ADDITIONAL EXERCISE?

[Calder Photography]

Hey guys,

I'm wondering whether it would be advisable to add extra exercise to the existing wod protocol.

At the moment each day I'm doing:

Warmup: FSP'S

Wod.

then a little bit of handstand work here and there.

My question basically comes because after all's said and done I still feel pretty fresh and want to do more. I'd love to add in some dedicated core work and I'd also love to do more conditioning (running, hill sprints, skipping e.t.c) I was thinking of addding this in after my WOD'S. what do you guys think?

Tom.

[toasty]

1) what are your goals???

2) if you are going to do additional work it should probably be lower body based

[Saber2]

Radlac, first I am not sure this is the proper place to post. Next time post it in the WOD of a certain day and somebody will be likely to answer. I think its the unwritten rule about this section.

About feeling fresh after a workout, I was told when you leave a workout you should feel more alive than when you first walked in to the session. Anything else, you can be on the way to overreaching. Take it slow and enjoy the process.

[Brendan Coad]

my thoughts would be to leave the WOD alone. If you feel fresh and have the ability I would add in extra sessions some other time but turning a good session into one where you just beat yourself down doesn't sound like a good from what I've experienced. If you do that if you're starting to wear yourself down or your WOD progress is stalling and/or going backwards from the extra sessions you know you can't handle them.

And I agree, can we not post topics in the WOD forum? Its such a great easily searchable resource and it would be ashame for it to get cluttered up with non-WOD topics.

[Joshua Naterman]

Hey guys,

I'm wondering whether it would be advisable to add extra exercise to the existing wod protocol.

At the moment each day I'm doing:

Warmup: FSP'S

Wod.

then a little bit of handstand work here and there.

My question basically comes because after all's said and done I still feel pretty fresh and want to do more. I'd love to add in some dedicated core work and I'd also love to do more conditioning (running, hill sprints, skipping e.t.c) I was thinking of addding this in after my WOD'S. what do you guys think?

Tom.

You absolutely can. Coach's guys do a lot of skill work afterwards, and while that's well within their strength levels it is still tiring. Keep in mind that skills have to be perfect, so they will always be submaximal. Use the same concept in your training.

You can absolutely get away with quite a bit more, programmed properly. Doing extra handstand work on 2 of the days for maybe 5-10 minutes will be great for handstand development, but what may be even better is just doing a single wall handstand every day for about 15s less than your max hold up to a minute per day, unless your max hold is less than 45s in which case I'd do half of max hold until it gets up there. Single submaximal sets build a lot of strength rather quickly because they cause neurological adaptation. The nervous system becomes more efficient, learns to use the right muscles at the right time, and develops the ability to send more action potentials which leads to stronger contractions. That's pure relative strength, which is what will help you the most in your gymnastic progress. You also build up outstanding work capacity this way.

A single set of the wall handstand, 2-3 hill sprints(switched with other sprints like a sled sprint one day and perhaps longer sprints like 400m once a week, but just 1-2 of those), 1 set of HLL max reps minus 2-3, so 2-3 reps if your max is 5, 2 reps if max is 4, just 1 rep if max is 3. Adjust the HLL progression to be appropriate. You could do a single set of body lever every other day as well.

Doing things like that will make you feel even BETTER than you do now, which may be confusing. That is how you were designed by nature to feel! Don't try and work more than that, you'll just start getting tired and worn down. It's easy to do too much at once, but you can do a whole lot of you aren't maxing out and you keep the volume of each exercise very low. It is quite remarkable. This is a secret of the old strongmen that I've been piecing together for a long time. It is literally transforming me.

You have to remember that you don't have to push your body to its limit to get results.

You have to push the body to its limit to get the maximum response for each SESSION, but that has a lot of drawbacks. One, you get tired. Really tired. Two, you need more rest. A lot more rest. Finally, you have to really be careful with your exercise selection, because you can only go all-out with a few things before you're completely wrecked for the day. Because of all this you have to specialize in one area with this type of training. That makes this training concept, and variations of it, very good for powerlifters and olympic lifters because their sports are very narrowly focused into just a few competitive movements.

