Principles of strength applied to GST

Hello everyone, I just started F1 2 weeks ago after having trained mostly with kettlebells and bodyweight for the past 2 years. I was doing so following the principles of Strong First (Pavel Tsatsouline's organisation after the RKC). I was wondering if I should be applying some of those principles to my GST practice. These principles usually make exercises harder and so make higher rep sets harder to complete or longer duration holds harder to hold. For that reason I was mostly doing 5 reps or less per set or shorter holds 15-20 secs and using longer rest periods. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to use those same principles and apply them to higher rep sets with less rest in between.

Irradiation: squeezing/grabbing really hard the bar/floor/rings with hands or feet (on squats) to increase the nerve output to the surrounding muscles.

Active negatives: lower yourself using muscles instead of letting gravity lower you on various exercises ex: pulling yourself down with lats on push-ups, pulling yourself down with hip flexors on squats, lowering in pull-ups like doing a military press or lowering on military press as if doing a pull-up etc.

Corkscrew: using a spiral motion when pushing off the floor in push-ups and squats

Total body tension: when doing isometrics like planks/supports/hollows squeezing EVERY muscle as hard as possible except face/neck.

Extra question : I would like to keep doing kettlebell swings maybe once a week for basic conditioning (low volume 50-100 swings in sets of 10 with light to medium weight) just to keep the skill active and wondered where I should plug that into my schedule. I plan on following the recommendations from coach Sommer for programming once I am finished with fundamentals and have purchased the stretch series and handstand 1.

Hi Benjamin,

Welcome to the GymnasticBodies community! Happy to have you onboard!

Some of these principles are applied in the Foundations. I.e. Isometrics hold, you are supposed to squize almost every muscle in your body.

As you've already seen, Foundation One is primarily to build better work capacity and therefore higher reps and long isometric holds, with little/no rest in between the sets.

You can keep doing KB swings if you'd like, I'd reccomend to do them after your GST workout on days you do Lower Body. 

Great idea to follow Coach Sommer's schedule after completing the Fundamentals course. This schedule will give you lots of material to work with and help you building a Gymnastic Body  

Looking forward to follow your GST journey! Please keep us posted with your profess, and feel free to reach out again if you have any questions  

Thanks @Pauline Taube, how about the other techniques? Irradiation principle and active negatives, have you heard of people using them in GST? I think @Jon Douglas used to train with RKC before GST, maybe you'd have some insight to share with me on this.

Thanks

Hi Benjamin,

Thanks for bringing up questions that I'm curious about too.  I've been experimenting with using Irradiation to squeeze out extra reps/time for some of my  progressions (seems most relevant to Rope Climb and Front Lever for me) and found it does help me.  It sounds like Irradiation is easier to do with weights because in that case you actually have something to squeeze, whereas not all GST exercises do.

That's great to hear Chad, I haven't heard about the irradiation thechnique before but I guess that technique is applied on i.e. Push-up by pushing your hands into the ground at the same time as total body tension. 

Active negatives are also applied later in Foundation for most of the progressions actually, Front Lever progressions, Manna, Rope Climb, SLS and Hollow Back Press progressions all apply this technique at some point  

Thanks Pauline, so for now I will focus on tension and technique, working to build up work capacity.

Irradiation was used mostly with weights and bar exercises, but grabbing the floor with your hands (kind of like clawing) had a similar effect, same on squats, clawing/grabbing the floor with toes.

Good to hear.

Having these principles in the back of your mind will help you focusing on the form in many of the exercises. 

Looking forward to see videos of you crushing the isometric holds in Foundation One. In the meantime, enjoy The Fundamentals  

Hi Benjamin,

Sorry; Australia time  IRT the principles you mention here, certainly when performing exercises such as levers, planche pushups and hollowback presses the whole body will need to be tensed from head to toe. This is partly for pure mechanics, as a relaxed link along the way will produce a noticeable sag, and partly for irradiation as mentioned. 

We also generally have athletes using more tension than necessary at first in the longer static holds, say a basic hollow body shape. This is because beginners, especially adults, will tend to use the wrong muscles (usually compensating for weakness in some link, such as not learning to activate the TA fully and doing it pretty much as a static crunch, resulting in a different shape and later an FL that won't quite stay straight against gravity). Often they can't feel these muscles at all at first - try asking someone off the street to tense the serratus or lower traps  so via irradiation we get the result and gradually it can become more conscious.

When on the rings in the correct positions, or when performing swings on the pbs or high bar, tension will occur pretty much by itself. Gravity and the bodys 'holy ****' response will ensure that. Strive for the correct positions, such as rings turned out and arms locked, and as much tension is necessary to get there. However muvh you think you are tensing, your biceps will find a little more to maintain the turnout until you are quite strong

Note that with experience all the rules change ; while max tension is necessary for say a ring l-sit for me, for those who are much stronger efficency becomes more important;  isolating the muscles needed and maintaining relaxation everywhere else is vital for longer routines  and performances in disciplines such as handbalancing. Obviously this is achieved when a given element or combination no longer requires full-body tension.

Negatives are used quite a bit in the Foundation series, for the purposes of keeping a higher time under tension especially while learning movements, but also for the purposes of hypertrophy and endurance. This one will be a non issue when you get on it due to the rep speeds  required

For the swings i agree with Pauline. Though at that weight/volume you could do them more often as cardio/active recovery, if you feel like it. Just don't get too frisky with extra weight and volume

Thanks @Jon Douglas, this pretty much answers everything. You really took the time there to go into detail for me. You and Pauline answered all my questions.

Thanks for the warm welcome and for the time you both took to answer. I'll keep you posted on my GST journey.

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