How to program for advanced isometric movements after a plateau

I’ve released Overcoming Gravity Advanced Programming e-book which goes over a lot more in-depth programming on how to design workout routines (with the various periodization models) to break plateaus. 

---

As Part of the Overcoming Gravity Online series, I decided to release this article as a video. If you are more of audio-visual learner, feel free to watch the video and read the article too!

Full Overcoming Gravity Online Playlist – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpxvbJWbbO-g8pDe387l_IDXrHh3OXDy7

---

One of the biggest questions that I encounter from people is how to progress with the advanced isometrics after hitting a plateau. Usually the isometrics involved are any combination of these:

• Planche
• Back Lever
• Front Lever
• Iron Cross
• Flag
• V-sit and manna

There are some other more advanced isometrics, but these are the one ones that this article will cover. Let’s get started.

---

Identifying weaknesses

Usually most people will stall out on the advanced tuck, straddle, or one leg out version of the isometrics above. This is common, especially coming from a beginner routine like from the fundamentals of bodyweight strength training or one constructed from Overcoming Gravity 2nd Edition (Digital Edition on my site).

The main thing that you want to identify in the above exercises is your potential weaknesses with the exercises. The reason why you want to identify the weaknesses with the movements is that is usually why the exercise is stalling to progress. Here is an example.

Let’s say we’re working on the planche. The planche can have a weakness in several different areas:

• Strength and/or hypertrophy of the primary movers (e.g. anterior deltoids, clavicular head of the pec, etc.).
• Strength and/or hypertrophy of the scapular muscles (e.g. lower traps, serratus anterior, etc.).
• Inability to effectively maintain the correct torso, hip, and leg body position (e.g. low back can’t hold the straddle position).
• Lack of ability to lock out the arms completely (e.g. straight arm versus bent arm or slightly bent arm strength).

These are the main categories.

Lack of strength and/or hypertrophy in the primary movers is usually pretty obvious. One of the things that many people training the advanced isometrics neglect is the effect of hypertrophy on strength. Increased hypertrophy lends to increased strength because of the strength equation.

• Strength = neurological adaptations * cross sectional area of muscle

The increased strength gained from the muscle mass is more than enough to offset the bodyweight that you gain that may make the exercise harder. You can think about it in terms of elite rings gymnasts: they’re extremely muscular compared to most other populations.

Lack of strength and/or hypertrophy in the scapular muscles usually manifests in sagging of the scapular muscles when you’re trying to maintain it such as the scapulas tend to be pushed into retraction when performing planche. The scapulas allow the primary movers a stable platform to exert strength, so without the stable platform the shoulders will tend to sag and you get less force output for the movement. Specific training to the traps and serratus anterior will usually help planche progress.

Likewise, another problem can be inability to maintain good body positions as the body stretches out. This is usually indicated by sagging or piking hips in the planche isometric and inability to straight them out well. This tends to go back to form issues that have progressed over time. For these, specific core work and body positioning work may be needed to correct this deficiency.

Finally, lack of the ability to lock out the arms completely is usually a form issue. There is a huge difference in locked out arms versus slightly bent arms, so someone with this issue may need to go back and train the positions from scratch and build up progressively over time again.

---

Primary exercises, secondary exercises, and supplemental exercises

Usually working a combination of three or possibly four exercises with the advanced isometrics is needed. This is not recommended for beginners or early intermediates because you may need several exercises to work on an advanced isometric effectively. This can take away from learning different movement patterns and basic strength that will help build the overall base that a beginner needs.

Let’s keep using the example of the planche.

• Primary exercise: The goal of the primary exercise is to build the specific angle isolation strength for the movement.

Usually this is going to be some work with the planche isometric itself. You can use bands with a harder exercise or weights with an easier version of the exercise. Alternatively, if planche leans work in this case they can be used.

• Secondary exercise: The goal of the secondary exercise is to help build strength and hypertrophy for the movement, while working close to or with the isometric itself.

With the planche, I tend to like pseudo planche pushups as a strong secondary exercise (or a primary exercise with 1-2s holds at the top of each rep if you are not doing a planche isometric and want to be more movement based).

• Supplemental exercise: The goal of supplemental exercises is two-fold. The supplemental exercises will typically be used as specific isolation exercises working on the primary movers or scapular stabilizers or other weaknesses. They will also double as hypertrophy.