When you don't push your body anywhere near its limit you are still pushing past what your body accepts as normal, and it will adapt accordingly. Our bodies like to operate within a large buffer zone. When we push even a little bit outside that zone, our body expands its abilities to compensate for that, so that the workload ends up being inside the buffer zone. Because you're staying so cfar away from the outer limits of your ability training as I've suggested, you are not going to get tired. You are not going to be all that sore. You will be able to train 4-6 days a week and do so indefinitely while practicing a rather large variety of things. This kind of workout is also very time efficient. The small increases from day to day add up quickly, and while progress in any one area will be slightly behind what a very focused approach would give, it will still be good progress. You will have more energy than you know what to do with. You may actually have to do one really hard session every week or two just to keep yourself under control. You will have consistent progress in EVERYTHING that you practice. You can still build a 3x BW squat and deadlift and a 2x BW bench, as some benchmarks, WHILE making outstanding progress in the gymnastics too, AND handbalancing, AND sprinting, AND jumping, etc. You will be slightly behind the development of any one specialist in any of those areas, but you will get to the same level if you want to. It will take an extra year or two, but you will have so many other high level abilities to show off at the same time that people won't believe it is possible without drugs. I can guarantee you this works.

You just need to pick the things you want and not do more than 2 sets of them per day, and don't let either of those sets be maximal. You will figure out what you can handle. What I've mentioned as suggestions won't bother you at all. There is probably still plenty of room to adjust that and fit quite a bit more in.

[Scott Malin]

Exactly what slizzard said! In regards to training, another important skill is the ability to listen to your body. And by listen, I mean the internal awareness equivalent of hearing a pin drop from 500 yards away. It's a lifetime skill that's always in development, but it's also become one of my best training and nutrition tools and one I'm constantly honing. In this regards, I'm a huge fan of meditation both as a training tool and a recovery technique. One has to only look at the studies of Tibetan monks with 10,000+ hours of compassion meditation to see the benefits this yields to athletics and most areas of life.

[Newguy]

:shock: Wow Slizzardman, you have just blew a hole in how I have always looked at conditioning.

And whats more what you said makes sense!

Thanks,

The guy who realizes he is quite new

[Joshua Naterman]

It blows a huge hole in how I used to look at conditioning too. You're not alone lol!

This is why I am CONSTANTLY searching for new information and learning more about how the body works, how different groups of athletes build their abilities, and how that is relevant to different fitness goals in general. It's a lot of reading, but I think it is totally worth it.

[Blairbob]

Basic GB strength which includes all the L-sit, straddle-L, manna and can include FSP's besides press handstand progressions. Then general handbalancing. For myself, I typically like to do some maintenance tumbling in my warmup period on tumbl-trak and floor (nothing too intense).

This could easily be the basic GB shoulder protocol as well in there, too.

[Calder Photography]

Thanks everyone so much again,

And so sorry for posting in the WOD, I'll remove it when I'm on next.

I'm very new to this and just hugely thankful to have you guys to refer to. Slizzardman especially, thanks so much for taking the time out for that post, it's cleared everything up for me, you've been massively helpful.

Thanks again guys,

Tom.

[Joshua Naterman]

No need, I'll move this to Getting Started.

Edit: this has already been moved to Community. It's good here, please leave it up.

[Calder Photography]

Okay, so here are my thoughts:

Obtaining a one arm chinup and pushup are goals I would really love to nail, so I thought i'd add 1-2 sets of 3-4 reps of a progression of OAP (towel pullups, negatives e.t.c) and one arm pushups after my FSP'S and WOD. conditioning is also pretty important to me so I thought I'd in a conditioning day on wednesday. this would be things like 100 burpees for time, Magic 50, intense conditioning workouts.

Does this sound like too much work?

[Blairbob]

I've tried doing intense metcons on Wednesdays while doing GB and it hurt my performance. Bare in mind, it can be done by others but not necessarily yourself. That is the trick. Not everyone has the same workout capacity and recovery rate. What works for some won't work for others. It all depends.

As well, eating and hydrating enough is a big factor.

Fortunately 100 burpees for time isn't too taxing. Ideally I would keep such things for doing on Saturday and doing something lighter on Wednesday.

Again it all depends on an individual basis. Sometimes you just have to try it and see if it works or crashes you.

[Alexander Moreen]

How strong are your oap negatives? 4 sessions of oap training per week sounds like a recipe for tendinitis for sure.

[Joshua Naterman]

Okay, so here are my thoughts:

Obtaining a one arm chinup and pushup are goals I would really love to nail, so I thought i'd add 1-2 sets of 3-4 reps of a progression of OAP (towel pullups, negatives e.t.c) and one arm pushups after my FSP'S and WOD. conditioning is also pretty important to me so I thought I'd in a conditioning day on wednesday. this would be things like 100 burpees for time, Magic 50, intense conditioning workouts.

