Create a short introductory guide/FAQ

Although I am quite recent in the forum, I keep seeing some recurrent topics from people that just purchased F1 appearing on a daily basis. Hence, I was wondering whether with a joint effort with more experienced people, we can come up with a succint, direct FAQ for people that just purchased F1 and spent a night or so reading the material, ready to get started.

Let me know.

Should you feel like this is a dumb idea or that I overlooked it and it's instead already present elsewhere, please accept my apologizes.

yeah, I agree that this is important. i'd like to contribute however I can

What would the topics be?  Equipment required, exercise order, additional work...  I know a lot of people ask about rest times or are unsure about their first workouts, but these are already explained in the program.

For H1, someone should answer the giant sets for wrist prep exercises.

Maybe add in to buy F1 like everyone else, instead of designing your own program, and state all of Coach Sommer's credentials.

...and to clear up how many reps each side/ altogether.

Awarenesss said:

Maybe add in to buy F1 like everyone else, instead of designing your own program, and state all of Coach Sommer's credentials.

I thought to be in this forum, you needed to have F1 already...

Yes, but this was not the point. Despite that, there is a need to clarify, e.g.

> 5 reps on the given Im means 5 reps per side

> 30s on the other Im means 30s per side = 60s total "rest" (I myself don't find them rest at all).

> How to proceed on the first WO/week

> How to understand whether you really mastered something

> Sync of PEs so that deload week is, in turn, sync.

> Equipment required to approach F1, plus a glimpse on what is required for H1 and F2 s.t. if people want to invest money they do it in the right direction

> And much more. It is matter of adding to this list, then we shape it. I believe this will help reducing the redundancy of the topics + it will help keeping all info in place.

LateStarter@46 said:

...and to clear up how many reps each side/ altogether.

Good point! i agree to all named questions. Rest times, reps per side, rest time, what do i need...

federicoC said:

Yes, but this was not the point. Despite that, there is a need to clarify, e.g.

 

> 5 reps on the given Im means 5 reps per side

> 30s on the other Im means 30s per side = 60s total "rest" (I myself don't find them rest at all).

> How to proceed on the first WO/week

> How to understand whether you really mastered something

> Sync of PEs so that deload week is, in turn, sync.

> Equipment required to approach F1, plus a glimpse on what is required for H1 and F2 s.t. if people want to invest money they do it in the right direction

> And much more. It is matter of adding to this list, then we shape it. I believe this will help reducing the redundancy of the topics + it will help keeping all info in place.

Very good point. I found myself only doing 15s each side for a total of 30s. 5r, I kind of just figured each side from past programs.

Burtchell345 said:

Very good point. I found myself only doing 15s each side for a total of 30s. 5r, I kind of just figured each side from past programs.

10 reps is when it gets more confusing.  Some exercises call for 10 reps total, and some need 10 reps per side...

Most of the things mentioned above are already stated in the F1 course material, not saying this is a bad idea but can the first point be "Go and read F1 again, do it now!"

I just can speak for me, but for me as a not english person from germany(i just learned it later in school) i have to say, that not every thing was clear for me after reading the intro in F1, i used a translator of course, but phrases and so on you know...so it cannot be wrong to repeat things or better so explain them in more than one sentence. because there are words you use e.g. for exercises, stretches and so on, we do not know and we can't translate them 1 by 1, just for understanding.

Agreed. I suggest we proceed by adding possible questions info in the same way I did above (succint, please). Then we can collect all this into a single post, and ask Coach or qualified people to have a look at it and decide whether it is worth putting this as sticky.

Bump to confirm this is going ahead;

For the moment will divide them into 2 FAQ lists--

1) Logistical-- equipment, how to put together your program, progression, rep counts, etc

2) Specific exercise FAQs.

Will take material from this thread (and any like it in other fora) as well as my own observations of recurring issues, and put it together behind the scenes for approval from the staff. Community managers will sign off on all element material, so don't stress about it just being my opinion- all technical training pointers will be correct. Please don't be shy about suggesting a problem or confusion you have or had

Please keep H1 and F2 suggestions to the appropriate forum though!

I think it'd also be useful to put together a list of physical cues for each exercise.  I appreciate the need to keep things basic and condensed in the manual, but some of the things I've read here and there on the forum have been critical to my progress.  

If we could create a single post with each movement in order of difficulty with the approved cues it'd be quick and easy for people who could benefit from additional guidance in achieving the form demonstrated in the video.

CraigR said:

 

Hey Jon,

 

Great idea, one question.

 

Given the staff are going to sign-off on element material, could this information be added to the course material itself rather than maintaining seperate FAQ lists in the forums?

