards) to a back lever, the grip rotates from pronated to neutral (palms inwards) to supinated as you invert through. You can think about the thumbs of the hands turning outwards, as the shoulder rotates through this transition to picture what’s happening. In this grip variation, the end point for your triceps are to glue to your lats, which helps to keep the shoulder in external rotation as well. Here’s an example of the movement on rings with an added press to planche.

Back Lever to Planche

As I mentioned previously, there is fierce debate out there in the FITer-Net about proper grip position in back lever. If you want to waste (or enjoy) an afternoon, browse some fitness forums with keywords “grip in back lever.” The debates is endless. If you search through long enough though, you will start to hear a consistent cry from the Men’s Gymnastics community. This is that supinated grip is essential for building bicep, shoulder and tendon strength (especially the biceps tendon) to enable progress to more advanced gymnastics moves, like Hefesto and Maltese. Of note, the Back Lever, while classified as one of the “hardest bodyweight moves” you can master in Calisthenics, is the base level (Level A) of strength in Men’s Gymnastics. Sigh, progress is always a matter of perspective.

In my experience, an underhand (supinated) grip in back lever has the same proposed mechanical advantage of pressing down on the bar against the force of your bodyweight’s gravitational pull, as the pronated grip of front lever does. Pushing the bar seems easier to me than pulling the bar to overcome gravity, and the propensity to a more internally rotated shoulder when entering a back lever from a pronated grip, isn’t my favorite thing to fight against. Conversely, others in forums state that using a pronated grip makes the move seem easier for them, or that the supinated grip puts strain on their elbow. The pro-supinated grippers claim that this pain is an indicator that they are not actually strong enough to be doing the level of training they are attempting (Full Lever Hold attempts rather than Advanced Tuck Lever Hold attemps for instance), and that they aren’t strengthening properly by going through proper progressions using the supinated grip. Their particular concern is that the biceps tendon is weak, or weaker than the surrounding muscles if progressions have happened too quickly. Here’s an experiment, try putting your hands out straight behind your back while standing. Face your palms up and have a friend (gently) press up on the back of your hands, while you try to resist. Now, face your palms down and have the friend (seriously, be gentle) try to press up on your palms while you resist. For me, the second is easier and more comfortable to all joints involved. I’m curious, what about you? Feel free to spam me with your answers in the comments.

Ultimately, the consensus that seems to have developed in the Calisthenics world is that either grip is okay, as long as you are not having pain, the rest of your form is on point, and you are truly strong enough to be working on these moves by following the proper progressions. I think it’s definitely possible that some people are more natural pullers or pressers due to genetics, and what kinds of movements their body is accustomed to. So, in some sense, while there seem to be functional strength benefits to a supinated grip in back lever, natural preference may be the right answer for how to grip if you’re not training as a male gymnast,* or planning on working on those more advanced moves.

Now, I am an aerialist, and I train aerialists. And we have unique considerations in this debate. If your primary apparatus is Straps or Silks, you can most likely go ahead and apply much of the wisdom from how grip and shoulder rotation in back lever are cued on the rings (remember, thumb rotates from in to out). The difference is that the wrist is put into a different position when gripping a flexible apparatus than when gripping a hard surface. So, while you’d still be thinking about the same shoulder and grip positions, and wrapping in of the triceps and elbow; your grip will most likely actually remain and look more like a slightly neutral grip. Though, I’ve seen both fully pronated and supinated grips on these apparati as well. Since Trapeze is my primary aerial language though, I’ll defer to the experts in these apparati, but my opinion is the best grip for an individual is the one that puts the least strain on the wrists, while keeping them in alignment, and the rest of the body in proper form.

When we approach this move from a Lyra or Trapeze, we encounter a more practical issue to consider. Most of our moves on a Trapeze are going to use an overhand (pronated) grip, and while Lyra moves utilize an underhanded (supinated) grip more often than Trapeze (due to the curve of the bar making this a more ergonomically desirable grip), there are still a good number of situations where you’ll find yourself moving from an overhand grip on this apparatus. Since you cannot simply rotate from pronated to supinated grip on a bar apparatus, being able to enter our back levers safely and strongly from an overhand or underhand grip simply offers us the advantage of more choices in our choreography.

For myself, and my clients practicing back lever on a bar, my advice is to not neglect the supinated (underhand) grip, and even to train with it most of the time, to protect your joints and build the necessary strength in the bicep tendon (as long as this grip is not causing you pain). Keep in mind that it takes tendons longer to strengthen than muscles. I would recommend sticking with the supinated grip as you work on the progressions that you’ll want to go through long before you actually ever try to hold your body in a full lever. Then, once you are ready to hold a back lever (no matter how strong we are in other areas, this could take six months-a year), train with a supinated grip 60% or more of the time, and switch the grip to pronated for the rest of your training. An example of what this could look like at an advanced/intermediate level is 3 sets of the following 4 exercises, performed to failure of proper form (not complete muscle failure): Full or Straddle Back Lever holds (supinated grip), Advanced Tuck or Basic Tuck Lever holds (alternate 2 supinated, 1 pronated grip), Skin the Cats (pronated grip), Back Lifts or Skin the Cats on Rings, Straps or Silks with the grip and shoulder rotation described above.

*For purposes of this blog, I use the term ‘male’ not to make a distinction between male or female identifying people who may be trying to get a Lever, but to distinguish between people of any gender identity who are choosing specifically to pursue training in the style of gymnastics referred to as Men’s Gymnastics.

**Please for the love of your life, always train with a qualified, experienced coach, in person, when trying new things. Use proper landing mats when going upside down. And make sure the equipment that you use is rated and rigged for what you are using it for. For example, over the doorway pull-up bars are not generally made for inversions or dynamic movements. Your safety is only a strong as its weakest link.

Disclosure: Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. This does not affect what products I recommend.

**The Most Relevant of the Sources and Resources I read for this Post**

http://www.ringfraternity.com/tutorials/back-lever.html