It is worth noting that there are a few different opinions on supplemental exercises. I like using them primarily for hypertrophy, but you can also vary the repetition ranges with primary and secondary exercises to focus on hypertrophy as well. It’s up to you.

Also, a mix of barbells and bodyweight is particularly effective, especially involving supplemental exercises or replacements for secondary exercises if you want a more measurable focused exercise. Integrating bodyweight and barbell exercises can help with that.

Hypertrophy focus for any of the exercises must work on multiple repetition ranges to maximize the amount of hypertrophy you gain. The reason for this is that there are 3 different aspects of hypertrophy:

1. Mechanical Tension — exercises where the muscle has a high amount of intensity. Powerlifters are a primary example of this.
2. Muscle damage — approximately in the 75-90 1 RM range or about 5 to 12 repetitions where the weight is heavy enough to cause muscle damage and there is enough volume to cause sufficient muscle damage for satellite cell donation and other hypertrophy induced signalling to the muscle. Bodybuilders are a primary example of this.
3. Metabolic Stress — high enough repetitions to stress the muscle to adapt. The legs of Tour de France cyclists are a good example of this. Bar athletes and their high volume high repetition work are also a good example.

For mechanical tension, I usually like working in approximately the 3-6ish repetition range for this. For muscle damage, I like anywhere in the 5-15ish range. For metabolic stress I like anywhere in the 20-50ish repetition range depending on the exercise.

2 repetitions is hard to get sufficient volume, so 3-5 is usually pretty good. Usually with the muscle damage since the mechanical tension covers the lowish range, spreading up to the higher range with 8-15 is generally good for that range. For primary and secondary exercises I like the 20-30ish repetition range and for supplementals I tend to like starting with about 20-30 and moving up to 30-50 range.

Note:

• Beginners can usually train effectively with only a primary or secondary exercise (your choice, though I usually recommend a dynamic exercise). One example for planche aside from PPPUs is Phil’s exercise here of moving in and out of the planche position.
• Intermediates usually train effectively with a primary and secondary exercise.

This a logical progression of adding more specific exercise and volume.

---

Putting together a program

Let’s go over putting together a program. An example of the planche.

• Primary exercise: Work on planche isometrics or leans. Can be with bands or ankle weights. Generally, for strength.
• Secondary exercise: Work on some version of periodized PPPUs in all rep ranges such as 15/10/5 or larger biases like 20-25/10-15/3-6. Hits both strength and volume, depending on day.
• Supplemental exercises: Work on specific weaknesses whether scapular or delts with isolation exercises. Spend some preference onto the biggest weaknesses. Isolation work for the specific planche muscles like supine front raises anywhere from 5-30 repetitions depending on which rep ranges were not hit.

Basically, you need to be working an advanced movement from every angle if you’re working straddle planche or full planche because:

1. Most of the people working them need more strength,
2. Most of the people working them need more hypertrophy,
3. Most of the people working them have some form of weak link in either scapular or main muscles (see 1 and 2), and you’re able to hit all rep ranges to hit both strength and volume for the hypertrophy.

Therefore, and example of MWF type of routine may look like this:

Monday:

• 4-5×6-10s of planche isometrics
• 3-5×15  of pseudo planche pushups with 1s pause in planche lean at the top
• 3×25 of serratus anterior and low trap isolation work, supine DB front raises, and potentially low back exercises if there are any needed.

Wednesday:

• 4-5×6-10s of planche isometrics
• 3-5×10  of pseudo planche pushups with 1s pause in planche lean at the top
• 3×25 of serratus anterior and low trap isolation work, supine DB front raises, and potentially low back exercises if there are any needed.

Friday:

• 4-5×6-10s of planche isometrics
• 3-5×5  of pseudo planche pushups with 1s pause in planche lean at the top
• 3×25 of serratus anterior and low trap isolation work, supine DB front raises, and potentially low back exercises if there are any needed.

Note the descending 15/10/5 in the PPPUs. The range for the isolation work does not have to be the same. If you need some extra strength-based isolation work in the 5-10 repetition range you can go with that. If you need more with the higher repetition ranges to build up the movement pattern effectively you can go into the 30-50 repetition range.

I tend to like the supplemental exercises to be in the high rep range because of the metabolic stress portion of hypertrophy and it will help condition connective tissues effectively. However, as long as you are getting work from all of the repetition ranges within the week, your hypertrophy should be maximized. There should be some exercises with high repetitions, moderate repetitions, and low repetitions.

