Can you breakthrough without GRIND?

What is a breakthrough?

Breakthroughs are basically progression. 

Going from 10 broken reps to 10 unbroken reps for push ups is a breakthrough. 

Getting that first chin up is a breakthrough.

Being able to kick-up into a wall assisted handstand after a good period of grinding, is another breakthrough. 

Keyword GRIND.

Time spent in arm balance poses does not equal progress. 

Many practitioners spend a lot of (very very frustrating) time in their arm balances and barely progress because - and this is what many people tend to overlook - time spent in arm balance poses does not equal progress. 

Don’t get me wrong, spending time in certain arm balances does have it’s time and place - like when you’re just beginning your arm balance journey. But when you’ve been at it for a while, you may feel as if you’re going backwards if you try to progress spending too much time in the arm balance you are working on. It’s just not the smartest way achieve breakthroughs. 

When it comes to arm balancing the real breakthroughs often appear in the form of a free gain.

A free gain simply means you achieve your arm balance goal by not directly working on it. Note: this is not to be confused with refining where you spend time in a certain arm balance or transition to improve the position or movement. 

So when you’re looking for a breakthrough - that first time you achieve a transition or position - it often comes from increasing strength and range of motion using potent exercises that will help you develop without working on the movement itself. 

For example, crow pose into handstand.

The shoulders go from being closed to open, and the arms move from being bent to straight under load. The strength needed for this movement won’t be developed by practising the transition alone - there is a lot of work that needs to be done on the outside of this arm balance transition before you can attempt this movement.

And these development exercises are where the gold lies.

So where does GRIND come in?

A tissue under the appropriate load strengthens. The degree of challenge in a certain exercise will determine how quickly you build strength.

However most often (and I have seen this a lot over the years), we tend to blindly complete reps and sets with the end of workout in mind - without paying much importance to the intensity of a single rep. This then leads to more days of training the same muscle group, which then leads to frustration because “I am working so hard but not progressing enough”. 

The GRIND

Imagine both the concentric (harder phase of the movement) and eccentric (easier phase of the movement) have the same degree of challenge. Imagine taking a single rep and putting in so much work that you’re not looking forward to the next rep.

That’s your GRIND. 

For example, feet assisted chin ups. You use your feet (on support) to get up to the bar, and then you allow yourself to go easy on the way down. The problem with this is you’re not using your muscles at capacity - which will usually mean you have to do more work later to increase strength of a particular muscle group.

Instead what we want to do is to accommodate the resistance in a way where the intensity is exactly the same in the eccentric phase as it is in the concentric phase. 

This means you use your feet as much needed - barely grazing the support (if you’re busting the concentric phase out, it doesn’t count) and on the way down, you pause as many times as possible to complete the rep. 

While you will not be looking forward to the next rep, this is where the magic happens. And this is when you’re a step closer to that arm balance breakthrough. 

Change your single rep mindset - that’s when breakthroughs happen. 

Shimi x

Lead Coach, Arm Balance Addict and Founder of Power & Posture

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