Hello everyone. Want to make a point to start contributing more to the forum so I figure this would be fine place to start.
I've known about Coach Sommer and the GymBodies program I think since roughly 2008-09, where my introduction was seeing Coach's athletes throwing out amazing strength skills on YouTube. It prompted me to check out the website and I lurked on the forum for awhile before joining later. Over the years since then I've tried on and off to get going with the program - either buying "Building the Gymnastc Body" back in the day or signing up for the online courses when they were first available - but ultimately never stayed consistent with it. There's a myriad of reasons but a big one was that I had a tendency to go too hard at the start, overtrain, and lose momentum from discouragement.
A little less than a year ago I finally swallowed my pride and said "Okay, start from the beginning and no matter how easy it is don't skip anything." I started up with F1, H1, Movement, Thrive, and the stretch series and was quite surprised with how far I didn't get in shooting up the ranks, in particular with the upper body. While I've had some ups and downs after sticking to it ~90% of the time since then I've seen a slew of great progress, in particular what feels like more overall muscular balance and the release from a lot of old nagging injuries from that overzealous training I mentioned from years back - the big one was forearm tendonitis from trying to do ring and planche work when I wasn't ready, that's all but gone now. There's still a ways to go but I feel more confident than ever about working my way up to the elite levels of the program.
For reference here's where I'm at now about 10-11 months after starting at base levels across the board:
Foundation
FL/PE5 - Step 7
SL/PE12 - Step 8
MN/PE6 - Step 3
HBP/PE2 - Step 7
RC/PE2 - Step 6
sPL/PE5 - Step 1
SLS/SE4 - Test Mastery
Handstand
WP/SE4 - Step 9
FKP/SE4 - Step 9
WR/SE4 - Step 9
FTP/SE4 - Step 7
HS/PE7 - Step 4
Movement
T1/2.3 - Step 7
T1/3.4 - Step 4
T1/4.4 - Step 9
T1/5.2 - Step 8
T1/6.1 - Step 8
T1/7.1 - Step 9
T1/8.1 - Step 5
T1/9.1 - Step 1
Thrive - Step 18
The stretch series is harder to quantify but needless to say my mobility has significantly improved, especially in the hamstrings. I had a setback about a month or so ago from a work injury so I've lost a bit of that but I can still do a standing pike and reach the ground with straight legs and bent arms so it's not all bad. Wish it would heal up already though.
Anyway that's kind of the long and short of me. I've looked at many different training programs over the years and although I borrow from others I still think for me that this one is the best. For a long time my strength goal for life has been a Maltese Cross on rings, with the rationale that if I could ever do one, I could look back on my life and know that at one point I was truly, absolutely, elite-level strong. It's been a great journey so far and I'm excited to get through the rest of it. Thanks to everyone involved in making this program and the structures - the website and such - that help keep it running. It's sincerely changed my life for the better.
Cheers! 