Cardio and gymnastics

Does anyone do a cardio specific workout to supplement there gymnastic workout or do u find the gymnastic workout sufficient to keep body fat in check? also if u were to incorperate a cardio style workout how would u do it? HIIT style?

Many thanks

Stirling

Body fat is mainly connected to diet.

Some gymnastics program include a bit of running, not many but some.

Blairbob said:

Some gymnastics program include a bit of running, not many but some.

I read in one of the last threads of this forum (getting started) that running was actually bad for your health and for overall muscle and strength gains. Is this true? So if you play a sport that involves a lot of running but you also workout only with gymnastic-type exercises, and you want strength and size gains, running a lot will be bad for such ends?

I am a huge proponent of simply walking. Not running or brisk walking, just regular steady walking with good standing posture. Dr. Andrew Weil recommends walking at least 10 minutes a days for those of us who live a rather sedentary live to provide our most essential exercise. I feel like 20 minutes is optimal and it is also a great recovery exercise during rest days.

As for the topic of running, there is another thread that is about a couple weeks old--I am sure you could look up--that talks about the benefits and costs of running in a gymnastics program. Some say it's great for knee prehab, others say it eats your muscles away.

The GB Search Bar is your friend.

I read in one of the last threads of this forum (getting started) that running was actually bad for your health and for overall muscle and strength gains. Is this true? So if you play a sport that involves a lot of running but you also workout only with gymnastic-type exercises, and you want strength and size gains, running a lot will be bad for such ends?

Running is not bad for health , except if you are pushing beyond your capabilities, but this also applies for everything alse including gymnastics.

Running is excellent, depending of what do you want. You probably do not want to prepare for marathon and training gymnastic at the same time. Look at sprinters physique, they are very muscular and strong contrary to people who running marathon.

For some sports, running (interval running, LSD) is crucial for conditioning (boxing, kickboxing, etc) and most of that people are very strong and muscular despite a fact they running every day for 5 to 7 miles. Just look at a physique the legend of wrestling Alexandar Karelin who running every day for 10 miles. Of course they are elite athletes.

if you are competitive gymnast then you must listen a coach, or if you are very serious about gymnastics training then I recommend you to join a club, or at least read the GB and follow that kind of training (this forum is also full of information about gymnastics).

For all around fitness, beside gymnastics moves I love to do sprints and interval running and trying to keep it brief and fast. Sometimes I do also long distance, and muscles are still here :wink: .

Generaly speaking, if you do running and strenght training, muscles wont fly away. But I am not a gymnast coach.

Little note, muscle size is not a goal for gymnast

I tend to do some sprint workouts or kettlebell swings for my cardio work. I do not like distance running.

When people talk about running being bad they are referring to the abuse taken by joints by many miles of jogging and possible chronic inflammation.

Kalerin's jogging mostly pointless.

When people talk about running being bad they are referring to the abuse taken by joints by many miles of jogging and possible chronic inflammation.

Maybe you want to read this book (I did )

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Christop ... 0739383728

on same page scroll down and first read Description and review

running is good:) imo i think 3 times a week is good addition to your plan whatever you are doing, cardio for around hour and HIIT for 30-20 minutes. But you can develop condition using complexes and other stuff, but personally i found 400 -800 m runs to be the best thing for conditioning .

I will give you my example. About 6 months ago, I was lifting weigths, for a long time. I had pretty good muscles, but I was neglecting bad the cardio and the nutrition side.

Then I decided to restart gymnastics, and obviously there were a lot of issues, like flexibility, some fat (I was 96kg, with 1,82m) not to mention strength itself, that need specific gymnastic work.

In these 6 months I have been training 3x a week, and running the other 2 days. I run now 45 minutes each day, and am also being more carefull with the diet.

Today, I'm 88kg. I haven't noticed ANY loss in muscle mass. Of course I do heavy strength work and eat well. The abs are a lot better, and so are muscular definition. But for my eyes the size is still the same.

I doubt most gymnastics programs that incorporate running do a lot of LSD on the order of 5-15mi a day or week. Some prefer sprinting while others run 2-3x/week. Who knows, really.

When someone says "the muscle don't grow", is that only esthetically or the hypertrophy has his functionallity?

So sprinters never do long distance running? I think I've seen some sprinters (or maybe another kind of runner) which are very muscular, upper-body wise, maybe even more than gymnasts.

I think people from Track and Field are very muscular due to very low body fat, achieved with a lot of cardio that they need to do. Muscle definition is a consequence of almost no fat in the body. A body with good muscles of course.

there are some people from Track and Field that go to the gym where I train, to do some specific strength work, in rings, rope, PB, etc, and they are very muscular, even the women.

Mason89 said:

Does anyone do a cardio specific workout to supplement there gymnastic workout or do u find the gymnastic workout sufficient to keep body fat in check? also if u were to incorperate a cardio style workout how would u do it? HIIT style?

Many thanks

Stirling

The differences in calorie burn between a GB workout and an equal amount of time doing cardio is not going to very much, especially when considered over a 24h span. Just keep your diet clean and the "fat checking" will be just fine. If you absolutely must do more exercise to burn calories, I would suggest light cardio so you don't hurt your ability to recover.

Mason89 said:

Does anyone do a cardio specific workout to supplement there gymnastic workout or do u find the gymnastic workout sufficient to keep body fat in check?

