♪ Different breed ♪
♪ When you take my hand ♪
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- There was a great response to the Tim Ferriss,
Chris Sommers gymnastic interview video that I did.
One question that I did get asked a lot is
if I had done the Fundamentals course that they talked about
or any of their other courses and what I thought about them.
So, the answer is yes.
I did do the Fundamentals course
and I'm currently in the middle of doing
their Handstand course.
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So each day is a video on one movement.
A lot of the movements are tied into mobility
and some if you do yoga,
they would actually seem pretty familiar.
There's the lizard pose, there's an ape walk,
there's a some good mobility twists;
straight leg bear walk.
It's very much an introductory type course
in the sense that it doesn't,
it just sort of exposes you
to a few different mobility moves.
It doesn't really go anywhere,
so there's no rep scheme by design
because they don't want people to force themselves
to do a certain number of movements
if this is like the first time they're ever really doing
any kind of mobility work.
With each movement they sort of show you the target
and they have some scaled versions
if you don't have the mobility yet to do that target.
From a coaches perspective, I did pick up a few handy tips.
Basically, my thoughts on the fundamentals,
if you do CrossFit
or if you have some familiarity with gymnastics moves
or not even gymnastic moves, just yoga poses,
mobility poses,
actually the fundamentals is worth a skip.
If you're a coach there are a few corrections
and scalable things for some movements
that I did find handy.
There's a couple good mobility movements.
There's a few movements in there that I've actually
incorporated into mobility work, post workout, as a group.
So there's a couple things I picked up as a coach
but as me as an athlete, wasn't that useful.
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But I did sign up for the Handstand course.
After completing the fundamentals I still was curious.
I liked what they were doing
and so I wanted to try the Handstand course.
I wanted to focus on something a little bit more
CrossFit specific because that's sort of my focus right now.
So handstands seem like a pretty cool thing.
I mean, A, once you can do a handstand
and a pressed handstand, it's pretty badass.
B, just getting upper shoulder strength
and working on shoulder mobility strength
is like a win-win,
you know, transferring to other things.
It seems like it is gonna storm right now.
So the Handstand course, from the user end,
it's totally different than the fundamentals
in the sense that there is a structure,
there is a progression,
there is you must master this step
before doing the next step.
There's a bunch of strength training modalities
or pretty much movements,
each movement has a progression that you have to master
before getting to the next one.
A lot of them are for wrist and shoulder strength.
And then the handstand itself
has a huge series of progressions
to actually get into a pressed handstand.
So, for instance I started with a tripod or table
with both hands and head on the ground
and then just tucking my legs in.
Once I was able to demonstrate that I could master that
then legs extended to table position hands down.
Currently I'm doing a headstand progression
so I do four sets of 36 seconds of headstand holds.
Working up to five sets of a minute.
Once I can prove I can do that,
then I go onto the next step.
On a good week I do four sessions a week
but you can do it from anywhere from one to all seven days
but that's probably not the best.
I found each session takes about 20 to 30 minutes.
I usually do it after my workout.
So the cool thing is you sort of pick the days you wanna do
and the computer itself will automatically schedule
what you have to do for that workout.
Then, once you are ready to go through the workout,
you start the workout and it has a video
and a way to log everything that you are doing for the day
and if you hit all the reps you're supposed to do
or how many reps you do hit.
And then it'll adjust the what step you're on if you,
let's say you start a new movement
but you can't hit any of the reps,
it'll like drop you down
or it'll properly adjust where you're supposed to be
based on how much work you complete.
So I've been working on headstands for a while.
Some people have said
that my headstands have drastically improved.
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I feel like it's working.
I feel like I'm definitely getting stronger
in my upper body.
So the Headstand course, Handstand course.
The Handstand course I can definitely recommend.
The problem with doing any sort of online course
is you don't really have a second pair of eyes
to tell you if your forms good
or if things are looking right.
So I will film myself and go back and check.
There is a helpful forum
and Coach Sommers is on the forum
and he has replied to stuff that I've posted
and questions that I've asked.
So they are very responsive.
So I hope this helped.
Bottom line, if you have some sort of CrossFit
or gymnastics or yoga background,
you'll probably be pretty familiar with what's available
in the Fundamentals course.
If you wanna just overall get better at gymnastics
then yes, I could definitely recommend their
Foundation course
or if you wanna work on a specific skill,
I'm in the middle of the Headstand course, Handstand course.
Hope this helped.
Subscribe for more videos like this
and I'll see you around.
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