Gymnastics: a high dose of humility

Since I've started incorporating GST into my training, I have found how severely flawed I am. Growing up, I never considered Gymnastics a "real" sport, mainly because gymnasts only manipulate their own body weights for resistance, and no external resistance like weights are rarely, if ever, used. This was because I only worked out with weights and applied body weight exercises as only starters and finishers to my workouts.

Looking at the Foundation series and BTGB, I wanted to try GST to see if I can try at least some of the movements. From arrogance, came in reality, as I realized how much I needed to learn. My flexibility needed work, and my strength coming from weight training did not help at all. Static holds, press/pull movements, these were out of my league. Whoever said that weight training will crossover to gymnastics/progressive body-weight training is a fool. I rarely get hit hard by reality, but today I just received a huge dose of humility from learning about GST. The best part is, I am okay with knowing I am not great where I am at right now!

If the point of GST is to improve your skills, then, Dear Cecilia God, do I want to improve. So I am going to start from square one, right to the basics with the Foundation series and see how far I can go. So, having said all, that, since I am kind of new here, I was wondering, have you received a dose of humility from GST? What aspect about GST made you think that you have to humble yourself before continuing on? For me, it was the aspect of body control and awareness; the fact that you have to have full conscience of where your body is makes GST especially difficult in comparison to weight lifting, where you have to lift heavier to see progress (not that this isn't entirely bad). So, everyone, please let me know during one point, in your training, what made you see the difficulty of GST. Thanks!    

 

 

have you received a dose of humility from GST?

 

Maybe back when I was in HighSchool and shihan showed us thing and as a young guy you think, "Hmm, can't be too hard since shihan is probably in his early 50's." He was about 53-55 in the years I trained under him and stuff like L rope climbs and L bent arm press to HS were easy for him and included lots of falling on our faces for us.

@Blairbob I've actually seen you post a lot here on the forums and, I must say, I am a huge fan of your works, or "posts/responses" to be specific, so I am honored that you responded to this. A lot your posts helped me out when I did not signed up with GB. THANK YOU!

I first thought L sits were pretty simple so I tried doing an L sit pull up, and, boy, did that give me a harder workout. It was 50% harder than an actual pull up. Is it because of the reduced leverage from the legs? Just that one simple FSP gave me a hard time, and more respect fot GST.

I've received a humility dose from Hollow body rocks and holds and Pseudo planche pushups mainly.

+1 on PPP and HBH, but not only that! I've soon realized that my core was (ehm, still is..) weak, my shoulders inflexible and not strong at all, my hips frozen. But the best thing about Foundation, one of the many great things to be fair, is been able to get to the point where you can master what at first was a "humiliating exercise" before. Best feeling ever when months of work pay off!

It was push ups for me. My god, 6 months it is now building reps and correcting flaws in my form.

Push ups, straddle ups, and I worked on hinge row for a long time back then..

@Alexander Egebak Did you usually practice push ups/press ups with your arms closer to your sides or a little shoulder width apart like the "standard" push up/press up? I always liked it better with my arms closer to my sides.

Straddle L. I think that's the single most humbling element I have tried, in terms of str/active flex/co ordination deficiencies revealed per second.

It's fine with hands narrower, even on rings, but as we go out to full pbar width the decline is strikingly dramatic. I am going to be working on it for a while yet.

I think the oddest humility dose is actually how often I have to tell people at my regular gym that I am not even on the board in comparison to a strong gymnast. People take it funny when I play down body levers, FL pulls, SLS etc without thinking about it because I know what is coming up.

most of the mobility and the recovery rate. handstands have also been a challenge and i want to improve on my balance. it feels like riding my bmx bike in the sense that you can be on top, blowing fire out your mouth one day and being as harmless as a little kitten the other. no two days is the same. that frustrates me sometimes but such is life and my mind is not in posession of all the facts, as Jon says.

Jesse Kim said:

@Alexander Egebak Did you usually practice push ups/press ups with your arms closer to your sides or a little shoulder width apart like the "standard" push up/press up? I always liked it better with my arms closer to my sides.

I believe I started with a shoulder width stance. I am doing the Foundation 1 push ups so certain requirements must be met.

Keilani Gutierrez said:

 my mind is not in posession of all the facts, as Jon says.

Just gets more and more fitting over time, doesn't it?

Jon Douglas said:

Just gets more and more fitting over time, doesn't it?

very. it feels good to "let go" of that imposed responsibility, the need to know it all. just do the assigned work, forget about it as soon as im done with it and rest up. if progress halts, ask for help.

Another thing that is off topic: I'm thinking about getting F1 andt the website shows that they give f1 and H1 as a package deal (sounds cool). But because the package deal is pretty expensive, would I be at a disadvantage if I only get F1 or is F1 in itself solid enough?

It's definitely solid, but you may find depending on your own history/strengths that you complete some of the strength progressions at F1 level relatively quickly (it'd be impressive if you were able to complete them all quickly ). H1 is the flip side of the F series for me-- I find pretty much all the F series mobility much easier than the strength, whereas in H1 the strength work is taxing at times, but the mobility is far and away more challenging (for adults). H1 will take you longer to work through, but that's not to say you won't get your money's worth from F1.

Both if possible, they are designed to work together and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts If you must choose one, F1 is probably the more comprehensive choice, but as Coach and Daniel and keep saying, quality gymnast = quality handstand. There is no way around that

@Jon Douglas Thanks for clarifying. I might just save up until I can by both, because they sound great together and will provide a more stable foundation than just getting F1. Argh, the decisions >

 Start now, don't wait. Something is better than nothing.

Get out of your head and train!

Every time GB releases a new course I am humbled all over again.

Stephen M said:

Every time GB releases a new course I am humbled all over again.

Coach, if you are reading, I think we're ready to be (very) humbled by M1