Integrating Gymnastic strength training with bodybuilding

Hey!

I've been reading a lot on this forum for 6 months and it's all great. I understand that most members do not care for optimal hypertrophy, as they train focused on gymnastic performance, but some members, I believe (my case at least) really do want to get big muscles, the own name of the site is building the gymnastic BODY.

Anyway, the point is, my goal (and the goal of at least some members I hope) is to get the benefits of the gymnastic training, flexibility, agility, mobility, and of course, strength, training as not professional gymnastic alied with exercises based on coach sommers book, doing all those cool skills AND to get a cool looking body. I understand that gymnastic strength does give you hypertrophy, but I think everybody agrees that not like bodybuilding. I noticed that on myself for the past 6 months.

I have tried before to train the two together, in the same week, but I wasn't successful. You inevitable get sore and stiff in the muscle you work and that lasts for more than one day. That being one upperbody muscle, like pecs, back or shoulder completely crashes your possibility to do, even one day after, ring training, bar or parallels training. You definitely need to rest that muscular group and that is hard in gymnastics because almost everything works almost everything.

So, the idea that came to my mind is to train one week of full bodybuilding, one muscle per day, plus abs and some stretch to minimize losing flexibility, rest the weekend, and one week of full gymnastic training, perhaps 3 or 4 days of gymnastic training combined with prehab and heavy flexibility work and strength based on the book of coach sommer. Keep alternating the weeks.

I'm starting this next week. Does this has any chance of working? Is a good idea? Will they complement each other?

Hopefully someone else will correct me if I'm wrong.

As I understand it; Hypertrophy requires a combination of enough tension plus enough fatigue. So, if you train your gymnastic moves with more volume per workout, and more time between workouts to recover, you should get bigger muscles.

Yeah! But there are key exercises with weigths that can't be executed with bodyweigth only. Bench press, squats, deadlifts, weigthed pulls and dips, and others that I don't know the name in english...

Come to think again, it may be better to just do the FBE and FSP with the key lifting exercises to improve the hypertrophy. Of course its harder to design a routine. It's just that when I tried it I remember I trained pecs one day and in the next I was very stiff sore and tired and couldn't do the ring training....

I dont know I'm kinda lost lol.....

I will refurmulate the question then.

How about you train like, let's say, in one day tuck planche and adv. tuck back lever, after you finish the strength and gymnastic training you go there and do some bench presses, dips and biceps work with weigths, exausting pecs and biceps. One day of rest and the other day you focus on HSPU, L-sit and OApushups, then after training you go there and exaust shoulder and triceps with weigths, then the other day you train front lever, false grip pulls, pull and chin ups, and after you exaust lats and forearms, other day you train legs....kinda like this.

Will this work to build both strength in FBE and FSP and give a good overall hypertrophy?

Why do you feel the gymnastics work is insufficient for upper body and core hypertrophy?

Legs, obviously, would be better served by weights if hypertrophy is your main goal.

I'm not the expert in gymnastic training but I like to think there's always more than one way to do something, it depends on what you're trying to do and what your interests are.

Leandro said:

I will refurmulate the question then.

How about you train like, let's say, in one day tuck planche and adv. tuck back lever, after you finish the strength and gymnastic training you go there and do some bench presses, dips and biceps work with weigths, exausting pecs and biceps.

You could do that, or you could work gymnastic exercises like pseudo planche pushups and dips until the muscles are exhausted.

Leandro said:

One day of rest and the other day you focus on HSPU, L-sit and OApushups, then after training you go there and exaust shoulder and triceps with weigths,

Again, you could do that. You could also work on HSPU and OApushups until the shoulder and triceps are exhausted, even if you have to use an easier version of the exercises like pike pushups and close grip pushups.

trianglechoke7 said:

Why do you feel the gymnastics work is insufficient for upper body and core hypertrophy?

Legs, obviously, would be better served by weights if hypertrophy is your main goal.

Not core. Just upper body.

I don't know. I may be training wrong, for that purpose. It's been around a year since I'm 100% bodyweigth, before that was around 4 years with weigths. I'm feeling a lot stronger, in gymnastic moves, static positions etc, but I lost some muscle mass, I think...at least thats my impression looking last year's photos on the beach lol

The Hansenator said:

I'm not the expert in gymnastic training but I like to think there's always more than one way to do something, it depends on what you're trying to do and what your interests are.

Leandro said:

I will refurmulate the question then.

How about you train like, let's say, in one day tuck planche and adv. tuck back lever, after you finish the strength and gymnastic training you go there and do some bench presses, dips and biceps work with weigths, exausting pecs and biceps.

You could do that, or you could work gymnastic exercises like pseudo planche pushups and dips until the muscles are exhausted.

Leandro said:

One day of rest and the other day you focus on HSPU, L-sit and OApushups, then after training you go there and exaust shoulder and triceps with weigths,

Again, you could do that. You could also work on HSPU and OApushups until the shoulder and triceps are exhausted, even if you have to use an easier version of the exercises like pike pushups and close grip pushups.

Yeah, but I feel like HSPU work a lot more muscles than just shoulders, as like PPP work a lot more than just pecs, in coparison

to shoulder and pecs weigth exercises. I'm not expert in the area, but it seems I can 't achieve that kind of soreness and exaustion in each muscle with bodyweigth exercises than how it was with weigths. At the end of a weigth training the muscle worked was very enlarged and stiff, and stayed like that for more than one day. That doesn't happen with my gymnastic training. But, as I said, my training could be wrong, and even I don't know if that is the key to hypertrophy (with proper diet)

Leandro said:

... but it seems I can't achieve that kind of soreness and exaustion in each muscle with bodyweigth exercises than how it was with weigths ...

Yes and no.

Currently this is because you are now using more intense exercise variations which are not allowing you to perform the same overall volume as your former much lighter bodybuilding movements. To mimic this same adaptation with Gymnastic Strength Training™, you will need to select exercise variations which allow you to perform the same high sets/reps as you used to perform in bodybuilding.

In my opinion, it is also important to avoid categorizing the feeling of deep muscle exhaustion from higher rep work as being superior to the very different feeling of working under a maximal load. Both are important indicators of progress at their respective times in a training cycle.

The following is of course vastly overly simplified, however in the general the concept that I follow with my athletes is to first build their strength to a reasonable level and then proceed to build volume at that strength level, then drop the volume while increasing their strength level once again. This will continue in a series of stair steps throughout their career.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

The following is of course vastly overly simplified, however in the general the concept that I follow with my athletes is to first build their strength to a reasonable level and then proceed to build volume at that strength level, then drop the volume while increasing their strength level once again. This will continue in a series of stair steps throughout their career.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer,

Once you reach a certain strength level, how much do you build the volume before increasing the difficulty again?

Thanks.

Thanks for the answers Coach Sommer!

Coach, what would a reasonable level of strength? How to determine period of more volume (easy variations) and period of strength (intense variations), every other week?

...

Since there are questions pending, I also would like to ask one thing to coach sommer, or to anyone who wants to answer.

If I do the WOD, of if I do my own designed routine with FBE and FSP, and ADD, after that, weigth training, hypertrophy oriented, in a combination with similar muscles worked each day, will that decrease my evolution in FBE and FSP? And with gymnastics performance, mobility, agility, etc? Consider that I will also work hard with flexibility.

I imagine I will not develop as fast as if I would go 100% gymnastics, but my question in more like if the weigth training will stop the bodyweigth evolution. Let's say if I could achieve a full BL in 6 months of WODs, I will achieve that full back lever in a year with this combined training. If it's yes then I'm done questioning =)