Stirling,

This is interesting.

Do you feel that your bodyfat is "out of check" without cardio?

The old adage is that body comp is 80% food selection/quality (i.e. diet) and 20% exercise (not "cardio" or "aerobics").

Still, if you're looking for Come-to-Jesus lungburners under the mistaken impression they'll help burn calories to lose weight, you can follow any Gymnastic Body workout that says "4X" at the top.

best,

jason

You don't need cardio.

Once strength work starts to become easy for some things like handstands it becomes skill work. The skill work basically becomes your "conditioning" much like most of gymnastics technique work on apparatus.

Keep developing your strength, and working on technique for skills like handstands et al. and you will have enough conditioning ability to do most stuff.

And yes, body composition is like 80% diet so if you're concerned about losing fat then fix your nutrition.

Hi, I don't do any cardio work. It is not specific to what I do and I also think it is a mistake to prescribe to overweight people seeking bodycomp changes. For many anaerobic sports, the aerobic base is a myth. For example, running a mile to prepare for the 100m sprint is not going to do anything for you and could even detrain your abilities that you need i.e speed and so it becomes necessary to regain them when what you should be doing is first developing speed over shorter distances and then moving to longer distances. This is obviously talking about the sprints but I think that with gymnastics cardio is also not necessary.

Rob.

I don't do cardio work either but light cardio WILL enhance your recovery. I need to get my lazy butt back in gear.

Running's effect on you will depend heavily on how you implement it. Running certainly isn't an ideal fat-loss exercise, but it can work reasonably well.

No matter what, if you decide to run, start off slow. Increase distance to what you want at a quarter to a half mile per week. So if you're running 3x a week, the first week you should run a half mile each time. The second week you should be running 3/4 to 1 mile. The third week you should be running 3/4-1.5 miles, etc, etc. You should up your mileage slowly. It takes time for your body to get used to running if you never do it, just like everything else.

If you're only running a few times a week, like 2-3, for 5 miles or less, you're not going to lose muscle even at my size of 225 lbs. I've done it plenty in the past, most of my best strength work was done when I had some cardio in my program, come to think of it... But that was a lot of sprints, primarily.

Once you've built up to the distance you want to run, ONLY THEN should you start working on speed. You could also work on your speed at a certain distance until you get to the speed you want, and then increase your mileage as outlined above. Either way works. The bottom line is that you should never increase speed AND mileage at the same time. That's just extra stress on your body that puts you at an increased risk of injury with no greater reward.

jasonmstein said:

Mason89 said:

Does anyone do a cardio specific workout to supplement there gymnastic workout or do u find the gymnastic workout sufficient to keep body fat in check?

Stirling,

This is interesting.

Do you feel that your bodyfat is "out of check" without cardio?

The old adage is that body comp is 80% food selection/quality (i.e. diet) and 20% exercise (not "cardio" or "aerobics").

Still, if you're looking for Come-to-Jesus lungburners under the mistaken impression they'll help burn calories to lose weight, you can follow any Gymnastic Body workout that says "4X" at the top.

best,

jason

This is a good thread thanks for everyones opinion!

Jason i dont feel my body fat is out of check atm but i have a fear it might lol i used to do a fair amount of cardio until i discovered GB. i was thinkin tht by doin cardio = high level of performance, i have now ceased the cardio (maybe swim once a week) and am on a food plan tht hits my maintenance for my weight. i just didnt want to be come unfit for gymnastics or carry extra fat about which could be detrimental

many thanks for everyones help appreciated

I posted this in another thread (with a minor edit):

I don't believe high intensity intervals would be as beneficial for gymnasts as middle-distance aerobic work or the speed-endurance-type work sprinters do. High intensity intervals are too taxing to be productive for gymnasts.

Aerobic work produces great work capacity, which allows for greater training volume and frequency. It also can be used to facilitate recovery. Higher aerobic capacities can also be useful for helping to buffer metabolic acidosis, which can be helpful in prolonging the time before muscle failure and in speeding up the recovery between sets.

Doing some aerobic work does not mean your muscles will fall off. Strength/power athletes are not training for high levels of aerobic capacity/power. They train it to complement/supplement their strength/power-specific training, so they merely need adequate levels.

Depending on the exact purpose for the aerobic work, aerobic work can often be done at about 40-65% of maximal heart rate, which is basically jogging (if you choose to run).

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If you're looking to lose weight, both steady state aerobic work and high intensity intervals can be used. Both have pros and cons.

Please Donald can you post an example of speed endurance work or a good web to get some info. Im begining to run and still learning and adding mileage. But I ll like to have some running with the gymnastic training. Will Speed endurance burn some fat also?

omegant said:

Please Donald can you post an example of speed endurance work or a good web to get some info. Im begining to run and still learning and adding mileage. But I ll like to have some running with the gymnastic training. Will Speed endurance burn some fat also?

What distance are you trying to run? 100, 200, 400, 800m?

Well I´m not going to compete (don´t think they have turttle class races) , so I´m running to complement gymnastics, as you said that training some middle distance runs are more beneficial than HIIT, I ´would like to know how to train them (when I´ll be able to). Fast running is not in my habilities so I should try something like 400 or 800m. Or maybe just stick to run 20 min 3 times a week at a good pace. What do you recomend?

You don't need cardio.

This statement is dependent upon the age of the trainee. If you are over 45, you need cardio.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer