TABLE OF CONTENT: The Ultimate Guide to Planche 

1. 🧐What is a Planche ? 2. ✅Planche Benefits 3. 🤸‍♀️Planche – Muscle used and Requirements 4. 📌Planche Training Injury Prevention 5. 🔑How to perform a perfect planche 6. ☑The most effective planche progression 7. ⭐Expert’s effective tips for the perfect planche 8. 🍄Boost planche progress – the most effective planche drills 9. 🔥Planche workout – for all levels 10. 💪Planche training equipment 11. 🤩What’s next after planche? – advanced planche transitions and variations.

💪Your Planche Workout

Learning advanced calisthenics skills such as planche takes time. It’s not a move that you will learn by luck or overnight. 

It’s a result of cumulative, specific work and effort through a longer period of time. Combining strength, mobility and technique ensures faster progress.

There are tons of methods available on how you can learn planche. Today, we’re going to share a 45-min sample workout that’s focused on planche training for beginners, intermediate and advanced athletes. 

👉 TAKE NOTE: Even if you’re already an advanced athlete, you cannot simply jump into the advanced phase of planche training. Being a general advanced athlete does not always translate to advanced planche skill level.

Planche is a very specific skill that demands specific requirements from you as mentioned in the article “Planche: Muscles used & Requirements.”

The skill level is not based solely on your planche skill but also based on your overall general level of fitness. But usually, individuals more experienced in planche tend to be more advanced in general fitness as well.

🎯In this article we want to show you

1. 👊What are the elements of a successful handstand workout

2. 👊Show you an example of a 45-min sample workout (beginner, intermediate & advanced)  that you can do that’s focused on getting you your handstand.

 

🤔What makes an effective PLANCHE workout? 

So the journey is one of the key concepts in TMA, but the real MAGIC HAPPENS DURING the WORKOUTS through its UNIQUE STRUCTURE.

Let me show you why.

Calisthenics is so powerful because it’s complex.💯

You might have enough strength to do a handstand but if your shoulder mobility is off you won’t be able to hold it.

Then there is a skill element. In the handstand example, the skill would be learning body alignment and entry and exit strategies.

Next is endurance which means improving your work capacity of being on the hands.

And then there is building muscle mass 💪 to support that mobility and ligament development

Programming for all these elements is difficult so 99% of the programs you will see our there will never even mention these different elements.

And this is something that we do very differently than everyone else on the market.

We structure your training program around these elements creating a holistic approach for all-round development.  

So your daily Training in The Movement Athlete app will always have these elements:

Warmup + Mobility
Skill Work
Strength Work
Endurance Work
Muscle Building Work
Cooldown + Flexibility Work

It’s SO CRITICAL YET NO ONE IS TEACHING THIS

Ok, Let’s look at each one of those separately.

✨SKILL WORK
The technique is key in calisthenics. These movements are designed to either draw focus to specific technique cues or train important movement patterns for the subsequent strength movements. Skill movements are done at a low intensity and low total volume.

✨STRENGTH WORK
Strength movements or main movements are the reason we are here. These are the movements that will chart your progression through the world of calisthenics and bodyweight fitness. There is a large variation in strength movements, from easy to hard, low volume to medium/high volume, dynamic to static but the reps and sets are optimised for strength building

✨MUSCLE WORK
A bigger muscle has the potential to become a stronger muscle. Muscle movements are movements that are done at low-to-medium intensities and higher total volumes for the purpose of building muscle. The lower intensities also allow athletes to focus on the muscles involved and to get a good squeeze and pump. Many muscle movements are pulled from appropriate strength movements but have a different rep scheme to strength.

✨ENDURANCE WORK
Many calisthenics movements involve static holds. Endurance movements train the athletes’ capability to hold the body in various positions. These are typically programmed to be easier than the equivalent strength movement holds. Instead, more work volume is added for more practice time.

Taken together, these different movement types are designed to produce skilled, strong and complete bodyweight athletes.

And this is what you would be getting inside The Movement Athlete App

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALISED PLANCHE WORKOUT 🔥

 

Now, let me just say that at The Movement Athlete Academy we are really against creating cookie-cutter workouts that limit you to beginner, intermediate advanced. 

There is a scientific research showing that not only the risk of getting injured is much higher if you follow ready made routines – the risk of you not making any progress is way higher too.

You can read more on this here: Death to beginner, intermediate, advanced workouts that are hurting your training

Hence, the workouts that are shown below are there as an example of workouts that you will see inside our app.

Yes you can use them and follow them – but we really advice that you follow a more personalised training.

You can asses yourself which progression are you currently on by following our planche progression here 👇

HOW TO CREATE THE MOST EFFECTIVE PLANCHE WORKOUT FOR YOUR LEVEL?

Here are the steps to follow if you would like to create your own personalised workout.

