Rock climbing & Gymnastic Strength Training

Hello everyone,

I am new to gymnastic bodies and I am very impressed with the level of strength that people are developing with BtGB.

I am a rock climber and I would like to incorporate Gymnastic Strength Training™ to my work outs, but I am not sure where to start.

Help and suggestions of particular exercises would be appreciated.

Here are some the areas I want to strengthen;

1. Forearm strength and endurance

2. Shoulder strength & stability

3. Control and precision with moving feet on the rock

4. Dynamic power (ability to jump and grab higher hand holds)

5. Lock off strength (ability to hold arm in a lock off position while reaching for next hold)

6. Total body control ( I want to learn to move my body in space to any position that will keep me in balance while climbing)

For fun;

a. planche

b. MUs on flat surfaces like walls or the tops of boulders

I am thinking there is a different strength to MU on rings and MU on flat surfaces

c. Manna

d. FL

I am trying to follow the WODs M.T.TH.F.

I got the BtGB book, rings and homemade pvc parallettes.

Thanks in advance,

Carlos

Just keep going with the wod's and be consistent. If you're consistent and follow the wod's you will see a lot of progress all around fairly quickly. If you do that and continue to practice your rock climbing you'll be a beast in no time.

Sorry to go off on a tangent but what level of basic strength would you recommend before moving to the WODS?

Gavin S said:

Sorry to go off on a tangent but what level of basic strength would you recommend before moving to the WODS?

WODs are scaleable. I personally think everyone can benefit from them as long as you can perform the basic movements.

I'm not sure I get how to scale the WODS in terms of volume.

If a WOD has 4 rounds of three dip variations of between 5 and 7 reps, how do I scale that if I can only do say 1 or 2 rounds of 5 reps?

Gavin S said:

I'm not sure I get how to scale the WODS in terms of volume.

If a WOD has 4 rounds of three dip variations of between 5 and 7 reps, how do I scale that if I can only do say 1 or 2 rounds of 5 reps?

For the most part its not the volume we are scaling but the difficulty. In the case of dips you could instead do a pushup variation, or use some form of assistance such as bands.

Nick_EOD said:

Gavin S said:

Sorry to go off on a tangent but what level of basic strength would you recommend before moving to the WODS?

WODs are scaleable. I personally think everyone can benefit from them as long as you can perform the basic movements.

This! I tried to gain some strenght before WODs but was a mistake as It took too much time to figure out a training plan than anyway had a fraction of the efectiviness of the WOD. Just read the WOD post and you will have an idea of fully scaled down WODs

( mine is a perfect example ). You will improve much faster with WODs. It took too much time for me to realize.

Cool, thanks guys.

After reading the "Program Design Options" again, and again, it seems that someone new to Gymnastics strength training would benefit more from the "Steady State Training Cycle".

Here is a quote straight out of the book "Steady State is by far the best training cycle that I have ever developed for use

with my athletes."...."In essence the Steady State training cycle is simplicity itself".

Maybe after one steady state cycle a new athlete would have a better understanding of how to "scale down" the WODs.

Does Coach Sommer recommend for a new "athlete" to just jump into the WOD cycle?

SSC works together with the wod's. The wod's tell you which exercises to perform, and the SSC gives you a way to scale the exercises without injury.

Yeah, steady state cycle just means that you don't increase the time or difficulty of the exercise over the course of 8-12 weeks. It's something you can use with the WOD.

Thanks for all the replies.

I got the home gym all set up and ready to go along with wifi to be able to log in and check out the WOD videos.

Let the training begin!...