Kettlebells and Gymnastic Training

Hi again!

Currently I am doing strictly gymnastic stuff 3 days a week. Statics: planche frog, BL, FL, L-Sits. Also a bunch of basic ring stuff to for the FBE.

What i realize is that i still miss doing Kettlebell stuff. Swings, Snatches, Squats etc.

How can I add these into my gymnastic routine? Just add a 4th day of only Kettlebell exercises? Or shorten my gymnastic routines to add in the KB stuff?

As it stands right now my WO takes about 1.5 to 2 hours.

Example day is:

Planche frog

XR Bulgarian PU

BL

XR Rows

FL

L-Sit

Then legs and core.

I could just do Kettlebell Swings and Squats for legs and core. But when and where to add the Snatches?

Anyways.... I kinda rambled on a bit. But any advice would help

Richard

4th or 5th days of KB work, KB for legs/core mebbe but it depends on your desire of gymnastics

What i realize is that i still miss doing Kettlebell stuff. Swings, Snatches, Squats etc.

Comrade :wink:

that is exactly my case although I don't miss squats. I'm doing the FSP and FBE 3 times a week and I try to get my hands on KB's 2-3 times a week.

For upper body I mostly rely on rings since they are far superior to anything else you can do for strength (sometimes Kettlebell clean&press). From the hundreds of possible exercises with KB's I use only swings and snatches for lower body, back and endurance. I missed the swings and snatches because I need fewer hours of sleep and I recover faster if I do a few hundred repetitions of those a week and I really enjoy Kettlebelltraining.

The main focus in my case is on FSP so there is no problem with swings and snatches because I hardly see any muscle hypertrophy with my legs but they are still getting stronger. Maybe you should consider to skip those squats because thick legs won't help your levers and PL...

So here is how I program the Kettlebells:

I use swings or snatches as a finisher right after FSP and FBE or on the same day but seperated from FSP and FBE. The user slizzardman educated himself on that topic and he suggests there should be at least 4 hours between sessions if you train 2 times a day.

For the length of the sets: You know Pavels "Enter the Kettlebell"? I do timed sets somewhere between 7 and 12 minutes.

12 minutes of swings 2 times a week will give you a worldclass fightingman's condition.

That's my BorÅ¡Ä :wink:

Besides, together with warmup and stretching I usually finish my workouts after 75-90 minutes. I'm 28 years old and quite big so I have to watch the length of my workouts because of limited recovery abilities.

If you want the best results, stick to a well designed program. But if you sometimes feel like doing Kettlebells, that's fine. Don't forget to have fun with your training.

Enjoy!

The swings are great, and they work one thing that a lot of gymnastics training doesn't: The grip. Gymnastics is ok for grip strength, but it is not developed to a very high degree on rings, because a lot of the stuff underneath the rings is done with false or partial false grip.

Kettlebell swings are fantastic, and while they may not interest the gymnast, they DO offer a lot of athletic power development. If your goals are to increase strength, your best results will come from a separate kettle bell workout twice a week, with a few sets of heavy swings, cleans, and maybe snatches if you like them and are good at them. If you want conditioning, it's like Pavel said. Relatively infrequent but intense endurance work gets the same or better results than more frequent but less intense endurance work. Those two days of 12 minutes of swings will do more than enough. I do less than that even, but my training is broader in scope than most people's.

slizzardman said:

The swings are great, and they work one thing that a lot of gymnastics training doesn't: The grip. Gymnastics is ok for grip strength, but it is not developed to a very high degree on rings

This is incorrect.

Certainly the basic strength elements that you are currently working on only develop the grip to a moderate degree, however higher level dynamic strength elements will develop the grip far in excess of most other athletic activities. For example, during the bottom of a giant swing on rings the grip is exposed to loads in excess of 10 times bodyweight; or in my case over 1200lbs of pressure.