1. Assessment

Look at the strength progression. Your goal is to pick the exercises in the strength progression that you can do at the mastery level. If you are not familiar with the exercise go here to the planche progression section and you can see all the exercises. But if you want us to do all the heavy lifting you can simply take our calisthenics assessment and it will give you a personalised training plan right away. 

We use strength progression as the main indicator of progress so once you can do a mastery level for that specific exercise it means that you can move to the next level in this progression.

2. Match the strength exercises with Skill, Muscle and Endurance

Once you determine your level on a STRENGTH progression you want to look at exercises that are on the same line as the exercise you picked. You simply add these to your workout. 

3. Put it into a workout with given programming

Below are example of workouts that are created based on where are you in the progression – either in early stages (we called in a beginner), middle stages (intermediate) or advanced (closer to the end of the progression

EXAMPLES OF PLANCHE WORKOUTS FOR EACH LEVEL

Below we want to show you some examples of planche workouts for different levels that are generated by our AI driven smart programing inside The Movement Athlete App. 

Note that this will look different for each person depending on exctaly which level you are at.  To get your own personalised training plan simply take this 5 min calisthenics assessment. 

👊 Beginners 45-minute sample workout

You can somehow start your planche training pretty early in your calisthenics journey. While the bulk of the beginner’s training will focus on developing general strength, mobility and fitness, some planche elements could also be started.

Straight arm support holds (without the lean) and bodyline preparations are highly effective exercises for beginners to build general arm and core strength, respectively. They are also the main components of planche. 

Beginner planche training focuses on teaching basic elements of the planche that has massive transfer in later stages of the planche journey. Main emphasis is put on shoulder and wrist mobility ,and anti-extension core development.

👊 Intermediate 45-minute sample workout

More experienced athletes who have a better grasp of basic movement patterns can further move to more specific planche training.

This includes developing proper form of the forward lean which is top priority to build mobile wrists and stronger anterior deltoids. 

Adding more general and specific pushing strength through bent arm and straight arm exercises are implemented to meet the very high demands of the full planche.

At this stage, it is very vital to build proper form in every exercise. Intermediate training takes advantage of the good habits learned in the beginner phase of training. That being said, intermediate planche training should focus on refining weaknesses and further increasing specific strength for planche.

👊 Advanced 45-minute sample workout

If you are in the higher level of planche training, you are very close to reaching your goals while still being far away.

Advanced planche training focuses more on addressing any weaknesses and accumulating volume to further solidify your foundations. 

By this point, you should already have excellent specific planche strength and mobility. You should also have ingrained in your system the key points of proper planche form. If you need a refresher for the planche form, you can check out the link below:

“How to perform a planche – the full perfect form”

 

You can do it! 👌

Planche training looks very intimidating especially when you look at how long before you can learn planche, but you don’t have to worry. Learning planche is very much possible for anyone who will dedicate their time and efforts to it smartly. 

You just have to plan your journey accordingly and respect the demanding requirements of planche. Easier said than done, I know. But if you want it, you will commit to it, and eventually attain it.

Don’t give up! 👆

 

Ready-made workouts are not the best 👎👎👎

Just before you jump straight into this workout and expect some gains, you need to know that these types of workouts are not ideal to progress in calisthenics.

At first glance, the workouts seem promising. It’s divided into levels in which you can categorize yourself into.

But these questions and realizations will come into mind especially once you got to try the actual workout:

• How can you really tell if you’re already an intermediate, advanced athlete or still a beginner?
• The difference in difficulty from each level is too drastic.
• Some exercises are too easy or too difficult for you.
• There are lagging body parts that I need to address.
• The whole workout makes me progress too fast or too slow.

With these realizations in mind, you might end up demotivated, uninspired and ultimately quit your training. 

Such training programs also post a higher risk of injuries due to the sudden jumps of difficulty and inability to address weaknesses.

What you actually need are personalised 🎯workouts 

Powered by a powerful Artificial Intelligence, The Movement Athlete Academy FREE ASSESSMENT creates a program that is perfect just for you. 

Personalised workouts are the exact opposite of the ready-made workouts.

First, since personalisation is specific to your needs, goals and current situation, an assessment will start your program. The assessment bases the structure of your program so you’ll have the right level exactly just for you in every aspect. 

Your new program isn’t set in stone. As it’s fully personalized, it will continue to adjust based on your current progress and ability to train that day. 

Let’s be realistic. There are just those days that we can’t perform like we want to because of other factors in our lives affecting our performance. The Movement Athlete app adjusts for you.

If you badly want to reach your planche, train realistically. 

Train safely, effectively, efficiently and with purpose. All of these while keeping it fun.

If you want to learn planche, GET YOUR FREE PERSONALISED TRAINING PLAN HERE.