 

The GB products are all online courses so I think that's the perfect place for all updated or additional information.

 

This is not going to be more course note style stuff. As far as Coach is concerned the notes we are given are sufficient for most people, at least with the support of this forum, and I'm not going against that.

I'm a moderator, but I'm not gymnasticbodies dev staff. This is strictly a forum project unless Coach/Cory decide that revisions to course material are warranted and believe me their plates are full with upcoming goodies.

Same answer to Steve Sisk. I'm not going to put together every cue anyone has found useful for every exercise-- this is overcoaching and is best addressed via the the search function. We are not trying to write the forums out of business We want the minimum reading required to solve the confusion of the maximum number of people.

Thanks Jon, I look forward to seeing what you put together.

Proper use of the search function solves most of the questions the FAQ proposes to address.

For instance a search on all posts by Coach Sommer in the foundation 1 forum with results as posts gives a comprehensive list of the official take on most exercises; try it from the detailed search page.

It is 8 pages of 25 posts, entirely worth your time to read through!

I know because I did it; a few weeks ago, the question popped up via PM, and I started to experiment with building a FAQ. After some time fiddling with threads and copy pasting stuff, I conducted the search in reference above, and found that 100% accurate answers to 99% of the questions were contained in these 8 pages of Coach Sommer's posts!

This is just an example, you can sort by threads, keywords, date, you name it!

To a lesser degree, proper use of the thesaurus --> list of controlled vocabulary from the Foundation course - AKA - the exercises acronyms --> will enhance user experience dramatically.

That means proper titles for threads; use of SL/PE1 and not SLPE1 or SL-PE1

Adding specific and precise metadata in the tag fields (keywords)

Most redundant questions are posted by people that (1) do not frequent the forum very often, (2) do not use the search function, (3) never check if a thread with the same topic exists before firing away... and more often than not, (4) did not even bother to read the course materials correctly!

Do you really expect they'll read the FAQ?

The one and important positive of curating and assembling a FAQ resides in doing it yourself - by the time you are done, you won't need it, because you'll have learned all the relevant answers to the important questions.

............... So, go ahead & do it...

Well Fred, I understand but I didn't want to assemble it for me. I got pretty much everything I need to get started by carefully reading the material and complementing this with suggestions from people here. However, it is a fact that many redundant topics are opened on weekly basis. Hence, the idea of having a FAQ.

Thanks Jon for your reply and efforts!

Great, go ahead & get your feet wet Federicoco, we'll see if you reach different conclusions.

[edit] Understand me here: I was an early proponent of a FAQ; in fact I even started the work on one; that is how I found out that it sounds more like a good idea than it is really one!

But as I said, go ahead and find out for yourself, I will not stand in the way of people trying to do something good, and maybe I am wrong, after all...

Fred--

Im just kind of bored with pasting thread links to the same questions over and over. If a bit of collating text now reduces that then it's a nett profit in my book. At least this way I can just post a link to a single FAQ rather than go hunting for a thread i saw somewhere, because Im a sucker and do peoples dirty work for them

Honestly Im not convinced a FAQ is required either. But plenty of people have requested it so we'll do our best to do it right

Jon Douglas said:

I'm a moderator, but I'm not gymnasticbodies dev staff. This is strictly a forum project unless Coach/Cory decide that revisions to course material are warranted and believe me their plates are full with upcoming goodies.

I have to admit, I'd much rather have access to some of the upcoming products than a slightly slicker version of F1.  Let's try and keep this among forum users, so that the dev staff have a chance to bring us some more stuff we can get confused about. 

from my experience, before getting F1 i read many posts, threads here around and talked to some members.

than i got f1 and startet working out. fine. you see pictures and have a video of the exercise, should be enough you think.

but for me and many other newbies here, who have never seen a real gymnastic session its not easy.

video works good for giving informations, but i noticed many questions going around here were caused by the fact, that the video was just taken from one sight, so a shot from the side would answer many questions, posts...
and there are mostly just two short notes about the exercise, so come on! someone, who really wants to start from zero needs more informations without searching here everytime. for more specific you can ask, i understand that. i really do. but when you're in training right now you do not want to search here for longer. and i think we got the right to know what an exercise does. i'm in bwe for many years, but there are many things, that i need to learn in another way. so at the end i say there are many reasons for a faq or a more detailed description in f1 itself.

not everyone starts at the same point, right?

Guys, it's going ahead, we no longer need to discuss the for and against Let's have William's post be the last word on that please, and further posts contributing to the development thereof~~~