As a consequence of this training, years ago after retiring from competitive gymnastics, at 125lbs I performed sets of finger/wrist curls with 135lbs for 8-12 reps and used to laugh at the big 200+lb guys who couldn't come close to keeping up with me. At the time I believed that my grip strength was simply due to my being a beast 8), however I now understand that it was the long term exposure to higher level dynamic strength elements to which credit was due.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I take back what I said. I was honestly referring to the gymnastics basic strength only. I absolutely agree that as you get into higher degrees of force and the swinging techniques, the grip would become quite powerful. My apologies for making such an incomplete statement!

Coach Sommer said:

Certainly the basic strength elements that you are currently working on only develop the grip to a moderate degree, however higher level dynamic strength elements will develop the grip far in excess of most other athletic activities. For example, during the bottom of a giant swing on rings the grip is exposed to loads in excess of 10 times bodyweight; or in my case over 1200lbs of pressure.

Hi Coach Sommer,

Accordingly do you recommend for someone still working on basic strength elements coming from none gymnastic background.

do you recommend him to do some other workout focusing grip?

and if so, do you advice of some possible bodyweight progressive grip training?

A fairly complete approach could be done with bodyweight, though I don't think it's the most efficient. Pinch grip hangs/pullups with a block of 2x4, slightly tapered, plus doing all pull work with fingers only, and of course learning to swing on the high bar and rings. You're still missing thick handle work, which simply isn't safe to do with bodyweight in any exercise besides the pull up and, with padding, foot-supported front lever rows. So, you could do all that plus some thick handle farmer's walking or something like that. I also, after trying them, HIGHLY recommend 3" thick bar barbell curls. Regular barbell curls and even thinner thick handles don't do a good job of working the muscles used in planching. The 3" thick bar does, in addition to working the biceps in the event you need that strength for more advanced ring work, like Gregor does. I can guarantee you, you will be very surprised at how effective that is. As far as other lifting,for the upper body you're going to want to do as much on the rings as you can. In fact, if all you want to do is gymnastics and acrobatics, you may very well not need much else.

If you are specifically looking to increase your grip, outside of what I said above, you're going to want to do as much thick handle and odd-shaped object lifting as you have time for. Sandbags, thick bars, etc. That won't necessarily help you with gymnastics, but it will make your grip monstrous.

I don't know how Coach feels about that, and I may be missing other bodyweight activities that can help you, but I can guarantee you that there is no substitute for thick bar work when it comes to grip training.

Unless there is a particular need for the additional grip work that I am not aware of, I believe that you will find that focusing on preparing the biceps tendons for more advanced ring strength elements will be far more beneficial in the long run than inserting additional grip work at this point in your training.

Preparing the Elbows and Biceps for Iron Cross Training

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I mean really, for gymnasts, I can't imagine much of a benefit to the grip training, especially with basic strength work, though I do personally believe in having as strong of a grip as possible, but that's completely outside of gymnastics. I have no idea whether it would ever be useful in later stages of training, having never been there.

I do think there would be a strong pre-hab element to the thick bar curls for the wrists and elbows. The rest of it, not really applicable to gymnasts unless they have outside pursuits require or would benefit from extra grip training.

Focusing on the biceps tendons is definitely something we should all start doing from the beginning, nice and slow, to be ready for the more advanced stuff. I have gotten into the habit of referring to this as "elbow pre-hab," especially after my unpleasant experience with my own elbows

Wow...

i leave for a week and come back to 9 or 10 replies.

Thanks everyone for your input.

So i think i will do 3 days a week strictly BW gymnastic stuff. Mix in the static holds with the FBE's. Steady State plan. Each day do a different pull/push combo. i.e. PU/Row , Dips/Pull-ups, HSPU/Curls.

On the 2 days in between these do core / legs. i.e KB swings, KB DL, Leg raises, V Sits etc. These should not take too long to do. 5-10 mins of swings, then leg raises and v-sits etc.

Static holds are Planche, BL, FL, L-sits. These i do on the 3 gymnastic WO days.

Does this sound like a good idea?

Oh and thanks again!

