Is it hard to maintain Biceps/Triceps strenght/size balance with gymnastic oriented workout?

[Leandro Santos]

Hi guys, what are your experience in this area?

Is it actually hard to maintain muscle balance in gymnastic? Or it is only a byproduct of a well programmed and balanced training? Is it hard to match the pushing strengh with straight arm strenght?

[Jean-Rene Losier]

I actually think it's easier to achieve balance with this type of training. As every part of you that needs to be involved, gets involved, where as "classic" bodybuilding style training focuses on isolating.

[Alessandro Mainente]

Foundation is very balanced as you have good nutrition.

with the time as you prefer to move to rings movements probably you will gain more muscles in the upper body.

Since the SAS puts great effort on biceps i'm not surprised about the size of biceps in respect to other muscles. 

For some reason working on GST is perfect to build up the biceps in all the fibers. for example SAS works in the elongation position, reverse muscle up work in contraction position, all the climbing variation work best for intermediate position with intermediate grip.

From an anatomical and "fibers" approach this is one of the mine preferred way to build up hypertrophy with my clients. with the GST you can experiment a good transfer without barbell training.

Personally since i've started the RC + reverse muscle up + iron cross training i've  increased the size of biceps and of course triceps (since all the pulling movements involve triceps).

[Leandro Santos]

Foundation is very balanced as you have good nutrition.

with the time as you prefer to move to rings movements probably you will gain more muscles in the upper body.

Since the SAS puts great effort on biceps i'm not surprised about the size of biceps in respect to other muscles.

For some reason working on GST is perfect to build up the biceps in all the fibers. for example SAS works in the elongation position, reverse muscle up work in contraction position, all the climbing variation work best for intermediate position with intermediate grip.

From an anatomical and "fibers" approach this is one of the mine preferred way to build up hypertrophy with my clients. with the GST you can experiment a good transfer without barbell training.

Personally since i've started the RC + reverse muscle up + iron cross training i've increased the size of biceps and of course triceps (since all the pulling movements involve triceps).

So, it like that the biceps generally will have more hypertrophy. You said that triceps is always used in pulling, but it isn't only the long heads that is being used? Generally speaking speaking, hypertrophy only really happens with advanced ring elements?

[Alessandro Mainente]

Yeah is like you said, you have some tricep involvement but only with the fibers that attach into the scapula, you will reach their involvement in front lever and any other pulling movement.

it's not important what element are you using and in that case the level of stress or difficulty but the % of 1RM you are using and the correct technique. i spent about 7 months under my PL coach to learn the benchpress technique, if my clients were used to work with X overweight now i could use with them 1/3 of X to obtain the same effort. good technique and correct % of 1RM are more important then the exercise you are using. you can obtain hypertrophy with only muscle up, eventually weighted muscle up, but be sure to work in -- mass range --

[Leandro Santos]

So, what really matter isn't the difficulty of the current skill, but the difficult of the skill to me.

 

As long as strenght goes up, so goes hypertrophy. Is it a slow process to get in a good muscular shape trough gymnastic? Or the limiting factor is my current capacity to progress trought skills?

 

Can i easily maintain triceps and biceps balance? I really don't like having my forearm/biceps bigger than my triceps, it is an issue that i was thinking if i could really adress trough gymnastic training, as i saw, coach students have body symmetry. Is it hard at all to have body symmetry trought gymnastic? (in a genreal way for sure, because i know that are many variables on this, like genetecis, etc)

 

The point i was trying to adress was like that: Is it possilbe to get "good shape" doing low level skills like l-sit, german hang, support hold without bodybuilding concepts like weighted exercise or it's like it will require such strenght to make my body generate good levels of hypertrophy or it's like that the levels o strenght that will give  me a gymnstic body shape ( generated by hypertrophy) will only really happens when i get to good level skills like planche, cross etc?

 

Would be like this (ilustration) : Strenght Required for pull up > 50

                           

                                                                 Iron Cross> 2000 > this would generate high levels of hypertrophy

 

Did you  understand well the point i'm trying to adress here?                                                                                                                                               

[Joshua Slocum]

Regardless of where you get your resistance from (iron plates, bands, bodyweight), maintaining muscle balance requires good programming. Coach's athletes have balanced physiques because they have a balanced training program. Gymnastics is not inherently balanced. 

 

Strength and hypertrophy are inextricably linked. You can't progress very far in either without some of the other. There is individual variation in this, espeically for bodyweight training - some people will 'bulk up' more than others when learning the same skills, but large gains in strength are invariably accompanied by gains in size. 

[Leandro Santos]

Thanks, this was exactly the point i was wanting to calrify.

 

Regarding my other question, usually, at what level in gymnastic and individual will begin to get a significant amount of hypertrophy? I'm asking this only as personal curiosity, every time i see an gymnastic i think about this. Taking into account that is in a general manner, because like was said, there are many variables like genetics, etc).

 

Joshua, i saw in a post that u said that only with like 3 years of training u had the mass and definition wanted, at this time, what skills could you do? 

[GoldenEagle]

As it is with lifting "free weights" you can begin to see muscle mass gains in your body weight training, after about four to twelve weeks after increasing the difficulty of a particular movement.

 

For body weight training Increasing difficulty can be moving on to a more difficult variation of a movement and/or adding one or more static hold positions during the range of motion.