 Welcome back to the School of Calisthenics. Lani and Jaco here. What do you have for us today, Jaco? Well today Lani, we together have got for you five exercises to help start your pulling mechanics and get the foundations for pulling movements in calisthenics for beginners. So it's really important when we're starting out that we are doing the foundation movements correctly. So we're going to take you through five exercises that look at things like the correct setting position for your scapula and how all of your moving mechanics for that pulling motion starts from that position and then how we can progress it through some of the other exciting exercises. So let's get started. The active hang is a foundation movement that we need to get these scapulas in so the shoulder blade is set and in a good position so that we can pull effectively in all of our pulling movements. So this is going to be where we start things off. So Lani's hanging dead from the bar where the shoulders are by the ears and the job is to try and draw these shoulder blades down towards the centre line and create some strength back here and we end up having a nice separation between the ear and the shoulders. She can hold that tension there and then she can drop back down, let the shoulder blades wrap around and then drive them back down towards each other trying to imagine she's pinching a pound coin between those shoulder blades. Pull-ups are a great basic movement for our calisthenics and it's important that we get control of the shoulder and the shoulder blade when we're going through them so we get a good foundation to start from. So Lani's going to jump up onto the bar and show us the correct technique for this pull-up. So she starts in this dead position at the bottom, she creates tension keeping the shoulder blades flat to the rib cage and squeezes them down and back to create that separation and then the job is driving the elbows down to the sides whilst keeping the alignment for the rest of the body, holds at the top for some control and then lowers back down to an active position and then lets it go at the bottom before she would then start the rep again. Now when we're just starting out for a lot of us that can be difficult and so we can start to use some of the tools to lock up like any centric tool where you could step off a box, Lani's just going to jump to the top position, catch it at the top, elbow squeezed to the side, shoulder blades nice and controlled at the back and she'd lower down and control five, four, three, two, one to this active position and then let it go and then she would jump back up to the top. Again that even can be very difficult at the very start when you're first working out so we can use a band where we'd loop it over the top, drop the band through and that creates a nice position for then someone to put their feet in. We like to put both feet in the band because then it can make you work on your alignment so core is tight, bum is tight to kind of keep that nice straight line from shoulder to toes. Again same thing active can now the band's going to help her drive back up or even if she was finding it difficult you could use the band just for the lowers so that gets us working through that full range of motion, nice quality position and control of the shoulders for your pull-up. We're going to look at a skin the cat now which takes us through the shoulder through 360 degrees range of motion which it has got but it gets a bit scary when you're up on the bar but don't worry we're going to show you a variation with the rings also and one of the great things about this is not only you taking that shoulder through that full range you're building strength through it and you're teaching yourself what it's like to go upside down for if you want to do any back levers or getting used to being upside down for handstands and a bit of body awareness so line is going to jump up onto the bar to start with. Again the same thing happens we must make sure we're doing this active position drawing those shoulder blades down packing them onto the ribcage and then from there she's going to pull the knees up and she's going to rotate backwards she comes through in the full position will be all the way down as low as she can into that position where the hip is now below the shoulder and then if you're not strong if you drop back down if you're strong like lining you're going to bring those knees up you're going to pull yourself through and you're going to control it all the way back down to the bottom now these are tough and also when you're starting out you don't want to be that high up on away from the floor so you might want to grab the rings it's going to give us a couple of different options to build this up nicely so the rings closer to the floor it means that that start point the first pull up can be difficult so with this lining it's going to be able to kick a feet from the floor into that position and what happens a lot of the time is we get stuck here you've got to let yourself go around till you find your floor put your feet down on the floor and then you can stand back up whilst you're getting used to being upside down and also building up some of that strength so if you want to get stronger through this position we then need to start actually pulling batter out of that bottom position so lining again she can do a little bit of a kick up and a little bit of a pull up to get herself around but then slowly controlling through here to just dab the toes on the floor and then pulling hand down tip to pull herself back around and then not falling on this part slowly lowering herself down to the bottom there you'll get the control going down to build up the strength to be able to help pull yourself up and what we want is nice strength and control through that full range for your skin the cap which you're going to have a little bit of fun getting upside down so the next pulling exercise we're going to look at is the ring row this is a perfect exercise if you've not yet mastered a pull up and it's also a perfect exercise to have in your in your session anyway it's a staple so what we're going to do is you're going to get the rings we're going to get a nice straight line from your shoulders all the way down to your ankles i want jacko to engage his shoulders and draw them back thinking about squeezing a note between between his shoulder blades and tucking his chin under the biggest thing i want you to think about also is making sure you're creating space between your ear lobe and your shoulders so they're nice and relaxed down then we're going to tuck the ribs under ready for jacko to take a punch squeeze those glutes on and then bring those elbows nice and close to your chest good and as he lowers back down really keep those shoulder blades engaged if this is too hard then jacko's going to step back a little bit and if it's too easy for you you can walk those feet all the way forward the further underneath those rings you get the harder it's going to get as you're pulling up make sure you're keeping a nice straight body we don't want any arching in the lower back no perfect the ring reverse fly is a perfect exercise to work on your posterior shoulder stability and strength as jacko comes into the position now we're going to create a nice straight line from his shoulders all the way down to his ankles imagine you're squeezing a pound coin between your shoulder blades tucking those ribs under ready to take a punch and squeezing those glutes as tight as possible jacko's now going to bring his arms out to the side keeping a nice straight line we don't want any bending in the wrist nice and as he comes back down he's going to go nice and controlled all the way down as he does the next rep i want you to focus on really tucking those ribs and watching that you don't arch your lower back and as he comes back down keep those shoulders engaged nice and controlled and that is the ring reverse fly so that's five pulling exercises to get you started with your program in calisthenics make sure you pay particular attention to that technique and work through them progressively you don't want to be trying to do stuff that's too hard for you so you can manipulate those body positions so it's able to do it for your strength abilities pay particular attention to where your scapular is your shoulder break position and where that shoulder is you want to try and keep it in a nice good position we want to lay good pulling foundations down in this early stage as a beginner so that you can move on with your calisthenics journey wherever that may take you so until next time class dismissed