I agree with Coach Sommer, I am new to gymnastics (rings), but my personal experience with Iron mind coc hand gripper and working only with rings in a gym after couple of months shows me that my grip is far better than previous when I work only with hand gripper (also for couple of months). Yesterday I test myself on hand gripper and easily squeeze particular number which is problem for me before. Of course, I still work on coc gripper, but only if I am in a hurry, etc

about kettlebells, I like swings and snatch, but if I work total body (gymnastics), I work on them some other day (if i decide ocassionaly ) and then I replace some gymnastics exercise or working on them less (especially lower back and harmstrings)

Good luck

Sounds pretty good. I find this interesting because I'm gonna have to change my weekday schedule to MWF from MTuThF possibly because Tu and Th don't lend themself to me getting in the gym (though I really need to get in more days of skill work, grr). I may be able to fit in another day on the weekend but I might be having to do CF workouts on TuTh as part of an internship that will really screw up my schedule (rather my recovery, probably).

Keep one thing in mind: grippers and rings do not work the thumb very hard. I can attest to this myself. Even after 4 months of ring training, the whole time during which I could close the CoC #2 with both hands, once with the left and 2-3 times with the right, my gripping power did not change. We can all agree that while not world class, a 205 lb grip(that's what it takes to close the #2 gripper) is pretty good. It's certainly a good bit above average. I then started doing thick bar deadlifting. Wow, was I in for a surprise! My thumbs were barely strong enough to handle 145 lbs for 10 reps. I usually worked out with 435 at that time with no support gear of any kind. So, that was a bit embarrassing lol I couldn't even make 205 budge. It may as well have been 5000 lbs. It's 2-3 months later now, and I'm using 185 for sets of 10. My thumb is noticeably stronger, and my ability to close the #2 gripper has increased from once (twice if everything was perfect, for a momentary hold) with the left hand to 3-5 times with solid 3-5 second squeezes at the close. With my right hand I have gone up to a pretty steady 7 reps in the same fashion, up from 2-3. So not only did my overall grip strength improve noticeably, my thumbs also got a lot stronger.

This may not matter for gymnasts much, I honestly have no idea how important the thumb is. From what I can tell in my training thus far, it's not a very big deal. For those of you who like to climb, practice parkour, or anything else that requires more well-rounded grip strength, those thick handles will force your thumbs to work, as well as the rest of your hand. For climbers, if you don't already know, they should have a complete grip program with thick bar work, pinch grip pullups and holds, finger lifts, wrist extensor work, the wrist pushups, etc. Just something to keep in mind for those of you who pursue other activities in addition to the work we do here

It is obvious that one exercise does not ensure all around development, variety is important, but setting goals is crucial to success. Different sports have different needs.

By the way, Coc 2 is tough, unless you want to be in iron mind list for CoC 3 or you want to crash bone with bare hands :wink: , two is very good

good luck

I want to get the #4, and yes, I do want to have a grip that can literally crush an arm. That's me though I know almost no one shares those goals

And thank you

This is getting a little off topic. My original interest was mixing in KB with Gymnastics training.

But, as we are now talking a bit about CoC training. Which one should someone start with? Also, on which days should it be trained with?

Thanks!

If you want to build the gymnastics strength, you should definitely focus on that, with kettlebells as a definite secondary. Fortunately, it doesn't take that much kettlebell work to get good results from them. Spending 10 minutes twice a week doing two sets of swings, cleans, and snatches will be plenty for developing strength and power in those movements, and I am sure that will translate over somewhat, but you really don't want to focus on kettlebells too much, because it will take away from the energy you put into gymnastics basic strength training.

I personally train a number of ways, but the bulk of my time goes into the gymnastics. I have one workout every 4-5 days or so where I work really really hard and heavy, and the rest of the days I do some planche leans, L sits, low Middle Split Hold(manna) on a retaining wall, some FL work and some L-pullups and PPP. Not too much, just some active recovery. I still can't do too much straight arm stuff, so I am a bit limited on my back lever work. Still, that's just my elbows adapting. The strength for a full BL I have already. So, most of my time is spend with the gymnastics, and it's working quite well. I am improving steadily. For you, I'd suggest that you work your gymnastics, and on two of your lighter workout days do your kettlebell work.

