Combining Oly and GST

I was reading the Facebook post earlier about the potential benefits of combining OLY and GST. As someone who transitioned into GST from a weightlifting background, this is a pretty interesting topic.

I thought I'd make a thread to see if any people on the forum have already started incorporated Oly lifting into their routines, and some of the benefits they've seen.

One main thing I'd like to talk about, though, is how detrimental big legs are to gymnast who are not competing at a high level; and in what ways are big legs detrimental to the athlete not competing at a high level.

Orench who is part of the GB staff came from a WL background. Originally he was doing some sort of split before he switched over though I do hear they do a bit of WL. 

I was still doing a Gymnastics+WL split before I left Co in spring and found MidtownS&C to find a coach in WL in Norcal. And that was pretty much when I switched to predominantly WL and the gymnastics to just play. For awhile that summer in 2012, I was back doing a hybrid program @ a CF until I got back on the platform.

Coming into Gymnastics, I believe the WL set me up fairly well for tumbling. Coach Sommer has an old story of how his son after football seemed to be more powerful in tumbling after hitting the weights.

One of the young guys at MTSC loved to do gymnastics after WLing and didn't find it too fatiguing until his lifts started to plateau. Also helps to be in his young 20's. 5'8 180ish. Floated between 77kg-85kg. Was only working rudimentary gymnastics stuff. MU, levers, HSPU on parallettes.

Well this topic has already been beaten to death here, but don't do any weighted work till everything up till single leg squat is mastered in Foundation series.

It may be detrimental to gymnasts, but most likely beneficial to the adult fitness enthusiast when mass isn't as big an issue

Check out the Stronger series by Lachlan, Matt Walker and Tyson Edwards. Lachlan and Tyson both have combined oly lifting with gymnastics succesfully

Didn't Coach state somewhere that he was interested in the combination between the two? I'm pretty sure he said in a podcast that the only athletes who out jumped his own was ones who had a background in WL + GST.

I used to train CF and WL predominantly. I'm backing off now, and focusing on GST, and focusing on WL technique once a week. 

My overhead position is pretty weak, and I find my joints are often sore after a strenuous WL session. Intuitively, it would make sense that the improvements in mobility and strength would transfer well to WL.

I can't wait to find out!

Great question Felix! There are tons of possibilities when it comes to combing Olympic weightlifting with Gymnastics Strength Training. The best answer is probably, "It depends," mostly on your goals, your individual physical preparation previously, your training age, etc.

As someone who is active in the CrossFit and weightlifting world, the Single Leg Strength in the Foundation series has been invaluable towards building balanced strength leg to leg and anterior to posterior. Many people claim to be able to knock out single leg squats left and right, but how many spend time on single leg shoulder bridge leg curls? Stronger glutes and hamstrings will translate to a stronger snatch and clean & jerk in my experience.

Regarding leg size for a gymnast, that also depends. Some people can squat 5 sets of 5 heavy every session and barely gain any muscle mass, whereas others just look at a barbell and puff up right away. For competitive gymnasts whose athletic career depends on the success of their routines, it probably matters quite a bit that their legs stay of manageable size. However, for the general fitness population interested in combining Oly and GST, I would guess there are many other priorities to be taken care of first before we worry too much about leg size.

Just my $.02, hope it helps. When in doubt, take care of your Foundation GST work first, then "play" with some light, clean, crisp snatches or clean & jerks.

Best,

Chris

Here's a good article on how tumbling is included as warm-up for weightlifting at USD:

http://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/article.php?articleID=38

 In the latest podcast, Coach Sommer talked with Robb Wolf about integrating WL with GST. I believe this refers to Jeff Severn of Trident Athletics bringing out Coach Ma from Lindenwood (former Chinese champion) very soon next month (he might have visited Coach Wu when he was making the rounds as well). Jeff was also the coach who had Coach's gymnasts do push jerk more like a push press 1.5xBW once upon a time.

 Coach talks about the Chinese method of WL in the podcast. It's in the transcript. It sounds like it's very much in the beginning stages of a work in progress.

I kind of wanted to go check out what that Russian Cirque friend of Klokov's was training like. Igor Zaripov. He's much bigger than a typical gymnast though and his lifts are strength are getting good. As well, his gymnastics would only have to be maintenance vs skill building. And oh yeah, he probably has more innate talent than most people you'll ever meet, hahah.

As for blending GST and WL, ultimately I think you have to make a decision whether you are bias to one or the other. Whether it's 2/3 GST and 1/3 WL or vice versa or 50-50. Robb hinted at an alternating split schedule in the podcast and if I remember, Orench did something like WL in the beginning of the week and GST in the 2nd half of the week when I met him.

