gymnastics and transference to lifting

[Jay Guindon]

Hey guys,

I read an interview with Coach Sommer and he said he's seen gymnasts with no lifting experience lift ridiculous amounts the first time they do. Here is an excerpt

Sommer: Gymnastics training does indeed build incredible strength. For example, I was not a particularly strong gymnast, yet I was able to do a double bodyweight deadlift and weighted chins with almost 50% extra bodyweight on my very first weight training attempts.

One of my student’s, JJ Gregory, far exceeded my own modest accomplishments. On his first day of high school weight lifting, JJ pulled a nearly triple bodyweight deadlift with 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 135 and about 5’3" in height. On another day, he also did an easy weighted chin with 75 pounds

I've also heard Ido Portal talk about this and say that being strong at moving your bodyweight transfers really well to moving external loads, but being strong at moving external loads does not transfer to being good at moving your body weight.

Is this really true? For those of us interested in functional fitness what does this mean? Can we train only gymnastic bodyweight stuff and still be able to lift heavy boxes off the ground (deadlift), put heavy loads on shelves above our heads (shoulder press), and get an 80lb bag of ice melting salt onto our shoulder from the ground (clean)? These seem like things that only weightlifitng can achieve.

Just as important as these things is being able to pull myself up over fences (pull up), get onto a tree branch or onto scaffolding (muscle up), push myself onto a ledge that is chest height (dip) etc. These things are clearly only achievable through gymnastic training as it has been noted numerous times that meatheads have a hard time moving themselves through space.

Having said that, it is very hard to argue that deadlifts, presses and squats, aren't functional because they are the most functional lifts

Sorry for the long post.

[Neal Winkler]

What do you mean, "is this really true?" I'm not trying to be confrontational, but are you saying that Coach Sommer is not being honest about the examples he gave?

Nothing transfers more than specificity, but that doesn't mean there is no overlap. Gymnastics movements have more overlap because there are higher demands on coordination, stability, ect.

Just think about a HSPU vs. overhead press. Almost the same movement except HSPU is upside down. If you can do multiple reps of HSPU, don't you think you should be able to do pretty much your bodyweight in the ovehead press (since that's basically what you are doing in the HSPU). Overhead presses will help with HSPU's, but mostly on the wall. You will not of developed the balance required to do freestanding. Compared to controlling your own body, controlling a weight over your head is simple. That's why gymnastics transfers more.

Also, an 80lbs. bag is nothing. I lifted probably over 1000 before I even did a single clean. You don't need to specifically train for that. You just need to know how to properly pick up an object.

[Joshua Naterman]

Hey guys,

I read an interview with Coach Sommer and he said he's seen gymnasts with no lifting experience lift ridiculous amounts the first time they do. Here is an excerpt

Sommer: Gymnastics training does indeed build incredible strength. For example, I was not a particularly strong gymnast, yet I was able to do a double bodyweight deadlift and weighted chins with almost 50% extra bodyweight on my very first weight training attempts.

One of my student’s, JJ Gregory, far exceeded my own modest accomplishments. On his first day of high school weight lifting, JJ pulled a nearly triple bodyweight deadlift with 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 135 and about 5’3" in height. On another day, he also did an easy weighted chin with 75 pounds

I've also heard Ido Portal talk about this and say that being strong at moving your bodyweight transfers really well to moving external loads, but being strong at moving external loads does not transfer to being good at moving your body weight.

Is this really true? For those of us interested in functional fitness what does this mean? Can we train only gymnastic bodyweight stuff and still be able to lift heavy boxes off the ground (deadlift), put heavy loads on shelves above our heads (shoulder press), and get an 80lb bag of ice melting salt onto our shoulder from the ground (clean)? These seem like things that only weightlifitng can achieve.

Just as important as these things is being able to pull myself up over fences (pull up), get onto a tree branch or onto scaffolding (muscle up), push myself onto a ledge that is chest height (dip) etc. These things are clearly only achievable through gymnastic training as it has been noted numerous times that meatheads have a hard time moving themselves through space.

Having said that, it is very hard to argue that deadlifts, presses and squats, aren't functional because they are the most functional lifts

Sorry for the long post.

Flaws in your thinking:

1) Thinking that functionality exists as a rigid, defined term.

2) Thinking that weight lifting is the only way to build the ability to move external loads, or that gymnastics is the only way to become able to move your body through space.