I have a similar problem. I'm going to start KB training this week (wednesday or friday) at a KB club or something, so I can't design my workouts, because trainings are held tuesday-wednesday-friday for 45 mins. This is going to collide with my gymnastic training, which looks like this:

Adriano said:

I pair push/press and legs/core. 2 minutes of rest in between sets (push - 2 mins - press - 2 mins etc). Immediately before any dynamic work, I do appropriate static work.

Day 1:

curl ups

single bar dips with under-grip

same as before, but legs are straight now

weighted SLL

Day 2:

pull ups - L

HeSPU - box

RLL - stall bar

weighted SLL

Day 3:

tuck front lever rows

push ups with hands at hips level

HLL - half

weighted SLL

Static work:

flat tuck front lever

tuck planche

flat tuck back lever

MSH bent manna

Started 1st of March and planning to do it for 10-12 weeks, 3 times a week, 3X3.

More details on my log.

Since I'm a beginner, I'm afraid those 3 days of KB training will exhaust me too much to do any quality gymnastics. Was thinking of doing gymnastics something like monday and thursday or saturday, doing eventually statics only, or statics and dynamics if KB wasn't too heavy, or doing 2X3 instead of 3X3. Don't have much experience with both KBs or gymnastics so I would really appreciate any advices.

Or gymnastics monday-thursday and KB tuesday-friday? Anyone?

I'd attend the classes until you can execute the exercises properly, personally. After that, twice a week should be the max. You may even want to switch, 2x a week for one week and then 1x a week, and alternate that. Do more gymnastics on your 1x week, and a little less on your 2x week.

Remember, kb is a different tool but the basic rules of successful training sessions remain the same:

If you're working close to your maximum capacity (high intensity) then keep your volume and frequency pretty low.

If you work a bit further below your maximum capacity you have a few options. You can keep your volume pretty low and your frequency high, or your volume a bit high and your frequency still pretty low. You'll probably do your best by periodically switching from one scheme to another, but no matter what you do, if it is physical training these rules will determine your degree of success or failure.

There are no concrete answers, everyone is a little different. Do not be afraid to discover for yourself exactly how much volume is too much at a certain intensity level, or how much frequency is too much. You are the only one who can discover these things, so if you don't do it then they will forever be a mystery, and mysteries aren't going to get you to your goals!

First thing's first, find out what the kb class is like. You won't know anything until then!

They have a new schedule from this week (mon - wed - fri) so I started from monday. Just learning the moves and techniques for now with light KBs (6 & 8 kilos). Talked to coach and he said gymnastics and KBs can complement each other greatly. He also suggested to use lighter KBs and concentrate more on endurance if I am doing strength training with gymnastics. For now, I'll do KBs those 3 days a week and gymnastics on tuesday and thursday. Worked fine for this week. Was kinda exhausted right after KB practice, but overall, I feel quite rested and fresh. Have no joint pain, no aches, no soreness. In fact, my gymnastic routine was done with more quality then ever before. Was thinking on doing gymnastics on saturday, but 6 days a week seem just too much. On the other hand, there's too much space between thursday and tuesday. Still, I don't want to overtrain. Anyway, I'm experimenting now and listening to my body. As I mentioned before, for now I feel great. If I start getting tired and sore, I'll have to rearrange something. Until then, I'll just enjoy my trainings like I'm doing now.

Hi Adriano, you mentioned using a 6 and 8 kilo kettlebell. In my opinion this might be to light for you especially if you are doing swings. I don't know your strength level but for swings you want a weight that is heavy enough to load up your legs. Most girls will start swinging with a 12kg and most men with a 16kg.

Keep in mind that he is brand new and is learning form. When you start learning form for clean and jerks, if your coach is any good at all you will start with a wooden dowel and will not be allowed to even use a 45 lb bar until your form is perfect.

He could certainly use heavier bells, and probably will, but at 3x a week he'll be too worn down to perform properly in his gymnastics workouts if those are his main goal and kettlebells are secondary. Just because he CAN doesn't mean he SHOULD.