Gymnastics and GPP

I've been thinking about GPP lately, after chatting with some old buddies I used to CrossFit with. Obviously we ended up talking about what I'm doing now and they were skeptical about specializing in bodyweight stuff over a mixed modal approach. I remember hearing somewhere once that gymnasts tend to do extremely well in all athletic endeavours outside of gymnastics as compared to other athletes that change sport. For instance a gymnast could pick up basketball, volleyball, soccer, etc. faster than a hockey player could change sport and be good at it. This made me wonder, first of all if it's true, which by all accounts it would seem to be, and two, if gymnastics mixed with sprinting could put together a pretty solid GPP program.

If you take cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy it would seem that gymnastics develops a lot of these and sprinting could close the gap in the rest.

strength, flexibility, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy are definitely well developed in gymnastics.

cardio/respiratory endurance, speed, and to some extent power can be developed with sprinting.

Stamina I am not sure about.

If you take this it would seem that eight of ten fitness domains could be very effectively developed by gymnastics and sprinting, with stamina and power being the only questionable ones.

Given this, do other people feel that a mix of gymnastics and sprinting could be a very effective GPP program?

Gymnastics build up stamina by working out 4-6 hours/day. Yes, it's all bursts or series of movements but develops a lot of capacity; besides they also do it over the course of 2-15 years.

You don't think gymnastics develops power? Really? Seriously. To the degree of olympic weightlifters, ok

Any good gymnastics program involves sprinting. However not all gymnasts are very good sprinters (in the lower levels) due to the fact they are weak or have ankle, knee, or hip issues (which a lot of the time have to do with not being strong enough in the first place).

Years ago when Coach Sommer was on the CF forum, (go search his posts on the forum) he ran a workout for his guys at the end of their workout day involving muscle-ups and squat jumps (which some boys opted to do standing backs). The MU were stated to be done strict. Over 15m, they did something on the order of 100-120 bar MU and 200-240 squat jumps and then decided to go swing some extra pommel circles in a contest. This is documented in BtGB but also available on the CF forum.

And then of course there are a few gymnasts who have managed to do standing double backs. Charlie Tamayo and Steve Elliott come to mind. This takes a powerful jump coupled with very strong abdominals to perform.

Jay Guindon said:

Do other people feel that a mix of gymnastics and sprinting could be a very effective GPP program?

Jay,

The trick with training for GPP is that you have to ask, "For what are you preparing?"

Which will help you decide if gymnastics/sprinting is an effective approach. Is it preparing you to train for a specific sport or event?

If you follow the WODs posted here, Coach Sommer's cycle includes sled dragging and shuttle-runs, all of which function effectively as the sprint/lung-burner/come-to-Jesus work that you mentioned.

A bigger question, though, is whether you find gymnastics and sprint-training compelling or not.

For me for example there's something compelling about training to control my body through all different planes of space, as opposed to say adding 5kg to my clean or knocking 30 seconds off my Fran time.

best,

j

Gymnastics revolves around routines performed around or under 90s. That is not even 90s full out, but 90s with intermittent bursts and rests.

We are talking about training predominantly in the glycolytic energy system with vault just under or past the phosphagen energy system.

Bare in mind, certain people are predisposed to lend themselves toward training for SPP or GPP in their genes besides their mindsets.

You could easily change gymnastics training to allude itself to training for primarily in the GPP vs SPP department if you wished. It will just take tweaking certain characteristics of the training.

Or you could hybridize it to work strength+power, short term endurance or long term endurance. Basically skill work followed by some sort of WOD tweaked to your desire.

Best thing you can do as a CFer is:

1. Do a lot of gymnastics strength work (for the body awareness and motor recruitment)

2/. Learn the Oly lifts. Hardcore.

3/ Learn how to sprint correctly.

Everything else is less skilled than whatyou learn -- so with proper endurance everything becomes easy after you have the strength. Much like it's pretty easy for people like ROb orlando

BraindX - I stopped CrossFit about 8 months ago, mostly because of convenience and monetary reasons-it costs me nothing to train in my house on my schedule with the rings and pull up bar I already own- but then after starting a GB program I really enjoyed it and have not felt inclined to go back to CrossFit. I still like CrossFit and think it's a great program and am still involved with it a litle bit, but I really like GB.

jasonmstein - the only thing I need to prepare for is life. I was also under the impression GPP is undertaken with no specific goal in mind, and that SPP was when you start fleshing out what you're preparing for. I do find gymnastics and sprinting compelling, especially being able to do cool things like planche pushups, free standing handstand pushups, some more advanced ring stuff, and some of the stuff I've seen the bartendaz do. I also find that kind of body control more appealing than adding weight to a lift, but the original question was more to see what, if anything, I need to add to my training if I also desire to tackle any random real life task.

Blairbob - good points. I was not aware of the power gymnastics could develop as everyone talks about olympic lifting when they talk about power.

Pound for pound, Olympic WL focus is on lower body explosiveness whereas with gymnasts it's almost flipped. It's not to say that Olympic lifters are not powerful through their trunk or upper body but gymnasts would take the cake on that note and lose on explosiveness through the hips.

Jay Guindon said:

I was also under the impression GPP is undertaken with no specific goal in mind...

Jay,

Even though it is by nature 'general,' you would still want to practice skills that will pay off later, even if it means your GPP simply doesn't interfere or inhibit your eventual SPP.

If you like sprinting, then try it out.

best,

jason