Functionality is always relative. For example, deadlifting is not functional for a freestyle swimmer. It contributes just about nothing to their athletic ability within their sport. A function, by definition, is the specific use of something. Specific uses, by nature, are limited to certain situations. For example, a chair has a specific use. You sit in it. The chair has no specific use when someone is running a race, or climbing a tree. In those situations, while a chair is functional when you need something to sit on, it is not functional when running a race or climbing a tree. Deadlifts and squats are only functional within specific contexts. For example, deadlifts are not as functional for a baseball player as they are for a football lineman because the ability to maintain a straight spine with a heavy external load from a squatting position to a straight position is not something that baseball players do, whereas that's essentially the core of what a lineman does. Baseball players would benefit a lot more from the arch ups that coach recommends, as well as the body tension developed by front levers, back levers, and GHR/NLC work. Incidentally, football players also reap large benefits from these exercises, because they develop the ability to keep the body tense in awkward positions, and develop strength and coordination in muscle groups that both sports rely heavily on.

That's just to help you learn how to properly frame ideas. That's an important skill that many people lack, and without the ability to correctly define ideas and recognize the limitations inherent to them and whatever set of circumstances is being considered one can not understand, learn, argue, or create anything. You become limited to memorization.

The main difference is that, as my personal story below will show, good strength in the weight room does not transfer to moving the body through space to anywhere near the same degree as good strength in moving the body through space transfers over to performance in the weight room, or with any other external load. The difference between weights and gymnastic work is that in most cases gymnastic work is closed kinetic chain, while most weight work is open kinetic chain. Squats and deadlifts, by the way, are closed chain, and that's why they are so much more effective at building actual athletic ability than the open chain exercises that work the same muscle groups, namely leg extentions, back extentions, and leg curls. The difference is that in closed chain the body is moving around a fixed point, like the hands in a push up or the feet in a squat/deadlift. With open chain, a load is being moved around the body, which is fixed into position. Closed chain work has much more transference to open chain than the other way around. That's just how our bodies work. Now, if your sport requires you to move heavy external loads, like strongman does, then you're going to need to do a certain amount of open chain work if you wish to excel. Even then, using closed chain work for basic conditioning is going to produce better results and more injury-resistant athletes than open chain basic conditioning will, because closed chain work forces your entire body to stay tense and in perfect position, working all the small muscles that don't have to do their job during open chain work. So while sports based around open chain work are going to need sports-specific open chain work, the athlete will benefit more from closed chain work being used to build and maintain non-sport specific strength and conditioning. Every sport will be unique in requirements, but the fact, and I do mean fact, that closed chain work produces more athletically capable bodies than open chain work within any given time frame, is a constant. You will ALWAYS have to use sport-specific methods to excel in a given sport, but the basics that one needs to have a strong body are the same no matter what and are independent of the sport specific work.

Because you have not had any experience with gymnastic training, just like me a year ago, you're not going to understand how this can be so because your mind is not clearly separating the differences in how the body develops with each training method. You probably don't know what they are, and that's understandable since you and the world at large has not been exposed to the old ways of becoming strong.

Moving past that, because I know that academia is not important to many people, I'll use myself as an example. I lifted weights for a long, long time before coming here. My strength, while fairly high, did not allow me to jump into gymnastics and do a bunch of high level skills.

Here's where I started out one year ago:

Weights:

15-17 reps with 235, barbell flat bench press.

2 reps at 205 military press, barbell.

250 power clean, despite never really training them.

400+ squat. I never really maxed, that's just an estimated 1rm based off of a 10RM of 315. I didn't train that high usually, since I didn't want my legs getting any bigger at the time.

barbell curl of 150 for 4 reps.

6x 465 for deadlift.

I was already doing body levers for abs, and was doing inverted sit ups for 10 reps with 25 lbs.

I want to point out that I used no support equipment. No chalk, no straps, no belt, no wraps. Nothing.

Bodyweight: 215 lbs.

Height: 6'2".

Gymnastic ability:

Planche: Couldn't even get off the ground hardly in tuck planche. I tried a planche lean and went forward a few inches and when my hands got to the bottom of my chest I literally fell forward onto my face.

L-sit: 10 seconds at almost horizontal.

Manna: nothing. Could barely do 5 seconds of the below horizontal bent leg split hold.

Front lever: 20 seconds tuck. And it wasn't perfect.

FL rows: not even 1 full rom, even in the tuck. I was close, though!

SLS: couldn't do one.

Headstand push up: could ALMOST do one. Which means, you guessed it, I could do NONE.

Wall handstand: 20 seconds max.

Back lever: maybe 8 seconds tucked.

Abs:

I could do 7 body levers, max.

I could not do one single HLL on a stall bar set up. Could barely get to the "L" position, and not with straight legs.

NLC: couldn't do them at all.

GHR: I could do one of the easiest variations for 4 reps. It was tough.

One year later:

Bodyweight: 225(notice I've gained muscle?)