Ultimately something like 

Day 1: GST, Day 2: Weightlifting, Day 3:Rest, Day 4&5 repeat Day 1/2 and Day 6 could be something of an accessory/lighter day. A lot of this also depends on the volume and intensity of the WLing. I could see 2 days of GST, and a 3rd day of WL, rest, repeat or GST+WL or vice versa. Even split days are possible if you have the time and recovery(youth).

Something like some GST first and one lift after with strength work sounds reasonable as well. The opposite means your gymnastics will be pretty damn fatigued unless you are only touching something like 70-80%. You could flip this on certain days as well if you want to get fancy and have a GST emphasis and another WL emphasis.

If you are at the beginning stages of GST, basic stuff, that stuff can be a lot easier to recover from than if you have hit an intermediate to advanced level of strength/skill. Age has something to do with this as well.

I mean if you only want to get a basic competency of WL, 1-2 days is probably fine enough. This can be alternating a lift per week or both on the same day but it'll take a lot longer to get decent at the lifts training 1-2x/wk vs 3-4x and you can probably forgot about something like a 100kg SN/#300 CJ but it depends on goals. 
 

btw, Single leg shoulder bridge curls on a slider aren't that hard, they're not super easy but they aren't that hard either depending on the surfae. Floor Glute Hams are a pain though. I stick to RDL's these days anyways.

If you can squat strong, you don't have to worry about your glute strength. You just have to worry about hamstring development since snatch and clean pulls and jerks are quad dominant.

Blairbob said:

 In the latest podcast, Coach Sommer talked with Robb Wolf about integrating WL with GST. I believe this refers to Jeff Severn of Trident Athletics bringing out Coach Ma from Lindenwood (former Chinese champion) very soon next month (he might have visited Coach Wu when he was making the rounds as well). Jeff was also the coach who had Coach's gymnasts do push jerk more like a push press 1.5xBW once upon a time.

 Coach talks about the Chinese method of WL in the podcast. It's in the transcript. It sounds like it's very much in the beginning stages of a work in progress.

I kind of wanted to go check out what that Russian Cirque friend of Klokov's was training like. Igor Zaripov. He's much bigger than a typical gymnast though and his lifts are strength are getting good. As well, his gymnastics would only have to be maintenance vs skill building. And oh yeah, he probably has more innate talent than most people you'll ever meet, hahah.

As for blending GST and WL, ultimately I think you have to make a decision whether you are bias to one or the other. Whether it's 2/3 GST and 1/3 WL or vice versa or 50-50. Robb hinted at an alternating split schedule in the podcast and if I remember, Orench did something like WL in the beginning of the week and GST in the 2nd half of the week when I met him.

Ultimately something like 

Day 1: GST, Day 2: Weightlifting, Day 3:Rest, Day 4&5 repeat Day 1/2 and Day 6 could be something of an accessory/lighter day. A lot of this also depends on the volume and intensity of the WLing. I could see 2 days of GST, and a 3rd day of WL, rest, repeat or GST+WL or vice versa. Even split days are possible if you have the time and recovery(youth).

Something like some GST first and one lift after with strength work sounds reasonable as well. The opposite means your gymnastics will be pretty damn fatigued unless you are only touching something like 70-80%. You could flip this on certain days as well if you want to get fancy and have a GST emphasis and another WL emphasis.

If you are at the beginning stages of GST, basic stuff, that stuff can be a lot easier to recover from than if you have hit an intermediate to advanced level of strength/skill. Age has something to do with this as well.

I mean if you only want to get a basic competency of WL, 1-2 days is probably fine enough. This can be alternating a lift per week or both on the same day but it'll take a lot longer to get decent at the lifts training 1-2x/wk vs 3-4x and you can probably forgot about something like a 100kg SN/#300 CJ but it depends on goals. 

 

btw, Single leg shoulder bridge curls on a slider aren't that hard, they're not super easy but they aren't that hard either depending on the surfae. Floor Glute Hams are a pain though. I stick to RDL's these days anyways.

If you can squat strong, you don't have to worry about your glute strength. You just have to worry about hamstring development since snatch and clean pulls and jerks are quad dominant.

As well as being bias to one or the other when it comes to scheduling training, do you also think you have to be bias when it comes to building the physique as well?

Ultimately I'm trying to find out exactly how detrimental big legs are to Gymnastic Strength Training™. Is it something people who are not practicing technical elements not have to worry about, or will big legs definitely make things like a straddle planche harder?

Some of it is your genetics and how they are expressed. If this is the case, there isn't much you can do about this besides not use your legs or keep the volume low.


 

Don't worry about leg size, instead just get a wide enough straddle that is won't matter!