So it's obvious to most people who are doing any sort of body weight exercises that body building exercises and people with body building backgrounds don't generally have the ability to translate their strength to body weight exercises, though to a widely reported and not insubstantial extent, gymnasts can do the inverse (I think everyone's familiar with Coach's accounts of his athletes weight lifting abilities as a sole result of their gymnastics training).
The obvious answer is that gymnastics training trains the body to work the muscle groups in coordination. The training of the tendons and ligaments is probably also relevant.
My question is why does gymnastics and body weight training translate to these exercises so well, and more relevant to my personal interest, pound for pound, why is there so much more of a gain in strength for bodyweight athletes than body builders? Why can't body builders easily "learn" to use the muscle groups in coordination? What are the upper limits to gymnasts strength derived from their training? What are the differences in muscle composition between gymnasts and body builders (given that body builders often have to build much more muscle than gymnasts seem to to make the strength to perform the specific lifts)? What are the areas where bodyweight focused people are weaker than bodybuilders?
Pardon me if this sounded terribly ignorant, I'm not very well informed on the area.