Height: 6'2"

Weights:

This is a bit of an unknown area for me. I play occasionally, and everything is easier. Barbell lifting seems like more of a good joke than something I should take seriously. I haven't benched recently, but for the first 4 months I did strictly GB stuff, and when I went back to the bench my strength and endurance was the same. Obviously, I improved some with subsequent lifting since I was essentially de-trained that first workout. I haven't lifted in a long time, probably a few months. I progressed too fast with the planche, not understanding the importance of inner elbow conditioning, and I injured my elbows. I couldn't train planches for 6 months or so, and in the meantime I lifted to try and maintain strength. I was using a 3" thick barbell that I made myself, and doing sets of 5 reps with 265. Let me tell you, that's one hell of a lot harder than doing 5 reps with 275 on a regular barbell. That's easy. The thick bar is really tough. I also did Pseudo Planche Pushups to maintain that strength once a week.

I WILL say that the thick barbell is infinitely more useful for building strength and ability than the regular olympic bar.

Shoulder press: 2 easy reps with 205. I laughed and put the bar down, because I didn't want to ruin my HeSPU work by getting tired with something unproductive.

Squats: I haven't done a squat starting from the top position for almost 7 months now. What I HAVE done, a few months ago, was work on bottom-start squats. You hang the barbell on straps at the bottom position of the squat. That's where you start. I was doing 5x5 with 295 my last workout, and it was pretty easy. These are much harder than starting at the top. I could not have done that a year ago. The SLS work has made my squat go up.

Deadlift: I'd deadlift once a month just to see how my strength was, and I was always able to do more than the last month. Gymnastics work brought my work sets up to 5x4 with 455, which is much more than my 6 RM of 465. I have no idea what my 6RM is now, and I honestly don't care to test it. I know that when I tested a year ago my work sets were 4 sets of 4 reps(4x4) with 415. I wasn't even tired at the end of my deadlift work the last time I did it!

Weighted pull ups: This has remained steady, despite my not using them in my routines. I can still do 6-10 reps with 75 lbs added to my body. Obviously, the gymnastic work is equal to the weighted pull ups in terms of building pull up strength.

Bicep Curls: 155x5 with a straight barbell is not a big challenge. I don't really test this. Biceps are too important to tire out with weights before I work out, even for a test.

Gymnastic Ability:

Planche: Flat tuck for 8-10s on both parallel bars and rings. Yea. Not too shabby, especially considering my long layoff from planche training.

Front Lever: I stopped training it hard when I hurt my elbows. At the time I had a 10 second or so front lever, but only the first 6 or 7 seconds were really perfect. Now, after being back at it for a little less than two months, I have a good 8 second straddle. My straddle isn't very wide, so it's pretty close to the full lay. My legs are only open 90 degrees.

FL Rows: I can do a few reps with bent leg straddle, but I work out with the tuck and advanced tuck.

BL: I had achieved full BL, but the elbow injury set me back. I can do a 15 second straddle, but I still work flat tuck and tuck for work sets.

Muscle up: Look at me do them on my youtube account. Username Slizzardman. I couldn't even start the transition a year ago.

L-sit: I can hold for a good 20s on parallel bars, but I never work this. THus the poor progress.

Manna: I work this sporadically. I can lift my hips off my arms with bent legs an inch or two for around 10 seconds with my fingers pointing backwards. A year ago I couldn't even do the easy stuff with the fingers backwards.

SLS(Single Leg Squat): 6 reps with +25 lbs now. I know, I did it in Home Depot with a bag of sand. Lol I usually use 20 lbs because it's easy. I build this slow.

NLC(Natural Leg Curl): I can do these with a 120 lb spot.

Natural GHR(Glute Ham Raise: I don't have the equipment to do a full one, but I could with a moderate spot. I can do 10 reps at a 45 degree angle.

Abs: Multiple sets of 10 body levers

Multiple sets of 5 Russian Leg Lifts. Yea. Big improvement. They are perfect, too. I should put that video up soon.

[Neal Winkler]

Hey guys,

I read an interview with Coach Sommer and he said he's seen gymnasts with no lifting experience lift ridiculous amounts the first time they do. Here is an excerpt

Sommer: Gymnastics training does indeed build incredible strength. For example, I was not a particularly strong gymnast, yet I was able to do a double bodyweight deadlift and weighted chins with almost 50% extra bodyweight on my very first weight training attempts.

One of my student’s, JJ Gregory, far exceeded my own modest accomplishments. On his first day of high school weight lifting, JJ pulled a nearly triple bodyweight deadlift with 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 135 and about 5’3" in height. On another day, he also did an easy weighted chin with 75 pounds

I've also heard Ido Portal talk about this and say that being strong at moving your bodyweight transfers really well to moving external loads, but being strong at moving external loads does not transfer to being good at moving your body weight.

