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Level of difficulty of GST exercises


Léo Aïtoulha
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Léo Aïtoulha

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The same goes for GST.
 
 
How do I know what is my level by GST standards ?
See below.
For instance, if you don't master Front Lever, Straddle Planche, Side Lever, Manna, Single Leg Squat, Hollow Back Press, Rope Climbing, Freestanding Handstand and the mobility paired with these exercices, you are a beginner.
 
Can I train intermediate and advanced exercises if I am a beginner ?
No. If you are a beginner you are not ready yet to benefit from doing intermediate and advanced exercises.
For instance, a lot of beginners think they can start to train for Back Lever while they still have weak connective tissue and poor mobility. As a result, most of them will get elbow/shoulder injury which may take a lot of time to fully heal depending on the gravity of the injury.


Beginner level :
- Front Lever
- Straddle Planche
- Side Lever
- Manna
- Single Leg Squat
- Hollow Back Press
- Rope Climbing
- Freestanding Handstand
Note that the mobility paired with these exercices obviously corresponds to a beginner level too.
 
Intermediate level :
- Ring Support
- Back Lever
- Reverse Muscle Up
- Press Handstand
- Ring Handstand
- Ring Press Handstand
 
Advanced level :
- One Arm Handstand
- Ring Planche
- Iron Cross
- Ring Maltese
- Inverted Cross
- Victorian

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Douglas Wadle

I like the thought process here.  My only comment on your take, Alex, is that sometimes difficulty should not be measured by how hard it is to do, but how hard it is to do safely.  Back lever is easy, however, due to the high likelihood of injury I disagree with you and would put it in intermediate.  If it's listed as easy, people will try do it, and they will get injured because even though they can pretend to have the strength for it, they actually do not.   So we must be responsible in telling people something is easy, because otherwise we will cause injury to our peers here who do not know any better.  It's akin to calling a flip easy, because anybody can do one, but if you don't know how to do it right you will get injured.  Sometimes it is not the difficulty of doing something, but rather of doing it correctly, safely, and reproducibly.  

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Coach Sommer

Muscle ups and back levers have no place in an adult beginner's training. Whether or not someone agrees is inconsequential and does not change this reality.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

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Pasha Muravyev

I agree on the whole with the chart above, but I think what classifies as beginner/intermediate/advanced is highly specific to a person's background (e.g. a press handstand could be a beginner element to a contortionist, for example).

 

I think there's also some discrepancy in terms of the skill divisions here and people's individual goals. If your goal is to develop strength in a thorough and efficient way, you should indeed go through the Beginner -> Intermediate -> Advanced progressions above. However, if you do other activities that would benefit from carefully integrating more advanced elements (and supposing you were not willing to give up the other activities), it would make sense to carefully incorporate some basic work on the more advanced elements into your workout (alongside the more basic elements), as long as it decreases the overall risk of your activities.

 

(As an example - say you need a back/front uprise to support on rings for a rings routine for a competition, it would make sense for you to carefully work ring supports and ring dips even though you might not have mastered a straddle planche (or some other F4 element), since not having strength in support will actually increase the chance of you hurting yourself on the uprise skills.)

 

However, these "exceptions" should be applied cautiously, with the understanding that they do carry a risk with them, since you're training "above your level." They specifically make a trade-off between progress in the short-term and progress in the long term: on this forum, we assume that faster progress in the long term always beats faster progress in the short term; however, sometimes, due to self-imposed goals, the opposite trade-off might be acceptable (suppose it's your last competition in college or something - you might consciously make the long-term/short-term trade-off in favor of the short term for that one competition, and the increased risk of injury in the moment might be acceptable to you in order to have a chance at a better competition)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Jesse Frigo

Even before I started GST and I was doing some of the calisthenic programs like Convict Conditioning I found that going beyond my current level was never a good idea.  I would make no progress and get frustrated.  When I met the prerequisites for a given exercise, progress through the technique and strength-building requirements was pretty smooth.

 

Skipping steps doesn't help if you aren't ready for it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Ronnicky Roy

Where does a High Manna stand on the Intermediate- Elite scale? I imagine it's elite or at best advanced. A high manna is something i want to work towards

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Dylan Robertson

Where does a High Manna stand on the Intermediate- Elite scale? I imagine it's elite or at best advanced. A high manna is something i want to work towards

In BtGB, didn't Coach say that he's only ever seen like 2-4 people in the World perform it? I imagine that it must be a pretty high up there skill.

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Ronnicky Roy

He said other than his athletes he's only seen it performed "in competition" once. But it's also been years since that book and seeing how manna is intermediate I'd think high manna is the next step and therefore is advanced. For all I know it still might be elite.

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Rajesh Bhat

I would think that high manna has tremendous transfer to victorian. Am i wrong? And how does one who has mastered manna develop this skill?

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Ronnicky Roy

I would think that high manna has tremendous transfer to victorian. Am i wrong? And how does one who has mastered manna develop this skill?

I saw coach share a video on facebook that had an athlete in a manna, then slowly lifting one leg up slightly. Alternating between legs. I imagine you train similarly to the body lever variations.

When in full manna, alternate legs>both legs at once>negative leg lifts>static hold in a slightly higher manna.

That would be my guess

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Daniel Burnham

In BtGB, didn't Coach say that he's only ever seen like 2-4 people in the World perform it? I imagine that it must be a pretty high up there skill.

It's pretty hard that's for sure. The coach at the gym in Atlanta that I went to had all of his athletes learn manna similar to coach's requirments and several of his had been able to pull off high manna. I believe one even competed it but i can't be sure if it is the same guy coach is mentioning.
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Ronnicky Roy

Mispoke. I guess it would be a manna with alternating single leg hip extension. A bit wordy

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  • 4 weeks later...
Daniel Taylor-Shaut

Muscle ups and back levers have no place in an adult beginner's training. Whether or not someone agrees is inconsequential and does not change this reality.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I can attest to this. Pretty damn sure that my brief reprieve from GST training in December of last year and my foray into back lever training has helped me have extended sternum and pectoral soreness. So, that's been awesome. (I'm obviously back to doing Foundation 1, as of January this year). 

 

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