Are pistols and GHR's enough?

After reading a basic discussion from Ido, I was curious what you guys thought. I am going to focus ENTIRELY on gymnastic/acrobatic strength. First I am not a gymnast training on a vault floor so dont feel I need rebounding strength like they do, however in idos discussion he feels sled dragging and heavier weights for your lower body isnt helpful when attempting to attain more difficult skills. I ask are pistols and glue ham raises enough?

I want muscular defined legs, that allow me to jump higher and sprint fast. I dont want tree trunks that come with heavt squatting though.

Would love if Ido could chime in, but anyone please feel free to answer.

Pistols and GHR's are fine for strength development but if you want powerful legs that allow you to jump high and run fast then you also need to practice jumping high and running fast.

Firstly, I prefer Ido's shrimp exercise for the legs to pistols, they are definitely harder.

Now, are you asking if pistols and GHR are enough to attain difficult body weight skills for the upper body? If so, of course they are. You don't even have to do them unless you plan on doing things that require landing or jumping.

Or are you asking if pistols and GHR are enough for muscular legs? Well, I guess that depends on how muscular you think muscular is. But probably not. Gymnasts also do landings and sprints to develop their legs.

With shrimps, pistols, box jumps, broad jumps, vertical jumps, sprints, and landings you can probably develop some decent legs. You'll never run as fast or jump as high as you would if you used weight. Whether body weight only will help you run faster and jump higher really depends on how strong and fast you are now. If you are untrained then bodyweight only legs training will make you faster.

That's my 2 cents.

For acrobatic ability, Ido really is your best source of info here.

I'll give what I know, but I don't know as much about this as he does. You are not going to need maximal strength so much as you're going to need extremely high levels of reactive and explosive strength. Single leg squats, shrimps, deck squat variations, eventually with weighted vests would work well to develop the maximal strength you need in your legs. You're still going to need a strong spine, and for that matter overall strength. For that the other gymnastics work will give you what you need. If you don't have Coach's book, you're going to want it.

To develop explosive ability in your legs the following exercises will help:

Short sprints, not longer than 100m.

Depth jumps: This is where you jump off of something high and land. It trains your body to absorb impact. You need this for your landings.

Plyo box jumps, both from nearly straight leg positions and from an iso squat. Ido has videos on these.

Senders: Jump forward, and upon landing immediately jump forward again with no pause. This should happen as quickly as possible. Highly developed athletes can do this in around .1 seconds or less, I believe. That's the time to hit the ground and be back in the air on your next jump. These develop rebounding ability, whether you do them on a gymnastics floor or any other surface. If you intend to be able to perform high level acrobatics you will need this ability.

Beyond that, you better pm Ido if he doesn't see this thread, and if he says to do different stuff than what I do, listen to him. He knows about this stuff.

I prefer SLS/pistols to shrimps but it's an interesting variation like hanging free leg SLS.

You can weight SLS as well.

Still gotta jump and sprint. To jump higher and run fast you need to practice jumping high and running fast. The SLS and glute-ham work is merely work to balance out the lower body and assist in working strength and power.

Don't do to much of depth jumps!!!! once a week is enough. Why? If we are talking about tumbling you must be good at rebound and not just push-off. So if you do to much depth jumps you will learn unconsciously to stop at the bottom and you will not rebound. I made a this mistake at my kids. Therefore I correct mistake with more boxes jumps (diffrent variations) with acro skill at the end, and less depth jumps (but I still consider them as a must to do exercise).

Blairbob,

I think shrimps could be weighted too, with the use of a weight vest. Something as simple as this should work.

shrimps, done correctly, should probably be difficult enough without the weight.