Is this really true? For those of us interested in functional fitness what does this mean? Can we train only gymnastic bodyweight stuff and still be able to lift heavy boxes off the ground (deadlift), put heavy loads on shelves above our heads (shoulder press), and get an 80lb bag of ice melting salt onto our shoulder from the ground (clean)? These seem like things that only weightlifitng can achieve.

Just as important as these things is being able to pull myself up over fences (pull up), get onto a tree branch or onto scaffolding (muscle up), push myself onto a ledge that is chest height (dip) etc. These things are clearly only achievable through gymnastic training as it has been noted numerous times that meatheads have a hard time moving themselves through space.

Having said that, it is very hard to argue that deadlifts, presses and squats, aren't functional because they are the most functional lifts

Sorry for the long post.

Flaws in your thinking:

1) Thinking that functionality exists as a rigid, defined term.

2) Thinking that weight lifting is the only way to build the ability to move external loads, or that gymnastics is the only way to become able to move your body through space.

Functionality is always relative. For example, deadlifting is not functional for a freestyle swimmer. It contributes just about nothing to their athletic ability within their sport. A function, by definition, is the specific use of something. Specific uses, by nature, are limited to certain situations. For example, a chair has a specific use. You sit in it. The chair has no specific use when someone is running a race, or climbing a tree. In those situations, while a chair is functional when you need something to sit on, it is not functional when running a race or climbing a tree. Deadlifts and squats are only functional within specific contexts. For example, deadlifts are not as functional for a baseball player as they are for a football lineman because the ability to maintain a straight spine with a heavy external load from a squatting position to a straight position is not something that baseball players do, whereas that's essentially the core of what a lineman does. Baseball players would benefit a lot more from the arch ups that coach recommends, as well as the body tension developed by front levers, back levers, and GHR/NLC work. Incidentally, football players also reap large benefits from these exercises, because they develop the ability to keep the body tense in awkward positions, and develop strength and coordination in muscle groups that both sports rely heavily on.

That's just to help you learn how to properly frame ideas. That's an important skill that many people lack, and without the ability to correctly define ideas and recognize the limitations inherent to them and whatever set of circumstances is being considered one can not understand, learn, argue, or create anything. You become limited to memorization.

The main difference is that, as my personal story below will show, good strength in the weight room does not transfer to moving the body through space to anywhere near the same degree as good strength in moving the body through space transfers over to performance in the weight room, or with any other external load. The difference between weights and gymnastic work is that in most cases gymnastic work is closed kinetic chain, while most weight work is open kinetic chain. Squats and deadlifts, by the way, are closed chain, and that's why they are so much more effective at building actual athletic ability than the open chain exercises that work the same muscle groups, namely leg extentions, back extentions, and leg curls. The difference is that in closed chain the body is moving around a fixed point, like the hands in a push up or the feet in a squat/deadlift. With open chain, a load is being moved around the body, which is fixed into position. Closed chain work has much more transference to open chain than the other way around. That's just how our bodies work. Now, if your sport requires you to move heavy external loads, like strongman does, then you're going to need to do a certain amount of open chain work if you wish to excel. Even then, using closed chain work for basic conditioning is going to produce better results and more injury-resistant athletes than open chain basic conditioning will, because closed chain work forces your entire body to stay tense and in perfect position, working all the small muscles that don't have to do their job during open chain work. So while sports based around open chain work are going to need sports-specific open chain work, the athlete will benefit more from closed chain work being used to build and maintain non-sport specific strength and conditioning. Every sport will be unique in requirements, but the fact, and I do mean fact, that closed chain work produces more athletically capable bodies than open chain work within any given time frame, is a constant. You will ALWAYS have to use sport-specific methods to excel in a given sport, but the basics that one needs to have a strong body are the same no matter what and are independent of the sport specific work.

Because you have not had any experience with gymnastic training, just like me a year ago, you're not going to understand how this can be so because your mind is not clearly separating the differences in how the body develops with each training method. You probably don't know what they are, and that's understandable since you and the world at large has not been exposed to the old ways of becoming strong.

Moving past that, because I know that academia is not important to many people, I'll use myself as an example. I lifted weights for a long, long time before coming here. My strength, while fairly high, did not allow me to jump into gymnastics and do a bunch of high level skills.

Here's where I started out one year ago:

Weights:

15-17 reps with 235, barbell flat bench press.

2 reps at 205 military press, barbell.

250 power clean, despite never really training them.

400+ squat. I never really maxed, that's just an estimated 1rm based off of a 10RM of 315. I didn't train that high usually, since I didn't want my legs getting any bigger at the time.

barbell curl of 150 for 4 reps.

