Taking on a planche challenge is no small feat. Over the past 30 days, 1 of our writers has dedicated themselves to progressing the planche as fast as possible. In this article, he will share his progress, the ups and downs of the journey, and what he learned along the way.

For the rest of this article, we will be writing in the first person. The journey has been somewhat documented on TikTok if you would like to see more content from our team.

Background and Planche Prerequisites

Hi Calisthentials readers, if this is your first time on our blog, welcome! My name is Den, I also go by Chera on TikTok. For the last 30 days I took an a challenge to progress the planche as far as I could. Meaning almost every single day I would perform exercises focused on improving my planche.

My Planche Starting Point

@cherahereWill post updates probably every 5 days.♬ Can’t Stop Me Now – The Score

Here you can see my day 1 attempt of the tuck planche. On day 1, I was able to hold a tuck planche for roughly 7 seconds. Prior to this recording I have attempted the tuck planche before but each time with poor form.

What do I count as poor planche form?

In the above video, you can see that my tuck planche has very little lean and my shoulder protraction isn’t very strong. In addition, my hips are sagging very low. For the first 5 days of this challenge, I decided to focus purely on the tuck planche and the planche lean to get stronger in these areas.

Before we go deeper into what I did each day let me breakdown my starting strength, weight, and calisthenics ability.

Bodyweight: 140lbs / 63kg
Height: 5’4 / 163cm
Weighted Dip 1RM: 125lbs / 56kg
Weighted Pullup 1RM: 90lbs / 40kg
Handstand Pushup Unlocked: Yes
Time training calisthenics: 2.5 Years
Back Lever Unlocked: Yes

The First 5 Days of My 30 Day Planche Challenge

The first 5 days were the most difficult and humbling days of this challenge. The planche was never a skill I focused on. For my first 2 years I rarely every trained push skills and instead focused most of my time to pulling skills like the front lever, muscle up, and weighted pull ups.

Each attempt of the tuck planche felt like I was holding a full backlever due to the pressure on my elbow joints. Planch Leans helped a lot during this time and using bands I would focus on holding the tuckplanche for 15 seconds.

Day 5 -10 of the 30 Day Planche Challenge

@cherahere day 5/30 and already making progress focusing planche everyday. #calisthenics #calisthenicsprogress #plancheprogress ♬ Showin’ Off – Danger Twins

After watching loads of videos from the Barkage and taking advice from others on the Calisthentials team I felt comfy attempting the straddle planche. As you can see in the video, tuck planche form was corrected in just 5 days and my first attempt of a straddle planche has a lot to improve. However, now I am able to extend my legs into a sort of tuck straddle with my legs fully extended. While they are not raised to be in line with my hips, I can feel that my lean has drastically improved and I am able to balance the planche much better than on day 1.

This is when I added the gymnastics dream machine to my training to focus on the straddle planche pushup. For those of you who have never seen a dream machine, it is a device that essentials cuts your bodyweight in half by using pulleys. The reason it is called a dream machine, is because you dream to be that strong. Cool name right?

The dream machine helped me understand how to tighten my glutes and raise my legs during the straddle planche. The pushup part I didn’t find much very useful at this time. However, the instability of the rings did improve my balance when I swapped back to parallettes.

Day 10 of the Planche Challenge

@cherahere 1/3rd done my challenge and getting closer to an acceptable straddle planche. #calisthenics ♬ edamame – bbno$

At this point, I started getting a bit confident in the straddle planche attempts, which may have been my downfall later in this challenge. At this point in the challenge I started saving tuck planche holds to the end of the workouts and focused on attempts and banded straddle planche holds. Several times during this period I was able to raise my hips and it felt like I was raising my legs but looking at the videos I wasn’t. While my lean was improving, my body awareness when it came to my legs were not.

Half way Through The Challenge

@cherahere was too sore to record day 15 so we doing day 16. lower bars I’m finding much harder than higher p bars. #calisthenics #plancheprogress ♬ som original – 𝑷𝒆𝒅𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒂𝒔🎵

Day 15 and I am starting to understand how to raise my legs. To achieve this, I added pseudo maltese kickouts and handstand negatives to my program. These definitely helped me understand how to align my legs to my hips in the planche but there is clearly a long way to go. However, during this time I started to work on the half-lay planche. In the video you can see a banded attempt with 1 very clear problem. My shoulders were not protracted! The lack of protraction during these attempts in my eyes, basically made these attempts worthless for achieving the full planche.

Injury?

To make things worse, these half-lay attempts would eventually cause some forearm pain in each attempt. Training almost daily with minimal recovery time doing harder and harder progressions was a mistake that would affect me for the rest of the 30 day challenge. My tip for you reading this, focus on your protraction! The planche is a shoulder exercise first and foremost, without strong protraction your likeliness of injury skyrockets.

Days 16-24 Of the 30 Day Planche Challenge

I skipped the day 20 check-in because of the pain I was experiencing from days 16-20. Due to the injury and my stubbornness to rest I made very little progress during this time. However, on day 24 I had some friends motivate me to attempt a handstand straddle planche negative. Here is that video:

@cheraherealmost done the challenge and close to unlocking straddle planche negatives♬ Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – The Jingle Bells

The hold was a bit high but the straddle planche is feeling more realistic to reach for day 30.  As for days 24-29, it was Christmas time. Between parties and travel I didn’t have much time to focus on the planche. This doesn’t mean I didn’t train however. Instead, around family I would perform handstands, handstand pushups, and planche leans. I definitely feel a difference going into day 30 after doing handstand pushups so onto the final day of the challenge.

Day 30 – Final Day of The Challenge

Today, the day I am writing this, is the final day of the challenge. My forearm is feeling much better than it did during days 16-25 and I did 2 attempts of the straddle planche. Here they are:

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While I couldn’t do the skill from a negative on the high p-bars, I was able to do a somewhat acceptable form version using dumbbells as parallettes. I think I can say I’ve unlocked the straddle planche in these 30 days but I still feel very far away from the full planche. It may be due to the difference in hip and glute activation between the straddle and full planche but after reviewing this video I still think that my biggest weakness is the protraction of my shoulders. Either way, I am very proud of myself for focusing the last 30 days of my training on the planche and progressing to the straddle progression.

Am I going To Keep Training For The Planche?

Yes.

However, I will be slowing down my focus on the planche for 2 main reasons. The first being the risk of injury. Half way through the challenge the pain was getting so intense that I almost stopped it altogether in order to recover. I don’t want to get injured and regress my progress so I need to do a better job listening to my body and putting on the brakes. Training for the planche has made me realize how much recovery is needed between sessions and that I needed to do a better job of listening to my body’s signals to stop.

The 2nd reason I will be slowing down my planche progress moving forward is because I have also noticed a slight regression in my pulling strength. Over the last 30 days I only trained pulling exercises twice. Previously I was able to perform 45lb weighted pull ups for 9 reps and am now struggling to do 7. While this may be due to the fatigue due to planche also activating the bicep muscles, my favorite calisthenics skill is still the front lever. The front lever has felt much harder after this challenge than at the start and it is a skill that I do not want to lose. Especially after spending 2 years unlocking it.

What I Would Do Different If I Did This Challenge Again

To end of this article, I want to share my insight into things I would do differently if I were to do this challenge again. First and most importantly, I would focus less on the straddle planche hold and instead focus on strengthening my shoulder protraction in the tuck and advanced tuck planche. In the day 30 video, my protraction is still weak and I don’t have the iconic turtle shell back that planche experts do. Focusing on the protraction would definitely make a major difference in my progress, especially when moving onto harder progressions like the straddle.

The 2nd thing I would change if I did this challenge again would be to change my program. Instead of training planche 5 times a week, I would regress it down to 3 and have a 4th light day focused on shoulder protraction. Here is what each workout would look like:

Day 1, 2 and 3

• 3 sets of 15 second band assisted full planche holds
• 3 sets of 15 second tuck planche holds
• 3 sets of 8 rep weighted dips
• 2 sets of 15 second planche leans

Day 4

• 2 sets of 8 rep tuck planche push ups
• 2 sets of 8 pseudo planche push ups
• 2 sets of 10 second planche leans

However, this being said, this program is still only focused on the planche and I would not recommend it for anyone whose goal isn’t achieving the planche as fast as possible from zero. If you do decide to try and rush the planche like I did, I recommend getting high quality wrist wraps.

Anyway, this was my experience training the planche exclusively for 30 days. To learn more about calisthenics training, or to read about our other experiences doing long term calisthenics challenges check out our blog.