Gymnastic Training & Physical Labor

I have kind of figured this out already but would like to hear what do you guys think. It would also be nice to hear if there are other people involved with heavy physical labor while training intensively in gymnastics

 

I am a university student who works as a lumberjack during Summer. The work I do is heavy, I will be either walking all day long while cutting small trees with a chainsaw or cutting tall adult trees and lifting heavy logs. My upper body seems to be doing great, basically the work is the most intense for 1. lower back & legs and 2. grip strength, which both have been my personal physical strengths for a long time but I still do get "stiff" lower back nearly every now and then after the work. Really makes the SL/PE1 more fun(pain pain pain).

 

I do H1, F1-F2 and some extra work on my own. I have already limited the leg day for one workout a week(Friday -> weekend left to recover) because I noticed it was just too pain in the ass to work when your hamstrings were experiencing heavy DOMS. F-workouts thrice a week and H1 twice.

 

My biggest concerns are the ability to progress because the work is really CNS intense... sometimes after work I am so drained that I hardly have any energy to workout. Nevertheless, I still do the workout. They say the most important days are those when you really have to push yourself to do it.

 

Any tips?

Eat like there's no tomorrow. That's the most important thing when under huge workload.

You might also benefit a lot from other recovery tips we've discussed at some point, like cold showers, hot sauna and others.

Pretty much every job I've ever had has been labour intensive, and I actually felt that I progressed better then than I have now. Eat a lot, stretch a lot, and really enjoy your training (I saw it as "winding down" after a day of work).

 I didn't work as a lumberjack, but used to work in construction before gymnastics and I think I did some of it during my breaks from coaching where I would do a day's work, come home and relax and then maybe a nightly workout.

 

 After a day of work upon hitting home, I'm way too tired and generally the same even with coaching (which isn't anywhere as hard of work). 

 

 Come home, relax, hydrate and eat and give yourself some time to wind down and it should be doable. Especially if you're young.

Flameous hit it best: Eat, dude!

 

Drink lots of water, eat lots of food, and get the best sleep you can. It can take your body a long time to adapt to the workload, because it will have to make a lot of hormonal shifts.

 

A friend of mine on my old ship was an ironworker out in New Mexico for two years before he joined the Navy, and he told me that it took his body nearly 6 months of eating everything in site to adapt to the point where he started gaining muscle because of the enormous physical workload. Well, he kept at it and he was seriously the most ridiculously jacked 5'6" guy I have ever seen.

 

All I can say is that you have to feed your body, and realize that it can take a very long time for your body to adjust its hormonal environment , so stick with it.

 

 

One of the heart patients I am working with told me that he changed his diet four months ago, and that for nearly 10 weeks he saw zero progress. Then, all of a sudden, he started losing about a pound per week, and that has continued for 12 weeks and shows no sign of changing. I have seen his exercise prescription, and it's not like he all of a sudden changed anything... it just took that long for his body to shift his hormones to a point that would support real weight loss.

I know what a day of physical labour feels like at the end. My suggestion which I'm following now, is to get up early at 5.30am, have a hot bath (the warm up!), and complete a training session before having breakfast and going off to work.

Thanks for the good replies. I managed to survive the same hell last year hence I am optimistic about this year... I actually gained muscle and fat last Summer thanks to following the advice "eat, eat, eat" . I am just mostly concerned of the flexibility progress, last year I didn't do any mobility/flexibility work lol and now I am noticing that I can do upper body flexibility/mobility work quite nicely. But with the lower back & legs I just can't reach the usual level of flexibility because of the soreness. Pike stretches really feel in the calves which are continuously sore.

 

It will be interesting to see how the upcoming 3+ months of heavy work transfer to heavy deadlifts

Yes Samui, good topic. I was going to ask the same question myself. I do 12 hour days on a farm which comprises of walking a fair number of miles each day, shovelling, lifting rolls of turf on to pallets and moving 15ft irrigation pipes around a large area of land all day. I've been training 6 days a week using the F7 template M,W,F along with HS1 Tu, Th, Sa. I feel your pain.