6x 465 for deadlift.

I was already doing body levers for abs, and was doing inverted sit ups for 10 reps with 25 lbs.

I want to point out that I used no support equipment. No chalk, no straps, no belt, no wraps. Nothing.

Bodyweight: 215 lbs.

Height: 6'2".

Gymnastic ability:

Planche: Couldn't even get off the ground hardly in tuck planche. I tried a planche lean and went forward a few inches and when my hands got to the bottom of my chest I literally fell forward onto my face.

L-sit: 10 seconds at almost horizontal.

Manna: nothing. Could barely do 5 seconds of the below horizontal bent leg split hold.

Front lever: 20 seconds tuck. And it wasn't perfect.

FL rows: not even 1 full rom, even in the tuck. I was close, though!

SLS: couldn't do one.

Headstand push up: could ALMOST do one. Which means, you guessed it, I could do NONE.

Wall handstand: 20 seconds max.

Back lever: maybe 8 seconds tucked.

Abs:

I could do 7 body levers, max.

I could not do one single HLL on a stall bar set up. Could barely get to the "L" position, and not with straight legs.

NLC: couldn't do them at all.

GHR: I could do one of the easiest variations for 4 reps. It was tough.

One year later:

Bodyweight: 225(notice I've gained muscle?)

Height: 6'2"

Weights:

This is a bit of an unknown area for me. I play occasionally, and everything is easier. Barbell lifting seems like more of a good joke than something I should take seriously. I haven't benched recently, but for the first 4 months I did strictly GB stuff, and when I went back to the bench my strength and endurance was the same. Obviously, I improved some with subsequent lifting since I was essentially de-trained that first workout. I haven't lifted in a long time, probably a few months. I progressed too fast with the planche, not understanding the importance of inner elbow conditioning, and I injured my elbows. I couldn't train planches for 6 months or so, and in the meantime I lifted to try and maintain strength. I was using a 3" thick barbell that I made myself, and doing sets of 5 reps with 265. Let me tell you, that's one hell of a lot harder than doing 5 reps with 275 on a regular barbell. That's easy. The thick bar is really tough. I also did Pseudo Planche Pushups to maintain that strength once a week.

I WILL say that the thick barbell is infinitely more useful for building strength and ability than the regular olympic bar.

Shoulder press: 2 easy reps with 205. I laughed and put the bar down, because I didn't want to ruin my HeSPU work by getting tired with something unproductive.

Squats: I haven't done a squat starting from the top position for almost 7 months now. What I HAVE done, a few months ago, was work on bottom-start squats. You hang the barbell on straps at the bottom position of the squat. That's where you start. I was doing 5x5 with 295 my last workout, and it was pretty easy. These are much harder than starting at the top. I could not have done that a year ago. The SLS work has made my squat go up.

Deadlift: I'd deadlift once a month just to see how my strength was, and I was always able to do more than the last month. Gymnastics work brought my work sets up to 5x4 with 455, which is much more than my 6 RM of 465. I have no idea what my 6RM is now, and I honestly don't care to test it. I know that when I tested a year ago my work sets were 4 sets of 4 reps(4x4) with 415. I wasn't even tired at the end of my deadlift work the last time I did it!

Weighted pull ups: This has remained steady, despite my not using them in my routines. I can still do 6-10 reps with 75 lbs added to my body. Obviously, the gymnastic work is equal to the weighted pull ups in terms of building pull up strength.

Bicep Curls: 155x5 with a straight barbell is not a big challenge. I don't really test this. Biceps are too important to tire out with weights before I work out, even for a test.

Gymnastic Ability:

Planche: Flat tuck for 8-10s on both parallel bars and rings. Yea. Not too shabby, especially considering my long layoff from planche training.

Front Lever: I stopped training it hard when I hurt my elbows. At the time I had a 10 second or so front lever, but only the first 6 or 7 seconds were really perfect. Now, after being back at it for a little less than two months, I have a good 8 second straddle. My straddle isn't very wide, so it's pretty close to the full lay. My legs are only open 90 degrees.

FL Rows: I can do a few reps with bent leg straddle, but I work out with the tuck and advanced tuck.

BL: I had achieved full BL, but the elbow injury set me back. I can do a 15 second straddle, but I still work flat tuck and tuck for work sets.

Muscle up: Look at me do them on my youtube account. Username Slizzardman. I couldn't even start the transition a year ago.

L-sit: I can hold for a good 20s on parallel bars, but I never work this. THus the poor progress.

Manna: I work this sporadically. I can lift my hips off my arms with bent legs an inch or two for around 10 seconds with my fingers pointing backwards. A year ago I couldn't even do the easy stuff with the fingers backwards.