However, if you prefer to do your supplemental exercises in the strength range, and some of your primary or secondary exercises in moderate to higher rep ranges that is also fine. Experiment and see what works best for you, as there is some variation here.

Progressive overload all of these exercises (primary, secondary, and supplemental) as needed. For instance, if you start with 3×25 of say supine DB front raises at 5 lbs, then try to move up to 6 lbs, then 7 lbs, and so on.

Indeed, if you are having trouble progressing with a program like this, you can also add in some type of eccentrics as they can be effective or use any other types of intra- or inter-exercise progressions noted in Chapter 10 of Overcoming Gravity 2nd Edition (Digital Edition on my site).

I also released Overcoming Gravity Advanced Programming e-book which covers designing a program and breaking plateaus more in depth.

---

Applying this to the other isometrics

I’m not going to go through programming all of these different isometrics, but I will try to give you some ideas of what different exercises you can use for each of the categories.

Planche was already discussed above.

Back Lever

• Primary exercises: Isometric back lever with bands, ankle weights, or any other assist
• Secondary exercises: Inverted hang slow lower to german hang in a BL position, or the reverse with german hang pull out to inverted hang through the BL body position.
• Supplemental exercises: Biceps curls, front raises, straight arm lat pulldowns, serratus anterior work. Reverse hyperextensions are useful for the core strength.

Front Lever

• Primary exercises: Isometric front lever with bands, ankle weights, or any other assist
• Secondary exercises: Front lever pulls, FL rows, ice cream makers. Eccentrics can be useful for breaking plateaus.
• Supplemental exercises: Biceps curls, straight arm lat pulldowns, one arm DB rows, one arm or weighted scapular depression, inverted hang weighted retraction or any rows focusing on retraction. Heavy deadlifts have also been known to help. Weighted decline situps, ab wheel or dragon flags are useful for the core strength.

Iron Cross

• Primary exercises: Isometric iron cross with bands, pulley system, or assist
• Secondary exercises: Assisted iron cross pullouts, block pullouts, inverted DB cross pulls
• Supplemental exercises: Biceps curls, rotator cuff exercises, weighted scapular depression, possibly one arm chinups progressions, cable lateral straight arm pulldowns

Flag

• Primary exercises: Isometric flag with assist or different body positions
• Secondary exercises: Slowly lower from inverted position down through flag
• Supplemental exercises: Biceps curls (bottom arm), side raises (bottom arm), upper trap shrugs (bottom arm), straight arm lat pulldowns or other lat strength exercises (top arm), scapular depression (top arm). DB side bends are helpful for the core strength

The flag is one of the exercises where you can lock in the bottom arm so you don’t have to use much strength there, but you still need the upper strength to keep yourself from sagging.

V-sit and manna

• Primary exercises: V-sit or manna isometrics. High holds.
• Secondary exercises: Lifting into the exercises or using momentum and high pushes. Manna wall slides. Can also use assist through the motion if you have someone to spot you.
• Supplemental exercises: Posterior deltoid strengthening, upper trap shrugs, triceps isolation work like triceps pushdowns or skullcrushers, compression work,

Usually with manna you’re going to want to pair a lot of the compression work with flexibility work for the shoulders and pike flexibility as well.

---

Conclusions

These are the main things that you need to do to break the plateaus.

1. Identify your specific weaknesses for the advanced isometric that you are working on.
2. Start breaking down your exercises into primary, secondary, and supplemental exercises to work on.
3. Program them into a routine to focus on both strength and hypertrophy with appropriate repetition ranges for what you are trying to work.
4. Profit.

In general, most people who are stuck will be going from just a primary or secondary exercise with maybe one supplemental exercise to both a primary and secondary exercise with a couple supplemental exercises. The extra volume and practice with the skill is what is going to give most of the initial improvements with the exercise, but in the long run the focus onto the various repetition ranges for increased strength and hypertrophy is what is going to pay the dividends in the long run.

Therefore, both steps 2 and 3 are important in the context of short and long term progress.

The resources mention in this article:

• Overcoming Gravity Second Edition (Digital Edition on my site)
• Overcoming Gravity Advanced Programming e-book

Thanks for reading.

Discuss this article on reddit.