Pommel Horses are Mental

Yesterday I was practising circles on a mushroom with a bucket for assistance. At the end of the gym session, all of my upper body is dead. This morning nearly everything is sore. My shoulders are sore (especially the anterior deltoid), so are the lats, abdominals, back muscles, pecs are slightly sore, traps are sore, forearms are sore. I can barely open or close a tap because of sore forearms! Its f@#king mental!

I can't remember the last time bodyweight exercise makes me sore like that, I really can't. I definitely want to do some horse work again once my upper body has healed.

I reckon Coach Sommer should put in horse work in his BtGB programme, circles/flares/windmills/kehrs/stockli loops/whatever condition your upper body like never before! I get the feeling horses are better than rings. Maybe horses work everything in one go as oppose to rings which works individual muscles or a group of them depending on what skill you're doing.

Circles and flares are highly technical skills and don't take much strength though. It's still takes some basic support and core strength though, but that's about it. Rings are still the ultimate upper body strength tools and the levers tense the whole body too and not just individual muscles.

B1214N said:

Circles and flares are highly technical skills and don't take much strength though. It's still takes some basic support and core strength though, but that's about it. Rings are still the ultimate upper body strength tools and the levers tense the whole body too and not just individual muscles.

Agreed. Pommel is hard for beginner but you get used to it. Foundation really helps build needed strength

 Pommel Horse is a bit different because it's TUT. There is no rest really.

 One of the conditioning drills we used to do with Roger Harrell was 50-100 circles with a penalty per each fall. Another was working sets of pommel horse swings. So 5-10 swings front, then middle, then the other leg, then rear.

 Being that my circles sucked it was either in a bucket or lots of swings. 

B1214N said:

Circles and flares are highly technical skills and don't take much strength though. It's still takes some basic support and core strength though, but that's about it. Rings are still the ultimate upper body strength tools and the levers tense the whole body too and not just individual muscles.

say for example you do front lever, in my experience the triceps and muscles around the armpit area does most of the work. Triceps work hardest the most I reckon. Sometimes the shoulder too.

With horse work, everything get worked out equally.

Pommel horse does hit a pretty broad spectrum of muscles. It's not the best strength training apparatus though because after a while your body becomes strong enough that pommel horse becomes more about endurance than maximal strength. 

it seems to me that the pommel horse just works the anterior side of the body, because it's all pushing muscles, but the posts in this thread have been making me wonder about that (since posters have been talking about how the pommel horse works many different muscles).

so here's my question:

if you work the pommel horse a lot, will it overly develop the anterior muscles of the body? or will it give you a balanced workout for the anterior and posterior of the body?