SLS(Single Leg Squat): 6 reps with +25 lbs now. I know, I did it in Home Depot with a bag of sand. Lol I usually use 20 lbs because it's easy. I build this slow.

NLC(Natural Leg Curl): I can do these with a 120 lb spot.

Natural GHR(Glute Ham Raise: I don't have the equipment to do a full one, but I could with a moderate spot. I can do 10 reps at a 45 degree angle.

Abs: Multiple sets of 10 body levers

Multiple sets of 5 Russian Leg Lifts. Yea. Big improvement. They are perfect, too. I should put that video up soon.

Great testimonial!

But I have to disagree with you on a point. I can use a chair to help me reach higher branches in a tree, ergo, a chair could be functional for climbing trees.

[Jay Guindon]

To the first replier, I was in no way insinuating Coach Sommer was a liar, it was really more of a surprised question and I do totally believe it. Regarding functional movements, if you read the post my definition of functionality is doing everyday stuff with great ease as I outlined in my examples. Lifting heavy boxes, putting heavy stuff on shelves, getting into trees or over fences, etc.

Let me stress this so that it is not misunderstood again, I am not interested in sport training, but I want to be strong and powerful so that when I need to move big rocks for landscaping or put heavy truck tires on the top shelf, etc. I can do it easily.

My question was more about whether gymnastics is best for me accomplishing these goals or the traditional compound movements and olympic lifts.

I do appreciate everyones feedback and opinion so thank you.

[Guest Ido Portal]

Guys, this has been discussed to death in the 'gymnastics superior to weightlifting' thread:

http://gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2989&hilit=gymnastics+superior

I have provided enough arguments and backed it up with data on that thread.

Ido.

[shiftedShapes]

Hey guys,

I read an interview with Coach Sommer and he said he's seen gymnasts with no lifting experience lift ridiculous amounts the first time they do. Here is an excerpt

Sommer: Gymnastics training does indeed build incredible strength. For example, I was not a particularly strong gymnast, yet I was able to do a double bodyweight deadlift and weighted chins with almost 50% extra bodyweight on my very first weight training attempts.

One of my student’s, JJ Gregory, far exceeded my own modest accomplishments. On his first day of high school weight lifting, JJ pulled a nearly triple bodyweight deadlift with 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 135 and about 5’3" in height. On another day, he also did an easy weighted chin with 75 pounds

I've also heard Ido Portal talk about this and say that being strong at moving your bodyweight transfers really well to moving external loads, but being strong at moving external loads does not transfer to being good at moving your body weight.

Is this really true? For those of us interested in functional fitness what does this mean? Can we train only gymnastic bodyweight stuff and still be able to lift heavy boxes off the ground (deadlift), put heavy loads on shelves above our heads (shoulder press), and get an 80lb bag of ice melting salt onto our shoulder from the ground (clean)? These seem like things that only weightlifitng can achieve.

Just as important as these things is being able to pull myself up over fences (pull up), get onto a tree branch or onto scaffolding (muscle up), push myself onto a ledge that is chest height (dip) etc. These things are clearly only achievable through gymnastic training as it has been noted numerous times that meatheads have a hard time moving themselves through space.

Having said that, it is very hard to argue that deadlifts, presses and squats, aren't functional because they are the most functional lifts

Sorry for the long post.

If you are trying to build a body that looks like that of a world class gymnast you will probably have more luck supplementing your workouts with various compound and isolation exercises than focusing exclusively on bodyweight strength.

if you want to train your body for a particular task, keep in mind that strength is very specific and you should focus narrowly to improve at that task.

[mauricioleal]

First of all, I generally agree that BW training is superior for developing useful/functional skills, and I have had the same weight room to empty room transition that causes a lot of former meat heads to ponder and share their conversion story. A couple points of contention though:

1) Function /= Specificity

The phrase "functional movements" gets thrown around a lot lately, and often incorrectly. For a movement to be "functional" it does not only have to be specific to the activity being trained for; a movement can be non-specific to an activity and still be functional for another reason: because it is fundamentally more difficult and requires an exceptionally strong contraction across a large span of muscle groups that confer great transference to a great variety of other activities. Hence, a lot of talk about cross-over ability and cross-training methods in general are centered around which core set of movements provide the greatest benefit regardless of specific demands of sport.

Mark Rippetoe swears by heavy back squats not because being able to do them is a specific demand of every person's life or sport, but because it happens to be the most fundamental method for developing the ability to transfer large amounts of force from the floor through your feet, legs, and torso muscles/joints (a long line of action) with an unparalleled degree of contraction (and resulting neuroendocrine response (heavy deadlifts are comparable)), and that degree of force production and transference through the body has a home in almost every discipline. They are functional because they elicit great adaptation and because most other activities become easy by comparison.