Does this sound like too much work?

I think you need to break down what your conditioning goals are, exactly. Conditioning just means getting used to a certain type and level of exertion. Interval training has been shown to be one of the best tools for increasing both aerobic conditioning and anaerobic 2 conditioning. This is ALREADY a big part of many WODS, and as such your goals are already being successfully trained for to a pretty good degree.

You won't build a very high level of aerobic or anaerobic 2 conditioning as quickly with the WODS as you would with specific metabolic conditioning workouts, but if you focus there you will be making zero progress with maximal strength or dynamic strength, and then when you try to focus on THAT you will start to lose the results from your metcon, because they are largely mitochondrial in nature. The body adjusts motochondrial density fairly quickly, which is why endurance can be build so very quickly compared to strength, which is a composite of factors that take longer to develop and longer to fade.

This is why complex training cycles were invented, to avoid this problem entirely. The speed of progress in any one area is slightly slower than if there was a single focus on that area, but ALL areas can be improved steadily at the same time.

Now, as for your one arm goals, the first thing you need to do is master the hardest two hand variations. Performing a one arm pull up is putting nearly 100% of your bodyweight on one arm. As we've discussed before, it's very hard to accurately modify one's resistance when just using the body and trying to either modify leverage or provide a self-spot. Personally, I think that your approach is full of enthusiasm that is very misdirected. Performing single arm push ups with good form is a very hard thing to do. Performing a single arm pull up or chin up is much, much harder. Your best bet, quite honestly, is to follow the WODS and allow your strength to build. If you don't have the strength to complete the pull up strength WODs with a good bit of added weight then you are really not ready to tackle OAC training. That's much more advanced than it appears to be. You can watch the videos of what I can do, and I will tell you straight up that I am not ready for OAC training.

As for the one arm push ups, I would make a simple loading pin (could be a 5 gallon bucket, really) and use a lifting belt, towel, or something else to put around your body as a belt so that you can use the bucket along with weight plates and some water bottles to get an accurate spot for yourself so that you can accurately and slowly decrease the assistance. I would approach this with a steady state cycle mentality. This is really easy to build, you only need two eyebolts and two pulleys, which should cost about 10 bucks total. I'll show how to do this later on in the month.

[Calder Photography]

Hey Guys,

thanks so much for all your replies!

In regards to conditioning, I think you're totally right, I've only been doing WOD'S for a little over a week and didn't realize the extent of anaerobic work involved.

As for one arm chinups/pushups, I've been training these skills for months and months on and off, well before starting gymnastic training. I've been doing weighted pullups/chinups as well as weighted pushups for ages (I use a weighted vest and backpack) I feel pretty confident with my progress/ability in these areas. I used to do advance chair pushups with around 40-50kg of extra weight, and I currently do one arm pullup towel variation (one arm on bar, one arm holding a towel) with my non dominant hand at the very bottom of the towel.

While I feel my body is ready for these movements, and can handle them, I also think you guys definitely know what you're talking about.

I trust your advice and will very carefully consider whether I'm truly ready to tackle these movements, or whether it would be more beneficial to wait a couple of months until my body adjusts to the new stimulus Gymnastic training brings.

Once again, It's so great to be able to put a question forward to you guys, and get such thoughtful answers. I hugely appreciate all your help.

Tom.

[Joshua Naterman]

Tom, with that amount of OAP progression, you may well want to take one set of each pressing WOD per round and replace it with a one arm push up prep move.

Same goes for OAC work on pull days. If it's multiplanar, I'd just do 1-2 sets after the WOD, or 1 set between warm up and WOD. You'll be surprised at how well that works out for you, I think.

I also think you might really like the set up for those I have at my girlfriend's house. I'll try to get that up this coming weekend.

[Calder Photography]

Hey Slizzardman,

That sounds like a good idea, I was planning on only adding 1 or 2 sets of OAC moves after the wod.

Do you think, with my current ability, this would be okay?

Tom.

[Joshua Naterman]

It sounds like you'll be fine, honestly. I would start of with just one submaximal set after each WOD and see how you feel after two weeks. You should find that things are getting easier with each week. You might try experimenting with 2 sets after a few WODs to see how you feel and how you perform, and do that for 2 weeks as well. Stick with whichever plan seems to make you feel and perform better! You may even end up doing 2 sets at the end of the week and 1 set the other days, who knows? Just keep those OAC sets submaximal!