Need help! Afraid to lose strength...

[josephcaceres]

Ok, so I have been training free weights for about a year and a half. At the start of this year I tried to switch to bodyweight only training. One handed pushups, assisted one handed pullups, lever work, and handstand work. I after two months I tested all my previous bb lifts and had lost strength in everything. I lost a little weight, but even my weighted dip and pull up went down. I learned muscle ups at this point and without ever actually training them, I went from 3 reps to 12...andgained 10lbs in the process. I did this by focusing on the weighted dip and pullup for three months. Also, I tried a back lever and got 5sec full bl with having only gotten 10 sec flat tuck 4 months prior and not training it since!

So I wanna try starting up a hybrd.. I was training 3x5 for all lifts, and was doing bench, dips, shoulder press on my A day.. pullup, row,bbcurl on my B day..and this is mwf so one week is ABA the next is bab.my pullup is at 80 for 5 and dip 85 for 5. This is the strongest I have ever been and im afraid to lose them moving into bodyweight only again. So I am curious to know if anybody has transitioned from this style of training without losing strength.. andif so, how did you do it!

I have trained so much to get where I am, I am afraid of making drastic changes and losing hard earned strength!

Im 5ft 11 170 lbfairly low bodyfat.

I can do 40 sec wall hs, 5 sec full bl, 10 sec flat tuck fl, 12 nonkipping knees locked mu, at least one slow mu, 40 sec lsit on rings, and thats about all I have tested. Right now I want to develop my hs and backk lever and muscleups.. maintain my lifts.. I also do leg raises, toe to bar, knees locked.. 15 reps is the best I have done... train this on leg day t, th.

Help me eith my programming! Statics before or after maintenance work? Should I do statics in morning, dynamics a few hours later?

[Philip Chubb]

I dropped all weighted upper body work (except for structural balance things) when I took up training with these methods. When I went to PICP to be tested on one rep maxes, I was able to do dips with 130 pounds attactched to me, chin ups with an extra hundred pounds (never tried these exercises before) and even deadlift 315. And that's not even counting the biceps curls, and presses, ect. I'm pretty sure you won't lose anything and you will probably gain it.

That said, if you only have three days a week to train, I wouldn't divide such a small amount of time between two different things. With only three days, you'll do much better to pick one. I'd also pick this one since it will transfer over to most of your lifts.

[Mikkel Ravn]

Well, what are your goals? If you want to get good at barbell lifts, train those. If you want to achieve FSP's and beyond, train those. It's difficult to be great at everything all the time, so determine your goals and focus on them. Plus, strength is also an expression of increased efficiency in neuromuscular coordination, i.e. Actually being used to the lifts, so if you just go back and test the lifts without having done them in a long time, your coordination will have deteriorated. However, this doesn't necessary mean that you, on an absolute level, are able to express less force in the individual muscles.

Oh, and beware of that back lever. Just cause you can hold it for five secs, doesn't mean you should train it regularly. The BL is a common culprit in developing elbow injuries, if the proper preperations have not been established, search the forum for further info. If you cannot hold it for 15-20 seconds with relative ease, train at a lower intensity, e.g. tucked or german hang. It's a sneaky position, because people tend to be excited that they can hold a lever, and therefore do it all the time.

[Connor Davies]

Best recommendation would be to purchase F1.  All the really strong people around here have done the same, and credit Gymnastic Strength Training™ with increasing their strength substantially over when they trained with barbells.  Seriously, do a search.  There's probably a hundred posts all detailing how someone gave up barbells, trained in the gymnastic bodies style and then smashed their previous records on various lifts.

 

If you don't want to take my advice on the purchasing of F1, try to include handstand wall runs, rope climbs and L sit work.  Those three are some of the best "bang for your buck" exercises.

 

I've never heard of someone training with only barbells + levers and getting good results...  Trust me bodyweight/F1 is the way to go.  It will strengthen you from various angles you hadn't even considered, protect your joints, comes with a ton of mobility work...  Plus if  you want to get good at the levers, bodyweight training is a lot more sport specific than barbell work, or even weighted dips/pullups.

 

Learn how to planche and hollowback press and you'll have a stronger bench than just about anyone you meet.  Plus, you'll have a few cool tricks to go along with it.

 

Also, the programming in F1 is top notch.  I doubt you can come up with such a complete routine on your own.  No offense intended, but it's basically the life's work of Coach, who has decades of experience training national level athletes...

[Vincent Stoyas]

One thing I don't think you should worry about, is losing strength in your BB lifts if you train BW correctly.
I was loosely following BtGB off for about 3 months. Worked things such as Tucked FL/BL, L sit, basic basic stuff.
I went to the gym with my friend for fun once after being decently committed for 3 months and I was able to put up 55lb curls for 5 reps, benched just over 1x my bodyweight (I've never benched before), and tricep curled 35s for 8 reps. I'm not sure if that's all pretty good or not, but I was doing slightly better than my friend was and he frequented the gym pretty often. I felt impressed with those results even though I didn't even work out consistently.

[Joshua Naterman]

Ok, so I have been training free weights for about a year and a half. At the start of this year I tried to switch to bodyweight only training. One handed pushups, assisted one handed pullups, lever work, and handstand work. I after two months I tested all my previous bb lifts and had lost strength in everything. I lost a little weight, but even my weighted dip and pull up went down. I learned muscle ups at this point and without ever actually training them, I went from 3 reps to 12...andgained 10lbs in the process. I did this by focusing on the weighted dip and pullup for three months. Also, I tried a back lever and got 5sec full bl with having only gotten 10 sec flat tuck 4 months prior and not training it since!

So I wanna try starting up a hybrd.. I was training 3x5 for all lifts, and was doing bench, dips, shoulder press on my A day.. pullup, row,bbcurl on my B day..and this is mwf so one week is ABA the next is bab.my pullup is at 80 for 5 and dip 85 for 5. This is the strongest I have ever been and im afraid to lose them moving into bodyweight only again. So I am curious to know if anybody has transitioned from this style of training without losing strength.. andif so, how did you do it!

I have trained so much to get where I am, I am afraid of making drastic changes and losing hard earned strength!

Im 5ft 11 170 lbfairly low bodyfat.

I can do 40 sec wall hs, 5 sec full bl, 10 sec flat tuck fl, 12 nonkipping knees locked mu, at least one slow mu, 40 sec lsit on rings, and thats about all I have tested. Right now I want to develop my hs and backk lever and muscleups.. maintain my lifts.. I also do leg raises, toe to bar, knees locked.. 15 reps is the best I have done... train this on leg day t, th.

Help me eith my programming! Statics before or after maintenance work? Should I do statics in morning, dynamics a few hours later?

It sounds like you did not follow a proper GST protocol, and that is why you lost muscle and strength. Getting onto the programs that are being released here is going to be your best course of action.