It's even more illuminating to examine some gymnastics movements which we all agree are quite difficult: the iron cross, planche, maltese, etc. What possible specific role could those fill for a non-gymnast who wants to be strong for other sports/reasons? Well, we have a large collection of anecdotes of people working on those and vastly improving their abilities in other, apparently dissimilar movements. Again, it's the breadth of skill transference that makes these things "functional," and this has less to do with the external mechanics of the movements than how the muscles in the body must adapt to produce incredible amounts of force through contractions that are fundamentally more profound than the lesser movements that precede them, in a mechanical pattern with enough similarity to confer skill transference.

2) Why must the comparison always be made to a meat head, i.e. a visibly massive weightlifter? IMHO, this is a straw man drawn up from the BW proponent side to show BW methods' superiority. A fat and strong weightlifter is not the only kind of weightlifter. And guess what: a 2 x BW back squat or 3 x BW deadlift isn't a big deal for the little guys who do it professionally.

http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records/raw/world (wfs)

The WR for BS and DL is about 5 X BW (without gear). So an elite gymnast gets about half way up the scale, big whoop. This isn't to belittle the amazing abilities and transference of those abilities that BW training does provide, but simply to illuminate that really, to be elite and even advanced at something you have to train for it specifically.

Of course, it is highly questionable whether elite lifters in any weight class would be able to perform even moderately difficult de-leveraged movements, but I haven't seen data on that test yet. To put it bluntly, we only hear about the fat ones who don't stand a chance any which way.

3) Lastly, it is also well documented that strength:weight ratio correlates essentially linearly with body weight, so small athletes will always have the inherent potential to be stronger on a relative basis than big ones. I read somewhere that this is because muscle contraction strength is proportional to the square of the muscle radius, while mass is of course proportional to the cube (density=mass/volume=mass/r^3). Therefore, strength/weight ~ r^2/r^3 ~ 1/r. Of course, our bodies are not simple spheres, so this relationship is not absolute.

Ultimately, I think gymnastics strength/skills are more useful for most sports and absolutely for the type of fitness a majority of people (especially women :roll:) would consider ideal if they even had a clue what gymnastics training really was and how training in de-leveraged states confers greater practical application to daily life. But to say that it is superior to weight training in general I think glosses over what resistance training is really about: muscle contractions and neuromuscular recruitment patterns. If one must really group things, I'd say those who need a high level of posterior chain strength definitely should be hitting the weights, and everyone else can probably just do gymnastics.

[rubadub]

Lifting heavy boxes, putting heavy stuff on shelves, getting into trees or over fences, etc.

Let me stress this so that it is not misunderstood again, I am not interested in sport training, but I want to be strong and powerful so that when I need to move big rocks for landscaping or put heavy truck tires on the top shelf, etc. I can do it easily.

I am pretty much the same, I mainly do BW exercises now, and weighted ones. I do deadlifts and squats the odd time, I have just started doing squats with sandbags which I find great. I do exercises which help me in the functions that I do, ME.

e.g. I use a "heavy gripper" tool which has improved my grip, on another forum I saw a amateur powerlifter saying the gripper would only make you better at "using a gripper", but he is mainly concerned with it powerlifting numbers. I use hand tools in work all the time, the gripper helps me hugely, I no longer have to use a bench vice for some jobs, I can hold objects in a pliers, I actually broke a snips once by pressing so hard, the action is identical to holding a gripper. Rope work is also excellent for grip strength.

When looking at logs on other forums I notice my numbers are out of line with others (usually they are doing "starting strength" or powerlifting training). My legs strength is far behind the others but the simple fact is my relative lack of leg strength is never an issue for me in my daily life. I am usually lifting boxes or awkward shaped machines, legs are not an issue for me, upper body strength is. I use rings, ropes, monkey bars, all sorts. In work we had to get keys to get into a certain area on the second floor, one day I was in a rush and just scaled up the wall with the aid of metal struts with total ease. I can scale walls or gates etc with total ease, I surprise myself sometimes let alone others who do not know/guess I train at all!

The way I see it I walk around on my legs all day, I also cycle a lot, they are plenty strong enough, if I walked around doing handstands all day long I expect I would have to work my legs a lot more. You will hear bodybuilders talking of "chicken legs", but to me the average untrained persons legs are out of proportion since they are undergoing resistance training all day long, while their arms get little or no training.

[Jay Guindon]

Mauricio, excellent point about certain exercises giving gains across a broad range of skills. Something like the iron cross may not look like something you would ever do in daily life (outside of gymnastics) but I am sure it's benefits are far reaching outside of the skill itself. This is something I had not considered as I have been under the impression "functional" just means doing things that look like real world stuff. Putting heavy boxes on a high shelf may look like a shoulder press, but if I can do something that looks nothing like a shoulder press and get heavier boxes over my head than that sounds like a good deal.

Ido, your previous thread was super valuable thanks.

One last question, does gymnastics training cause any negative health/longevity effects? For example, marathon running causes levels of oxidative stress and inflammation that are unacceptable to those of us concerned with health longevity. Excessive amounts of weightlifting is damagin to the CNS. Constant high intensity exercise leads to massive amounts of cortisol production. I want the benefits like increased lean body mass/muscle mass, increased organ reserve, increased bone density, etc. and a decent amount of functional capacity without training to a point of excessive inflammation, oxidative damage, or cortisol production.

Again, thanks to everyone who has been participating in this discussion.

[Blairbob]

One last question, does gymnastics training cause any negative health/longevity effects?

Due to poor programming it can or catastrophic injury as well. However, the injury rate is pretty low for as many hours as they train. Generally there can be a lot of joint overuse injuries. Lots of sprains. Coupled with gymnasts with back problems, that can lead to some negative health effects in the long run (many gymnasts don't find out they have various spinal issues until they start popping up).

[Neal Winkler]

Blairbob, are the injuries more common in men or women? Seems like women do a lot more extreme extension of the spine, so I can see them suffering from back injury more often.

[Blairbob]

Dunno. I've never really seen separate data numbers and there is like 5x as many females in gymnastics competitively as men.

What I see is in adolescents, especially by that tween age in the girls is there are a lot of back issues. I think this is caused by:

1. There are required walkovers in their routines where there is not in the men's program. This means there is much more volume. Typically in L5, they start training the back walkover on beam which tends to require more flexibility in the lumbar region. As well, I'd say in general that female gymnastics S&C programming tends to be lacking in protecting the lower body joints and spine. This is mainly because a lack of knowledge or ignorance. Lots of walkover volume doesn't help either and the fact we area dealing with growing spines.

2. I think due to the amount of swing work in the men's apparatus, there is far more lower back injuries besides the lack of walkovers. A bridge or bridge kickover is tested in the Future Stars program but this isn't nearly the same amount of volume in limbers as the girls do.

The injury rate from catastrophic disaster injury (crazy skills) is probably just about the same ratio wise in numbers. That's just a hairball guess though. For stuff like Osgood-Schlater's are Plantar Fascitis the numbers are probably the same.

As well, the men have much more time to compete and mature besides the effects of puberty on the hips. At the younger ages, girls tend to train much more.

Just my opinion. AKA it ain't worth beans.

[Joshua Naterman]

Great testimonial!

But I have to disagree with you on a point. I can use a chair to help me reach higher branches in a tree, ergo, a chair could be functional for climbing trees.

This shows a lack of clarity concerning ideas. A chair is an idea, and does not exist in a pure form in reality. For example, the idea of a chair is something that a single person sits on, that has a backrest to lean against. When you are hitting someone with what we would call a chair, it is no longer a chair. It is a weapon. This appears to be nit-picky, but the accuracy of definitions is what all of our scientific achievements is based on. Therefore, what you are describing is an object that is stepped on to increase a person's height. This is an idea. This particular idea could be a ladder, or a step stool. It depends on how you define it. And again, if you use a step stool as something to sit on, it is no longer a step stool. It becomes a sitting stool.

Additionally, to clarify your statement, you are using the step stool to reach a tree branch. Thus, the step stool is helping you enter the tree, not climb up it. You could perhaps not climb the tree without that stool, since you could not reach the first branch, but once you have grasped that branch and have started climbing, the stool plays no role whatsoever. So, it is extending your reach, not helping you climb.

Specificity of ideas is frustrating, isn't it lol! I can understand why so many people hated Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, not to mention the many other philosophers who first put down on paper(with the exception of Socrates, who never actually wrote anything) the ideas upon which our modern world has been built.

[Jay Guindon]

Are back problems something to be concerned about? I would've thought gymnastics makes backs stronger.

One more question that occured to me...obviously Gymnastic Strength Training™ increases muscle mass/lean body mass. Does it also increase bone density like weightlifting?

[Blairbob]

Does it also increase bone density like weightlifting?

Yes, a friend and coach I worked under did her Master's thesis on this.

Back problems are something to be concerned. Besides it's been led to believe that the modern chair and things we sit on besides shoes are probably not a good idea for our body. Besides, all the wear and tear on our body due to the forces we exert on it. As well, not only do we rotate our body (and spines) but we twist them at the same time. And it's not like we are landing dead straight with perfect posture all the time.